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Another shock to me? There’s some ink on his arm.

His sleeve still covers most of it, but something is definitely there.

I’m not going to be that girl who asks to see his tattoo.

And thanks to my Exexveei vision, I don’t have to be.

If we truly do go on to date, then I know that I’ll see his body someday—all of it.

I do my best not to mentally undress Ollie as I reckon with having the gift of insanely accurate, detailed foresight.

Before I need to fan myself off, Ollie asks a question that roots the both of us back to the here and now.

“What do you think our odds of escaping are?”

“Well, I’m a little nervous about our teammates.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” he asks.

“They’re shit-faced.”

“What? No. Who goes to an escape room drunk? You can’t focus on the clues when you’re wasted.”

Before he has a chance to freak out any further, our host for the evening approaches the group.

“Good evening, everyone. I’m Tommy, master escape room designer. Welcome to my second home, The Panic Room. Tonight, you all will be up against my latest creation, a puzzle I’m calling: Lab Rat Revenge .”

“If actual rodents are involved, I’m out,” I whisper in Ollie’s ear.

“The room takes place in a laboratory where possessed rats are conducting experiments on humans. That’s right, animal testing is taking on a whole new meaning tonight, folks.

Here’s the tea: you are tasked with completing a series of puzzles to escape the possessed rodents.

If you succeed, the place will explode behind you and you’ll put an end to the deranged human testing.

If you fail, the rats are going to put you into a wood chipper. ”

“What does a wood chipper have to do with a lab rat?”

I knew the engineer would throw a flag on that one. Alas, Tommy ignores him and keeps going with the directions.

“You will have one hour to complete the tests and attempt to get out of the laboratory before you turn into mulch, friends. Now let it be known that I will be watching from my underground lair. I will hear everything you say and see every move you make. Should I catch you clearly getting stuck on a clue—or spinning your rodent wheels, if you will—you’ll hear me come onto the intercom and give you a generous hint to steer you in the right direction. Any questions?”

The birthday girl has one.

“Is there Wi-Fi in here? I want to upload some selfies with the rats.”

“There is , but there are no phones allowed in the rooms. It’s too easy to google the answers to my riddles and cheat your way out. In fact, that’s actually what this chest is for. Everyone, put your phones and purses in here. I’ll keep everything locked up until you’re out.”

The room collectively groans at the thought of not being connected to the digital world for the next hour. As such, no one moves when Tommy opens the chest. No one, but Ollie.

“Anyone else care to follow the rules?” Ollie asks with his signature hint of elitist annoyance.

“I really hope we escape,” I say to no one in particular, dropping my purse into the chest and letting out a guttural sigh. The birthday group does the same, but lets out burps instead of sighs.

“Great, thanks. Any last questions?” Tommy asks, turning the key into the padlock on the chest.

I raise my hand.

“What if we have to go to the bathroom when we’re in there?”

“It’s a whole thing. Try not to,” Tommy says.

I give him a thumbs up, remembering how I’ve used that exact line on Nora’s kids before.

Tommy ushers us into the room and locks the door behind us. The six of us stare at each other in silence as the clock starts to tick down.

“Should we all introduce ourselves?” I suggest to Ollie.

“We don’t really have time for that,” he says, beginning to comb the perimeter of the room, running his hands along the walls, switches, and gears—looking for what, I don’t really know.

“Besides, it’s better to work in pairs. Just stick with me and we’ll cover more ground on our own than we would as a big, dumb herd. It’s called divide and concur.”

Despite how into the escape room Ollie is, I can’t take not knowing the names of my fellow captors.

“Hi guys. This is Ollie. I’mMoonie,” I say. Right then, I realize I might be recognized. My name has been a Chicago buzzword lately and if these drunks pick up on that, I fear it will delay us even more.

“Anna is the birthday girl. I’m Meg. These are our boyfriends, Sebastian and Dan.

Apologies in advance, we’re a little buzzed.

Bottomless margaritas beforehandwas probably not the best idea, but when you’re visiting from small-town, Iowa to celebrate your thirtieth, it’s kind of a given.

What’s the theme of this room again? Prison Break? ”

Small-town, Iowa, check.

Ollie shouts out that he’s cracked the first clue by spinning a rodent wheel until it unlocked a drawer with another riddle in it.

“ Lab rats are lyrical geniuses,” he reads to the group. “What could that possibly mean?”

“Nice work on the wheel, Oliver,” Sebastian says.

“It’s Ollie .”

Sebastian then takes out what looks like a mini bag of unbranded gummy bears. “Care for an edible, O-man?”

Sebastian holds out two in his palm—a red one and an orange one.

Living in San Diego, one becomes very fluent in the world of edibles.

You can’t go a city block without seeing a shop selling it or a courier delivering it.

Even though I didn’t really get into them, I admit I’ve indulged before and figure it might be time now again.

I take my chances on the red one and toss it in my mouth. Cherry. I bring the orange one to my partner.

“Here you go,” I say to Ollie like I’m handing him a Tylenol.

“What even is that?” Ollie asks, holding a giant piece of plastic cheese in his hand.

“I think it’s tangerine.”

“Yeah but tangerine what ?”

It hits me then that Ollie may not be familiar with the stoner version of gummy bears.

“It’s a weed gummy,” I explain, distracted by the fake cheese. “Did you find another clue?”

“I don’t know, this was in the drawer. There may be a key inside. If you all would help me solve this riddle, we could find out.” He raises his voice for attention on that last part.

Just then, Tommy comes on the intercom.

“Fifty minutes, everyone. That’s five-zero minutes to escape.”

The gummy is becoming one with my sweaty palm as I gesture once more for Ollie to take it.

“No thank you. You heard the guy. We’ve got fifty minutes left to get out of here. I don’t think now is the time to be popping weed gummies,” Ollie says, sounding impressively like a middle-aged suburban dad.

“On the contrary,” I argue. “We’ve got fifty minutes left of being trapped in a room with a bunch of drunks who aren’t going to contribute shit toward our fate of being put through the wood chipper.

Thesegummies will take twenty minutes to kick in, leaving us with thirty minutes of semi-tolerable interaction with these idiots. ”

As I rest my case, Ollie looks to Dan and Sebastian who have failed to realize that the giant-sized rodent water bottle is nothing more than an aesthetic element as they crawl around on their hands and knees attempting to suckle water out of the plastic prop.

This is the reason I haven’t created a Tinder profile since being back, by the way.

“Oh, fuck it,” he says, snatching the gummy from my hand and popping it in his mouth.

As I begin to explore the room on my own, I stumble across an old typewriter. In it is a piece of paper with the beginnings of a poem or something. It says:

Despite all my rage…

Suddenly, the old Smashing Pumpkins song “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” pops into my head and I punch the rest of the lyrics into the typewriter: I’m still just a rat in a cage.

When I put the period on the lyric, a door opens, leading us out of the colorful room we started in and into a literal human-sized cage.

“Oh shit,” I say aloud. “I think I broke something.”

Ollie rushes over to me as I explain what happened.

“Quite the opposite, Moonie . You solved the clue to get us to the next lair. Nice job. And that door opening like that? Talk about impressive hydraulics. Remind me to ask Tommy what kind of air compressor they got for that when we leave.”

He holds out his hand to high-five me. Knowing what’ll happen if we touch palms, I make the executive decision to throw my arms around his stomach and go in for a quick hug instead. I can’t risk being side tracked by a vision of us doing god knows what later on tonight.

“Sorry, the gummies make me kind of touchy-feely ,” I say, blaming the THC for my burst of faux affection. Ollie smiles and puts his hand on the crook of my back to usher me into the cage room.

The floor of the cage room is covered in a thick layer of hamster bedding—like a ball pit made of hay. The drunks kick it at each other. Meg comments that she hopes there’s “rat poop” in there as she hurls a load at her boyfriend, Dan.

“Ugh, what does this all meeeeannnn ?” Anna exclaims as if the cage room triggers an existential crisis.

“There’s got to be something buried under this hay. A key. A code. Something ,” Ollie states to the group. This is the first time he’s engaged with the others and I can tell the gummy is working on him—a lot faster than I thought it would. “Everyone, start digging.”

I find his marching orders sexy, which means I’m feeling the gummy, too.

Sebastian is supposed to be digging like the rest of us, but instead he pulls a vape pen from his pocket and takes a rip.

He taps Dan for a hit as he exhales smoke rings.

Dan does the same before tapping Ollie, who rolls his eyes and passes.

I also decline. Anna is next. Then Meg. And now the room officially smells like a strawberry haze.

“Hey! There’s no vaping in the escape room!” Tommy’s stern voice comes across the intercom.

Sebastian tucks it back into his pocket and holds his hands up like there’s nothing to see here.

“Ugh, this is, like, really hard,” says the birthday girl, Anna, as she sloshes some hay around and belches.

“Stay focused, guys. We’re running out of time to get out of here,” Ollie reminds the group.

“We’re not done yet?” Anna asks/complains.

“There’s one more room after this, then we’re free from the wood chipper. Keep looking for clues.”

Ollie discovers a black light flashlight under a pile of hay and shines it on the wall. Some gibberish numbers and letters written in what looks like blood appear.

“It’s a code of some sort,” he announces to no one in particular.

A part of me feels bad that he’s clearly the only one who is super into this, but the other part of me watches him in adoration.

It’s kind of cute to see how all these trap doors, gears, switches, and life-size rodent toys do it for his engineering brain.

In comparison, the flavor board at an ice cream shop has the same effect on me.

“Oh! I know!” shouts Anna.

“You know what the code means?” Ollie asks.

“Yup,” she says, belching again. “It means…”

Just then, Anna projectile vomits into the hay and we all immediately plug our noses and look away.

“Yeah, you guys are toast,” says Tommy on the microphone as he presses play on a pre-recorded soundtrack of what I imagine is supposed to be rats laughing and a wood chipper crunching up onour bones.

He switches on all the lights, kills the creepy background music, and opens the emergency door which lets us out into the lobby.

The mood is instantly killed. The only thing that could make this worse is if we actually got put through a wood chipper, which, depending on how hard the puke is to clean up, might actually happen if Tommy has any say.

Anna is sobbing in the background, wailing that Sebastian doesn’t even love her, while Meg comforts her and the boys try to get out of paying the mandatory “puke fee” to Tommy.

I look to Ollie who I can tell is still wondering if now’s a good time to ask Tommy about the hydraulics he used in the trap door.

Instead, we grab our phones and coats and slither out the front door with our tails tucked between our legs.

“Well, that was fun!” I say as we exit into the cold, fall air.

“That was…a complete disaster.”

“But at least your gummy kicked in by now, right?”

“I guess so. I mean, I am starving. That’s a side effect, right?”

“Yup. The munchies are totally normal,” I assure him. “There’s a really good diner up ahead at the corner. Have you been?”

“No. Do they serve burritos stuffed with French fries, Miss California?”

“It’s more of a burger place. But don’t worry, I’ll just dunk my fries in a chocolate shake instead.”

“Because ketchup would make too much sense?” he asks.

I give it a beat before explaining, “I prefer to bepleasantly surprised by combinations that don’t seem to gotogether.”