Ashley watched the gym doors after she’d changed into her shorts and t-shirt. Other kids shot hoops, and a few had dodgeballs, hoping Mr. Curry would give them free days for the last few gym sessions before summer.
Curry walked in wearing his signature navy blue Winterberry t-shirt and white shorts.
Ashley remembered the dark smears on his white shorts the day he’d stumbled from the woods with a dead Simon clutched in his arms.
He blew his whistle before quickly taking attendance. Several kids were missing, noticeably absent were Simon’s two best friends, Jon Hastings and Benjamin Rite. Ashley guessed they’d be out for the rest of the week.
When Mr. Curry reached Warren’s name, Ashley looked around the room, searching for the boy’s square head in the crowd.
Sid shuffled over, pulling on his Batman t-shirt. On the other side of the room, Travis and two other friends stood whispering, their heads close together.
“Warren Leach?” Mr. Curry repeated.
He put a mark on his clipboard and blew his whistle a second time.
“Basketball today. Groups of five. Line up on the wall,” he shouted.
“We’re not going outside?” Melanie Dunlop asked. Melanie had a Madonna obsession. Even during PE, she refused to take off the dozen bracelets encircling her wrists. Large fake gold hoop earrings hung from her ears. She liked to go outside so she and her friends could sit on the bleachers and giggle about the boys.
“No,” Mr. Curry told her.
He didn’t elaborate, but Ashley knew why. There had been long yellow tape streaming along the edge of the sidewalks, blocking not only the woods near Winterberry Middle School, but the playground as well.
“Warren’s gone again today,” Ashley whispered.
“Yeah, I noticed in science class,” Sid told her.
AFTER SCHOOL they walked into town.
Sid had gotten his allowance the day before and he bought them each a Dr. Pepper and a chocolate chip cookie from the Seven Eleven store.
Afterward, they cut through the laundromat and climbed onto the building’s roof.
Sid finished his cookie in two bites and then walked the perimeter of the roof, looking over the edge. When he rounded the front of the building, he jumped back.
“What?” Ashley asked.
Sid put a finger to his lips and pointed over the side.
Ashley walked to the edge and peeked over. Travis and three of his goons stood by a park bench, their skateboards beneath them.
Ashley laid on her belly and scooted to the edge, peeking her head over the side and tilting her ear to listen. Sid did the same.
“Dude, he’s totally planning something wicked,” Travis boasted. He pulled out his knife, flipped it open and flung it toward a patch of daisies. The knife stabbed through a daisy and into the ground.
“I don’t know, Travis,” one of his friends said. The friend, Gary, was taller than Travis with long skinny legs and arms and a stringy mop of hair that looked like he hadn’t washed it in a week. “My ma said his parents are flipping out. They think somebody kidnapped him.”
Travis chuckled and retrieved his knife. “That’s what Warren wants them to think, dumbass.”
The other two friends grinned and nodded their approval, but Gary didn’t seem to buy it. He closed his mouth, though, and Ashley knew why. If he challenged their leader, he’d soon find himself the hunted instead of the hunter.
“Then where is he?” Gary finally said, tipping his skateboard on its edge and spinning it around.
“I know where he is,” Travis boasted.
Sid’s eyes popped wide and Ashley grinned.
But instead of saying the words out loud, Travis leaned close to his friends and whispered it.
Ashley and Sid couldn’t hear them.
Sid leaned further over the roof. Ashley darted a hand out as Sid’s glasses slid from his face. Her thumb brushed one lens, and Sid’s own arms shot out as he scrambled to catch them, but it was too late.
The spectacles landed with a crack at Travis’s feet.
14
All four boys looked up.
Travis’s face contorted in a snarl.
“You’re dead,” he yelled, pointing a finger at them. Then he glanced down, his scowl replaced with a mean grin.
“And now you’ll be easy to catch too.”
Travis lifted a foot and slammed his shoe onto the glasses.
Sid squinted toward the boys, cringing when his glasses cracked, but Ashley knew he couldn’t see the glasses or even Travis’s face. The boys would be a blur against the sidewalk below.
“Bloody hell,” she snapped, grabbing Sid’s arm and pulling him up. “Just move your feet,” she hissed.
The Thrashers would run through the laundromat to the service door that led up the stairs and eventually opened onto the roof. Every kid in town knew how to get there, but not every kid knew about the old dumbwaiter in the fourth-floor hallway. It was their only chance.
Sid bumped along behind her, breath wheezing between his teeth. She tugged him forward.
“Stairs,” she told. “Grab the rail.”
He took the rail in one hand, holding hers in the other.
Below them, Ashley heard the heavy laundromat door crash open and the slap of tennis shoes on the cement steps.
Sid groaned, but Ashley didn’t allow the vision of the boys pounding up the stairs to frighten her.
She jerked Sid down the hallway, nearly tripping when he stepped on her heel.
“The dumbwaiter,” she whispered, shoving the metal door open with a shriek.
Sid planted his hands on the edge, his face a mask of terror, but he didn’t complain as he hoisted himself into the dark opening. She gave him a little push, and he tucked into the back corner of the metal box. She crawled in behind him, crushing against him, and pulling her legs against her chest.
If the boys made it to fourth floor as she closed the door, they’d hear it, and she and Sid would be stuck in the tiny, claustrophobic space.
She momentarily flashed on the boys lowering the waiter halfway so that they’d be trapped inside the wall in perpetual darkness. For half a second, she wanted to jump out and take her chances with the Thrashers. Instead, she gritted her teeth and yanked the door closed, sealing them in darkness.
Sid’s breath came out in raspy huffs, and she could feel him trying to slow down his breath. Even she found it difficult to breathe in the space. The air was stale and warm, and the darkness seemed thicker than the air outside the dumbwaiter.
Her right leg and arm were pressed against the cool metal door. Footsteps smacked down the hallway.
“They’re not on the roof,” one boy shouted.
Behind her, Sid made little gurgling sound in his throat.
More footsteps thumped down the hall.
Travis’s voice rang out. “Well, they didn’t jump,” he snarled.
“Third floor,” Gary announced. “The window at the end opens up to the fire escape.”
“Shit! Come on,” Travis shouted.
Shoes pounded away.
Sid started to move, as if ready to plow into the metal door and force his way into the light.
“Not yet,” Ash warned.
Several minutes passed in silence.
She wondered if oxygen had become scarce in the little enclosure. Every breath seemed smaller than the last. Soon they’d be sipping air, and after that, they’d open their mouths, but their lungs would hang empty and deflated behind their ribs.
Just as the words let’s go formed on her tongue, she heard the soft plod of a footstep in the hall. It was a muted sound. The person walking didn’t want to be heard.
Ashley shrank back, listening for another footstep.