Two of the walls were moving inward.
It was barely detectable at first. They rumbled slowly toward me. Within minutes I would be crushed to death. This was how I was to be eliminated! There would be almost nothing left of me. They had a perfect plan.
At first, I just screamed. But I was screaming into a void. By great strength of will, I stopped and forced myself to think. Maybe this was a dream. I pinched myself—hard. It hurt. I slapped myself across the face. Really hurt. I was still in the little building, and the walls were still coming at me. I tried to keep from panicking.
“What would Grandpa do?” I asked out loud. It seemed like such a stupid question at first. Why would I want to do anything Grandpa did anymore? How could I look up to a single thing about him, anything he had ever said or done? But he had always been the guy with the ideas in our family, the one we’d all leaned on in a crisis.
So, I told myself, maybe I should think about what he’d do. Maybe my new lethal and dedicated grandfather was actually a good role model in this desperate situation. Evil or good, he got the job done. Grandpa had survived a lot: the Spanish Civil War, a plane crash in Iceland, the Nazis in occupied southern France, dangerous adventures in Africa. And those were just the things I knew about. He had likely remained cool through it all. Mom was like that too—calm under fire. Also, it was apparent now that Grandpa had lived a life of deception. He was like a guy in a John Le Carré novel. What would he do? Time was running out.
“I need to remain cool too,” I said out loud as calmly as I could. “I need to think clearly.”
I tried to find something or someone to calm me, but I didn’t think of Shirley. Her kind face, more beautiful to me than anyone else’s, wouldn’t comfort me now; it would upset me, because I wanted to be with her and hold her in my arms. I thought instead of Leon Worth.
The walls kept closing in on me, terrifying me. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to die this way, to be crushed to death. My ribs would break, my inner organs would—
“Help me, Leon!” I shouted. “How do I get out of here?”
Leon Worth is the smartest person I know. He’s about four feet tall, and all of his limbs are pretty useless. He has a muscle disease called inclusion body myositis. It is slowly killing him. I wish somebody would find a cure for it. I’ve been helping him out for a few years. He’s in a wheelchair, but he stands tall in my mind, as tall as anyone I’ve ever known. Shirley just adores him. Lots of girls do. And why not? He’s a brave and amazing guy.
So as the walls kept grinding toward me, I thought of Leon. I called out to him again. “Help me!” He always has ideas; he can solve any problem. If I could just concentrate on some of the things we’d done together, some of the ways he’d dealt with difficulties, something would come to me. But time was running out.
“You know, you’re a chick magnet,” I remembered telling him just last week.
“James Bond on wheels,” he responded. That had cracked me up.
Most people have a hard time understanding him. His voice is high-pitched and kind of wrecked, but I always know what he is saying. It bonds us.
He went with Shirley and me the second time we saw Skyfall. “I should be Q, you know,” he told me afterward.
“Q!” I shouted now, petrified as the walls moved in on me. Q, the problem solver. I had to channel him. Think!
“And I should be Moneypenny and fall in love with you instead of Bond,” Shirley had said to him. She was wearing the glistening gold earrings I’d got her for her seventeenth birthday, the ones that really make her dark eyes and short dark hair look great. She can really smile with her eyes. I love that about her. She was smiling at Leon.
“Chick magnet,” I’d mouthed to him behind her back.
“Stud on wheels, a seated Daniel Craig,” he said.
“What was that?” she asked. Anytime she heard the words Daniel and Craig together, she perked up.
“Stud muffin,” he said, laughing.
“I’ll say,” she’d said and kissed him.
“Come on, Leon!” I yelled at the advancing walls. “Come on! How do I get out of here?”
He had come over to my place to stay that night. I’d let him sleep in my bed. I have to carry him out of the chair, even help him put on his pajamas and put him under the covers. I don’t mind. It’s the least I can do. Bad Adam isn’t allowed in the room at those moments, not for one second.
“Hey,” he’d said just before I turned out the lights to leave. “If I’m Q, then you have to be 007.”
“I don’t think so, buddy.”
“No, no, you are Bond with all that Wing Chun stuff you know now, and you’re a good-looking guy.”
“Why, Leon, I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“Shut up, A-Murph. You are good-looking to girls, though I hate to admit it. Shirley knows.”
“Well, Shirley is pretty bright, now that you mention it.”
“So, if I’m Q, then I have to make you something.”
“Yes, something you might even use sometime.”
And so he had.
It was all coming back to me, and with it came a glimmer of hope in my desperate situation.
He’d come up with a plan for a pretty cool knife, built from the tiniest Swiss Army knife either of us had ever seen. We’d gone out together to buy it in Buffalo and then went to work on it, him instructing, me building. It didn’t have just a blade, but also a little cell battery that could be used in all sorts of situations, even with the little flashlight we’d built into it. It also had a couple of tiny pellets the knife could actually shoot. Then we’d sewn it into the lining of a pair of my boots, right behind the steel arch support.
I had those boots on now! I hadn’t even thought of the fact that I was wearing them when I went through airport security.
“This will be undetectable, hidden in the steel arch support,” Leon had crowed after we’d put it into my boot. “It won’t even get picked up on airport security.”
I hadn’t intended to test that theory and neither had Leon, I’m sure. But it had gotten through security. And there it was now, in my boot, as the walls closed in on me.
But how could I use it? It was useless, wasn’t it? Think!
I thought of Leon again. How inventive he was, how he never seemed to give up on anything, even though he was dying.
So I thought more about the boots. And that was when it came to me.
For our hidden little gadget, I’d bought these cool work boots that had steel toes. I liked the look of them more than anything else. They were black, with big soles that made me look even taller than my six-foot frame, and kind of had a Doc Martens vibe to them. The steel in each boot extended farther than usual, from the toe almost halfway down the shoe, and the clerk had bragged that it was as tough as titanium—in fact, it was some sort of special hard material a million times stronger than steel or something like that. I had big feet. I looked down at them.
The walls kept rumbling inward. They seemed to be picking up speed. They had reached the little desk and were beginning to crumple it! I looked up. The ceiling was made of steel, just like the walls. I couldn’t get out that way either.
I bent down, barely able to fit into the space now as I hunched over. My heart was pounding, and I was dripping with sweat. I ripped off the boots and tore Leon’s knife out of the lining.
“Save me, little buddy,” I whispered.
I snapped open the small blade and frantically started cutting up the shoes, ripping them in half just beyond the steel toes. The knife was sharp, but the leather was good and the rubber soles were thick. I sawed with everything I had. My hands were trembling. Soon I had to stand up to work. In a minute or two, I would be dead.
I fumbled the boots once I had them cut in half and dropped both of them. Oh, God! I could barely reach them now. I couldn’t turn sideways anymore. There was only a few inches between me and the walls. It felt like my chest and back would be touching both walls if I took a deep breath. I wondered what it would feel like, and sound like, when my bones cracked.
My hands still shaking, I tore the steel toes out of the boots. They were each about four inches long, maybe a touch more. I lined them up so that they formed about an eight-inch length of extremely hard steel. I fitted them together so they wouldn’t shift when the walls connected with them. Then I put them between the walls and prayed.
With my back against one wall, there was about an inch left between the other wall and my chest.
I screamed.
Less than an inch.
The walls groaned.
Half an inch.
A fraction of an inch from my body, the walls ground to a halt, held apart by the remarkable steel toes.
I felt like crying again.
I was safe, but for how long? How long would I be able to stand there? How long would the steel toes keep the walls from moving? Maybe this was worse than being crushed. Maybe I would just expire as I tried to stay on my feet. It would be a horrible death.
About a minute later, I could feel someone tapping on the outside of the building. Then I heard a voice. It was muffled. But it sounded like a girl.