So, how the hell do I get into the hallway?
Trinity hasn’t come back yet, leaving me only Coco to worry about; and she hasn’t moved since she face-planted into her duvet. Hopefully this means she is the level of comatose that I need. Bending my knees, I scoot my butt closer to the bed. A sudden cramp makes my leg spasm and there’s a clinking sound as my shackle bangs the metal frame. Stifling a curse, I freeze and stare through the dark in the direction of Coco’s body.
She doesn’t move.
Exhaling, I try round two of scooting and am more successful. In the dark my hands trace down the bed frame until my fingers find the relentless stainless steel of my shackle, but try as I might there’s no way to trick open the spring mechanism.
Too bad I never learned to pick locks growing up, but for some silly reason I had kind of figured on being a decent, law-abiding citizen my entire life.
Guess this is plan B.
I spin slowly and use the bars of the bed frame to pull myself up to stand. Taking a minute to let my blood pressure adjust, I assess the situation. One cuff of the shackle is around my ankle, the other locked near the floor around the narrow bed pole. Since I can’t very well chew off my own foot, I’ve got to move the bed somehow. Bending over, I yank at the bed frame to see if there’s any wobble or uneven floor advantage to help me out. There isn’t. The only way to get the cuff off the foot of the bed will be for me to lift the bed enough to slip it out from underneath. Without waking up Coco.
Which means that I must now transform into Superwoman. Cursing myself for not buying that Groupon for Crossfit a while back, I curl my body as much around the corner of the bed and pull. Nothing happens, besides a brief and passionate protest in my lumbar spine.
I step back, frustrated, until high school gym class comes back to me in a flash: lift with the legs, not the back. Of course! I squat, tucking my tailbone into the bed frame and straightening my back to minimize strain.
With a deep breath, I push with everything I’ve got. My tired hamstrings are screaming at me but the flimsy metal frame gives a trembling jump in my hands. The corner raises first an inch, then two, then three. Coco rolls softly onto her side because of the angle, but still doesn’t wake. She must be pretty damn drunk.
The bed is frickin’ heavy, but I manage to hold it up long enough to slide my shackle out from under. It rattles across the concrete floor like nails on a chalkboard, but Coco still hasn’t shown a sign of life. Finally, with a hissing exhale I set the bed frame back down as gently as possible.
Oh. My. God. I did it. I’m a fucking superhero.
There’s no time to bask in my newfound glory. I catch up the loose end of the ankle restraints with my left hand and do a weird limp-run to the door and out into the hallway.
It has to be super late and it’s dead quiet on the dormitory floor, all the bedroom doors closed. Heart hammering, I remember what Amy said about the guards and wish there was a way for me to find out what time it is. I’ll just have to wing it and hope that Amy somehow makes it out, too.
The exit light oozes a red glow over the stairwell about five doors down from Coco’s room, and I make an awkward sprint for it. I almost sob in relief when I make it through and find myself clinking down the stairs. I pass the familiar seventh-floor entrance to the bar area and press on, amazed that no one is around.
Sixth floor.
Fifth.
How is it so easy?
And there it is: the most beautiful window I have ever seen in my life, never mind that it’s caked black with dust and rust: it’s freedom. Amy neglected to mention that it is small and high, starting at my shoulder level and only about the size of my bathroom window back at my and Rachel’s apartment.
Whelp…so much for easy.
Gripping my fingertips into the lip of the glass, I grit my teeth and push up. The window squeals like a pig being burned alive, but it opens. If that sound won’t raise the dead and bring the guards, I don’t know what will. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get my body through it, and fast. I attempt a pull-up to the windowsill with and without a leaping start, and epically fail.
“Come on, yoga arms,” I mutter. “This is your chance to shine!”
A door opens somewhere in the stairwell, and I hear heavy footsteps approaching. Adrenaline spikes through my limbs. Someone is definitely coming my way.
Shit just got really fucking urgent.
My hands are on the windowsill and my feet seek out the railing of the stairs almost on their own, using them as a booster. Necessity really is the mother of invention. It’s not until I am climbing up and my knee is on the window ledge and my head is outside the building that I realize that my body figured out an escape route without my brain’s help. I force my torso through the window and gulp as I come face to face with my greatest fear.
“Heights,” I hiss. “Why, why did it have to be heights?”
It’s dark and the widow opens into a dimly lit alley, but I can still see that the ground is really, really far away: five floors away, to be exact. Vertigo threatens to seize up my newfound Superwoman.
“Get it together,” I order myself. “No time, Clark. Oh my god. Pipe! There’s a pipe! Find the pipe!”
I force my gaze up from the ground and back to my immediate surroundings, remembering Amy’s instructions. The ledge I’m on is narrow. About a foot and a half away, I see the drainpipe that shoots from the roof above all the way to the street below. About two feet past the pipe is another column of narrow windows, and beyond that is an iron fire escape. In order to reach it, I’d have to be Superwoman and Spiderman…and I am not.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I curse.
It becomes my mantra.
Since there is literally no time to freak out, my body takes over again. I shimmy my knees onto the ledge, carefully pulling my shackle so it follows the rest of me through the window. Using my legs as a wedge, my arms stretch sideways until my hands can close around the pole. There are brackets every yard or so securing the pipe to the brick wall, and with laser focus I aim my un-shackled foot at that tiny, tiny hold.
With a startled squeal I swing my shackled foot over. Just like that I become Spiderwoman, my body trembling and clinging to a freaking drainpipe five stories above ground.
The Catholic kid in me is sure that maybe God is for something. I mean, having to shimmy down a drainpipe has to be at least some kind of karmic retribution for how well the first part of my escape was going, right, because stairs would be way too easy wouldn’t they? A ladder would be too easy. A rabid grizzly bear flanked by angry Nazis with harpoons would be too easy.