Page 110 of Not Quite Dead Yet

Yes, she was right.

About ten feet below the window was the tilted roof of a long, narrow lean-to. A covered storage area against the wall down there. Better than jumping out the second story of a burning building and hoping for the best, and that was Option B.

She just had to get the window open. A sash window, only two panes of glass between her and living.

Jet reached up, undid the catch in the middle, the smoke gathering around her, forcing its way into her throat.

She coughed.

She choked.

She grabbed the handle on the lower half of the window and she pulled.

It didn’t move.

No, no, why wouldn’t it move?

The window was stuck, or her left arm was too weak.

She needed both arms, needed two hands. Fuck.

Jet pulled again, straining, through her fingers all the way up through her neck, screaming with the effort.

‘I am not going to die!’ she yelled at the window, at her own ghostly reflection.

She lifted one foot, drove it into the windowsill to give her left arm more power, and she pulled.

The window didn’t move.

‘Fuck you!’ Jet coughed.

Smash the glass, smash the glass, she needed something to smash the glass.

Not going to die, not going to die.

The computer on Dad’s desk? That was heavy. No, too heavy, Jet couldn’t pick it up with one hand. Something else, something else.

A large gold pot in the corner with a sad-looking palm plant inside, too green among all this smoke.

Jet picked it up and ran, ramming it into the window, the plant still inside.

The pot shattered but the window did not, dirt and leaves scattering over her feet.

‘Fuck!’ she roared.

The door behind her was on fire now, the wall too, the flames finding her, closing in.

Trapped inside her dad’s office.

Not going to die here; she was not going to die.

Something else.

On the desk, beside the computer, was a large photo frame. It looked heavy, the frame made of marble or something close to it.

A photo of the Masons. Jet just a squinting red-faced kid, probably thinking about frogs. Mom, Dad, Emily, Luke. That final summer, before five Masons became four.

Jet grabbed it because she was not going to die.