Liberty heard voices above her. “Youz guys up for the game, then?”
“Yep. I got the chips and beer.” The man burped. The other laughed.
“Let’s call it a day.”
A moment later, the heavy lid was pushed over the hole.
She was in total darkness.
Without anything to distract the eyes, the mind tends to go a bit wild. It’s why most people are afraid of the dark. This happened to Liberty.
Will I ever get out of here? Even if I do, I’ll never escape him, Liberty thought. Mal has signs everywhere and he’s a honkin genius. The image from her nightmare popped into her mind: Mal with a ferret head pushing her into a vat of hot oil. What if he really does cook me in a vat of hot oil? No, that was just a dream. Still, he’s sure to catch me. I’ll never make it to boarding school.
Uncertainty, having grabbed her mind like a dog latching onto a bone, would not let go. In the dark, tears streamed down her face. And when I return to my life, it will be worse than ever, because now I know how it feels to walk down the street, to go to a library, to pet a cat.
I will let you in on a secret. Having a heartfelt cry is like putting helium into a balloon. Your spirits will lift much faster than if you just ignore your misery.
After ten minutes of sobbing, Liberty began to feel better and recover her strength. Well, I can’t just stand here. I’m facing the direction I was supposed to, to go toward the school. I might as well start walking.
Carefully, she made her way through the dark, slimy tunnel, sliding one hand along the wall for guidance. She could hear the street sounds above, which comforted her.
The sewer did not just have rats. It also had giant cockroaches, which skittered over Liberty’s hand. And each time, without fail, she gasped in horror. After one particularly gruesome encounter with the giant insects, she let out a scream.
“Shut up, will you?” a voice said.
Liberty looked around, her eyes finally settling on a dim vision at her feet, a white rat with trembling whiskers. “Sorry,” she said. “One of those … giant insects ran across my hand and it startled me.”
“Cockroach!”
“Excuse me?”
“It was a cockroach. The lowest creatures on earth. And people think it’s us. You’re a big rat. I’ll bet you’re greedy to have grown so large.”
“I’m not a rat,” Liberty said, offended.
“You speak rat. Skidmore is a skinny rat because of greedy, giant rats like you.”
“Who’s Skidmore?”
“Well, I’m a person, Skidmore. Can’t you tell?”
“Everyone’s saying they’re something different than what they are. It’s like living with a bunch of politicians. Rats saying they’re people. Guinea pigs saying they’re rats.”
“Guinea pigs?”
“Biggest complainers I ever met. ‘At our house, we got to eat fried clams. At our house, we had a warm cage.’”
“That’s them!”
“Worse, they had a snake with them. Very unpopular. It ate a couple of my friends.”
“Where are they?”
“We told them to get lost, so they moved to California. At least, the guinea pigs did. They had a plan to get shipped with some food. Pretty smart, they were. Click and Clack, they called themselves. One of ’em was a whiz at math. Had all the calculations.” Skidmore raised up on his back legs.
“Oh.”
“So if you’re not a rat, maybe you eat rats?”
“I hardly think so.”
“Skidmore will put up a fight.”
Liberty sighed. “Can you tell me how to get out of here?”
“Why should I?”
“So I won’t eat you,” Liberty said, as fiercely as she could.
Skidmore trembled. “The only way out is up. You have to find the light.”
Liberty looked up and all around. Darkness.
“But be careful. If you pop up in the wrong place, a car might drive over your tail. That happened to my cousin. Can I go now?”
“You could’ve gone all along. You’re certainly faster than I am.”
“Skidmore escapes by his wits once more.” The rat dashed off.
Alone again, Liberty continued her sad walk through the sewer under the city. It would’ve been nice to meet up with the guinea pigs. The song that Sal had sung came once again into her mind. She pretended the song was dancing ahead of her, like the Pied Piper, that she could follow it out of the sewer. Baby fishing for a star … Another memory came. Sitting on the rug playing with blocks. They were colorful, even though the paint was chipped, and she and Sal were stacking them. Where were those blocks now?
The city sounds had disappeared, Liberty noticed. The muck around her feet was getting deeper. How long had she been here? She couldn’t tell.
Her mind shifted to all of the stories she’d read, but she couldn’t think of any where someone got out of a hole. The characters were stuck in other ways: Rapunzel in her tower, Sleeping Beauty in her glass coffin, the frog in his bog. Always, it seemed, there was someone else to help out. Except for Alice; she just woke up from a dream.
Fishing near and far. She was so absorbed in the stories and the song in her mind that at first she didn’t notice. Light. Two small streams of light pouring from above.
She felt along the wall for the ladder.
But there was none. No way out.