Page 42 of Not On Your Life

“I don’t know,” I say, studying the door. I guess it’s on me to get us out of here. Unfortunately, the door hinges are on the outside of the door, so I’ll have to go for the handle, or the door itself. I scan the room. There’s got to be something in here. A crowbar, or an ax?

I come up empty in my search. It’s strictly a sports closet. It’s almost as if they didn’t want kids to hurt each other.

I pick up a metal bat. This is the best I can find. I turn to the door.

“Whoa, what are you doing with that?” He tries to step around me, but I charge forward.

“I’m going to break the door down.”

He shakes his head. “That’s a solid metal door. You’ll be banging on it for hours. You might damage it, but you’ll never break it down.”

“So?” I lift the bat over my head. I’m not going to sit here and do nothing for the next three hours.

“Okay.” He grabs the bat with two hands and pries it from my fingers. “Let’s think about this before we start smashing things. We might be able to find a phone charger in here.”

A phone charger. Right. I can see how that might be the next logical solution. “Okay,” I say, and for the next…I have no idea how long because I’m stuck in a closet without a clue to the time, I go through every box and shelf in the room.

The closet needed to be reorganized, anyway.

“I found half,” Connor says.

I spin around. It’s only the block, though. No cord.

“Ugh.” I sink against the mountain of boxes I’ve made on the floor. My back hurts, my feet hurt, and I’m hungry. So hungry I considered eating a granola bar I found in a box half an hour ago. But it was so old I didn’t even recognize the brand on it.

“We are never getting out of here,” I grumble.

He drops to the floor on the opposite wall, stretching his legs in front of him until his giant shoes nearly touch my right hip. “Sure we will.”

“When did you become an optimist?”

“I’m not really. That’s more of my sister’s thing. But there’s not a better option right now.”

My stomach growls, and I place a hand on it, attempting to stamp out the hunger pangs.

I lean my head against the boxes and take a deep breath. When I was little, I developed an irrational fear of public bathrooms, and with the concrete floor and cinder block walls in here, it feels eerily similar. It was fine when I was searching for a way out, but now reality sinks in. I’m trapped. My breathing speeds up. So does my heart rate.

One of those exposed pipes in the roof connects to the sewer, I’m sure of it. At any moment, it could burst. And now I’m hyperventilating.

“Hey, are you okay?”

I nod, but it feels jerky and probably looks like I’m having a seizure.

I’m vaguely aware of him joining me on my side of the closet. Telling him to move takes too much effort when I’m struggling to breathe.

“Are you claustrophobic?”

“Not necessarily.” My breath escapes in short rasps.

I’m not sure where he finds a bag, but suddenly there is one in front of my face.

I press it to my mouth, filling the bag and releasing it. Fill and release. Poop isn’t going to rain down on me from the huge pipe up there.

Not a helpful thought.

Drain pipes run underground, I think. I close my eyes and focus on my breaths. A few minutes later, my lungs stop fighting me, and I relax.

“I don’t like public bathrooms, and uh, for a moment,“ I point at the pipes running along the ceiling, “this almost felt like one.” I surprise myself by telling him this, by giving him valuable ammunition.