It had to be a drainpipe on the side of a tall building.
“Why, god, why?” I moan.
I am crying ugly tears as silently as I possibly can as I force first one foot, then the other to step off the bracket and let myself slide down to the next. My body shivers to a squeaking stop. About a layer of skin has already scraped off my hands and inner thighs. I risk a glance down to check my progress, but it’s very depressing.
I am now approximately three feet closer to the ground than a moment ago, and trembling violently.
“Fuck!”
Either this is going to take all night, or I’m just going to fall to my death.
Nope, don’t think of falling. Oh god. My eyes squeeze tight shut.
“Well, this is going well,” I mutter.
What jerks me out of my fear is a sudden explosion of voices in the stairwell not too far away, a man and a woman shouting. There’s a harsh slap, some scuffling, a scream. The window is slammed shut as the sobbing woman is dragged away and a door bangs shut.
God. Was that Amy? Was she caught?
A weird calm filters through me: I’d rather die than go back in there, so the only direction for me to go is down. Determined, I release my foothold and again squeak and bump along with gravity until my feet find the next bracket to steady me.
I repeat the process over and over, not allowing myself to look away from the grungy pipe inches away from my nose. I don’t know how much farther I have to go, but it seems like the ground has got to be closer now. Sweat is making the job harder and my hands are losing their capacity to grip.
Can’t stop. Must go on.
My inner thighs and hands are raw, and my biceps spasm from their completely unprecedented effort. My foot slips and I miss the next bracket, causing momentum to build until I shoot down the pole like a fireman.
“Ahh!”
Speed makes the metal cut into my skin painfully and the next bracket breaks my grip. Stunned with the pain, I feel the pipe slip out of my grasp. My arms are wheeling backward, my feet standing on air.
I’m freefalling.
Chapter Ten
Water is pouring over my face. It’s the first thing I feel as I swim back to consciousness and almost drown. Am I underwater? No, it’s giant, greasy raindrops—like only New York can make—splattering on every exposed inch of me. A peal of thunder brings my eyelids fluttering open, and the gray sky ripples into focus, a mixture of rainstorm and dawn.
For a moment I register nothing but the rain and its like I’m a floating droplet myself, but then my body catches up with me and I go from zero to excruciating pain in a single breath. My head is only inches away from the metal rim of a dumpster and I’m spread like a starfish over piles of garbage.
Guess it could have been worse: I could be dead. It could have been the pavement instead of pillows of waste. Still, I wonder if I can actually move. It always looked like a nice soft landing in the movies, falling into a dumpster, but my decimated body bets to differ.
With a groan, I gingerly wiggle my toes and fingers. When that goes well, I move my hands over my torso. There’s something sticky on my side. Blood? I try to lift my head to have a look and feel a stabbing pain shoot down my neck that makes me suck in my breath.
Fuck. That will take some getting used to. I carefully bring my fingers near my face for inspection, but the sticky substance on them doesn’t look like blood: it’s more like decomposing garbage.
Wonderful.
Now my fingers are free to massage my neck and scan my head. Amazingly, I don’t feel any cracks or gashes. I draw on every scrap of stoicism I can muster to bite back the pain and attempt to get up.
“Arg!”
It hurts, but I manage to rock myself to sitting and somehow force myself to scramble over the side of the dumpster. Falling to the ground of the alley, I tuck myself into fetal position in the corner between the building the dumpster and succumb to misery.
Collecting myself at this juncture is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I feel exactly like a person who is afraid of heights and has just climbed down five stories on the outside of a building, fallen, and landed in the trash.
Maybe I’m in shock. Maybe I’m really dead. Maybe that’s why when I hear a motorcycle engine decelerating and coming to idle down the alley I don’t bother moving to better cover. I wrap my arms around my torso and shiver, like a kid who thinks they’re invisible if they shut their eyes.
The sound of male voices talking over the hum of the bike goes on for what feels like a long time, and then I hold my breath as the roaring engine fades into the distance.
The sky is lighter now. More people will be around soon. I count to ten, make myself stand up. My vision is clouded with black fizzling stars, but they clear up enough for me to see that it’s a dead-end alley full of dumpsters and debris with only one opening to the street. I point myself that direction, hope infusing my stumbling steps with speed.
I take a few dizzy strides before registering that there is still a motorcycle parked in the mouth of the alley. A large man leans against it, puffing cigarette smoke in a dark cloud around his silhouette. His back is to me, displaying the Death Layer patch that covers the entire back of his leather jacket.
My adrenaline spikes, reminding me I am not free yet. Biker dude hasn’t seen me, though, so I still have a chance, but here I am frozen in the middle of the alley like a deer in the headlights. Seconds stretch as I weigh my options.
Ahead and to my left I see a pile of cardboard boxes jutting out from the canyon of buildings. If I can make it behind those, I can keep my eye on biker dude and wait it out without giving myself away.
I jerk my body towards the boxes, but in my stupor I have completely forgotten about the damn ankle shackle and it grates loudly against the cobblestone, sending sparks. The man’s head whips around as I dive for the boxes and burrow myself under their musty weight, knowing that it’s too late. He definitely heard and saw me.
“That you Blair?”
Blair? He must have been waiting for someone. He must think I am his date. Fuck.
Sure enough, the heavy scruff of boots cautiously draws closer to my hiding spot. There’s nothing to do but pull the boxes over me like a shield. A damn useless shield, it turns out, because a moment later my fort is slowly demolished.
“Quit farting around, I don’t have time for this shit.”
The voice sends fear spiraling down my legs and I burrow deeper, searching for anything to use as a weapon. My hand lands on a piece of PVC pipe just as the last box is yanked off of me. I swing the pipe into something, I think his head, and hear a string of curses.