That man lies and tells her, “I don’t know how.” He’s telling the lady they got to find me, that they can’t let us get away.
I find a door on the wall. I can just barely make out the square shape of it in the faint nighttime glow. I reach for the handle, but the door is locked up tight. My sweaty hand feels up the door, landing on the lock.
The man and the lady are getting closer. I know ’cause they’re still screaming at one another, telling each other which way to go to find Gus and me. Calling one another idiots, telling each other to turn on a light so that they can see. Their voices feel close enough to touch.
They try and negotiate with me, saying things like, “If you tell us where you are, we’ll give you a cookie,” as if I’m dumb enough to fall for that. No cookie is good enough to live here the rest of my life.
But then, in the blink of an eye, they go from negotiating to mean, ’cause right after their offer for a cookie, they’re calling me a bitch again, saying, “I’ll kill you when I get my hands on you, you little bitch, you dumb twat.”
They know this is my doing. They know Gus ain’t so naughty as to try and run on his own.
My sweaty hand turns that lock and the door miraculously opens. There’s a rush of air on the other side of it. It’s hot and sticky, hitting me like a wall. It comes barreling into me and I freeze ’cause I ain’t ever felt it in all these years that I’ve been here. Fresh air.
The outside world immobilizes me at first. But then I get ahold of myself ’cause if I don’t I’m easy prey. ’Cause when the front door opened, an alarm on the house started screaming. If the man and the lady had any question about Gus and my whereabouts before, they know now.
The lady hollers that we’re getting away.
I force myself outside. I start running. I’ve still got Gus’s hand in mine and I pull on it, dragging him with me. There’s fear in being outside as much as there is in staying inside. I haven’t been outside in a long time. I nearly forgot all about outside.
The heat and the darkness swallow me whole and I run faster than I ever have in my life. I drop Gus’s hand by accident, but I pray that he can keep up. Gus hasn’t been doing his calisthenics like me, so there’s no telling what kind of a runner he is. But sometimes being scared makes you do things you didn’t know you could do.
My bare feet run across pebbles first and then the grass. The pebbles cut into my feet, hurting, making them bleed, though I’m not paying any attention to things like that. The grass, when I get to it, is soft and wet, tickling my feet. But I can’t feel that, either, not really, ’cause I’m just running.
I see something shining in the sky. The moon. Stars. I forgot all about the moon and stars. I hear the buzz of nighttime bugs around me. I want to stop and stare and listen, but I can’t. Not yet. Not right now.
“Stay with me, Gus,” I scream back over my shoulder, knowing we’ve got to get far, far away from this place before we stop to look back. For all I know that man and that lady are just twenty paces behind and they’ll catch us if we stop for a breath. I ask Gus if he’s coming, if he’s okay. I tell him to stay with me. To not slow down one bit. “We’re almost there, Gus,” I say. “We’re almost free.”
For a while I hear that man and that lady calling after us. They’re quiet mostly because they don’t want to cause a commotion. They got flashlights with them, though, ’cause I see the glow of those flashlights moving through the trees. Every so often the light falls on Gus and me and I duck away from it, veer off in some different direction so that soon I’m all turned around and couldn’t find my way back to that house if I wanted to.
But then, after a while, I can’t hear the man and the lady no more, which is a relief, but it also terrifies me. I wish they’d make some sort of noise so that I’d know where they are. Have we lost them? Or are they hiding in the trees, waiting for me?
It’s dark outside mostly, still nighttime. The moon and the stars light the world a bit, make it so I can somewhat see. After all that time in the basement, our eyes are accustomed to the darkness. It gives us an advantage over the lady and man. They’re not used to seeing in the dark, like Gus and me.
I don’t know where we’re at. There are houses, a street. But there aren’t too many houses and what there are is broken up by trees. The trees are big and tall, but not the kind that are big enough that Gus and I can hide behind. The houses are tucked into the trees, and they’re dark, hardly a light on anywhere. The grass everywhere is overgrown. It reaches right up to my knees and is chock-full of prickly weeds that scratch at my bare feet and legs. They’re knifelike, stabbing me and making me bleed.
I run headlong into a tree branch, stunning myself. For a minute, I see stars. My knees lock and I freeze in place, trying to get my bearings. “What happened?” Gus asks. But before I have a chance to tell him, I hear the snap of a tree branch from somewhere behind and know we’ve got to keep running if we’re to survive.
I say, “Let’s go.” I take off again. I hear the sound of Gus’s heavy breathing behind me. After a while, neither of us says another word ’cause we got to conserve our breath for running.
I trip over a felled tree. I go soaring to the ground, where I land on my hands and knees. It hurts, my knees mostly, but I can’t lie there on the ground and cry about it. I get myself up, dust off my hands and knees and keep running. “Watch out for the tree,” I whisper to Gus as I go, knowing he’s got to be just steps behind me, though his breath is getting harder and harder to hear over the sound of mine.
My legs are getting worn out from all the running, my feet heavy as lead. My heart is beating hard, on account of being short of breath, and my fear. I’m scared as hell, wondering what that man and that lady would do to us if they caught us.
Now that I got a little taste of freedom, I don’t want to die.
I run fast past houses. I cut through yards. I run down the road.
A ways down, my legs become tired as all get-out. Gus and I ain’t got a lot of options. There are a handful of houses, but what are the odds that anyone would open up for us if we knock on their door in the dead of night? I’m not sure we can risk it. We’re sitting ducks if no one lets us in.
Hiding out seems like the better choice. I start looking for a place to hide. My running has slowed down some. We’re no longer being tailed by the flashlights, but I’m not so dumb as to believe the man and the lady plumb gave up and went home. They’re playing games with Gus and me.
In the backyard of one of them houses, I spy a shed tucked beneath a gnarled tree.
“Come on, Gus,” I call, knowing the shed would be as good a place as any for us to hide. “In here,” I tell him, spotting a padlock on that shed door, but seeing that it ain’t locked up tight. We can still get in.