Savannah stood directly under the vent, her head tilted back and her good arm straight overhead. “Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey,” she chanted as she slowly turned the CD she’d finally managed to fit into one of the screws.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
Her eyes didn’t shift from the point where the CD met the screw. “It’s how you know which direction to turn.”
“Isn’t that just counterclockwise?”
She made a raspberry sound. “That’s kind of hard to figure out, especially when it’s over your head and not right in front of you.” As she spoke, the CD slipped out of the screw slot. She squinted, poked her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, and reset the CD. Slowly, she began to twist the disc.
Savannah was so focused, without a single doubt. She seemed to think that getting out was going to be easy. Like we could just unscrew the vent, pull it down, climb out, and go. Like there weren’t worse things waiting for us out in the dark.
But what if she was right? What if it had been possible to leave all along, and I’d just been stupid enough to accept it this whole time?
A crow of triumph interrupted my thoughts.
“Yes!” After setting aside the CD, Savannah used her fingers to finish twisting out the newly loosened screw. She set it on the bathroom counter. Then with a grimace, she shook out her arm.
Rex was still out there. But Sir was probably asleep, the way Savannah said. And maybe she was even right that together we could figure out a way to get past the dog. After all, my wrists wouldn’t be duct taped. And if I went with her, there would be two of us.
We could still fail. We could still be killed. But her question kept echoing through me. Which was worse? To die or to keep living like this?
For the past ten months, I’d been existing in a stupor. Hunkered down, telling myself that the most important thing was simply to survive. Savannah was forcing me to wake up.
She picked the CD up again and set the edge of the disc in the next screw, but this time when she turned, it didn’t budge. She kept twisting it even as the silver plastic flexed and started to bend. Finally it broke. The snapping sound made us both jump. The broken piece fell to the carpet as she turned the CD to an unbroken edge. Now it lacked its earlier rigidity. Each time she tried to twist the screw, it was the disc that gave instead, creating a series of small cracks until finally a second big piece broke off. Meanwhile, the screw didn’t seem to be moving at all.
“Maybe try a different screw?” I ventured.
Without saying anything, Savannah moved on to another screw. Eventually she was able to loosen it. But her victory came at the expense of all my CDs. She piled the increasingly smaller shards next to the bathroom sink.
When Savannah turned to set the second screw next to the first, she staggered and nearly lost her balance.
“Here. Let me do it.” I held out my hand for the biggest remnant of CD. “You’re so tired you can’t even stand up. You should lie down for a while.”
“I’m fine.” Her face was covered by a slight sheen of sweat.
“You don’t look fine.” Savannah was starting to remind me of toddlers I babysat. The more tired they got, the more they protested they were wide awake. My gaze fell on her splinted arm. Her fingers looked like sausages, red and plump. “Look at your hand. It’s all swollen.”
“Yeah, well I think we have more important things to worry about than my hand.” She made a face, but still handed over the CD shard. “Okay, okay, I’ll sit down for a second.” She leaned against the wall and slid down until her face was even with her knees. She tipped her head forward.
It took me a long time to seat the piece of CD in the screw. Thoughts crowded my head. If I let Savannah go out there by herself, how would she manage against Rex with one hand? And meanwhile, I would be all alone. Could I stand to go back to never having anyone to talk to? And it wasn’t like staying put would keep me safe. Sir was already mad at me for things I couldn’t control, like my face not healing. How much angrier would he be once he realized I had known what Savannah was doing and done nothing to stop it?
The piece of CD kept slipping out whenever I tried to turn it. My shoulder burned, and the pain began to crawl up the side of my neck. Finally I found the point where I generated enough force to keep the shard in the slot and turn. A spark of happiness traced through me as I twisted the plastic. And then it snapped into two pieces, neither of them bigger than an inch across.
The sound roused Savannah. She swore. “There has to be something else we can use.” She awkwardly pushed herself to her feet. In the kitchen area, she rattled the cupboard door. “Why won’t this open?”
“There’s a latch. I guess you wouldn’t want all your glasses falling out every time the RV took a turn.” My fingers reached past her and pressed down on the plastic hook so that the door swung open. “Are you hungry?”
She swallowed hard at the sight of my food: SpaghettiOs, canned tuna and peaches, generic Wheat Thins, and a jar of peanut butter, as well as a glass and a plastic plate. “No,” she said shortly.
“You should be,” I said. “I ate while you were sleeping, but it’s been at least twenty-four hours since you did.”
With her good hand, she waved away the suggestion. “Please stop talking about food.”
She managed to unlatch the single drawer tucked under the counter by herself. It was filled with a jumble of junk, including two metal spoons and a spork. She tried the corners of the spoon handles in a screw slot, but they were too big. After putting them back, Savannah looked at me with bleary eyes. “How much longer do we have until the sun comes up?”
In the hallway, I squinted up at the dark sky. Was it getting lighter? “I don’t know. But it does seem like it’s been a long time since it got dark.”
Aimlessly, I pawed through the junk drawer. And then I saw it, wedged in the back corner. The metal potato peeler. It barely worked, taking big chunks of apple or potato along with the skin. But what about the rounded tip that was meant to dig out bruises? Could it also dig us out of here?
Ignoring the ache in my shoulder from holding my hand above my head for so long, I set it in another screw. The peeler was so flimsy that it bent in my grip as I twisted it. But eventually it loosened the third screw. Long minutes later, the fourth was free. I was starting to think that it all might actually work. There were only two more screws. If we could just climb out before Sir noticed and then find a weapon before Rex found us, maybe we would stand a chance.
But when I started on the remaining screws, they refused to budge. I pushed the peeler so hard that it broke, cutting the tips of my index and middle fingers. Pressing them against the palm of my other hand to stop the bleeding, I looked down at Savannah, curled up on the stained carpet, to see what she thought we should do now. The sound of her breathing, soft and regular, made me realize that she was asleep. I crouched to wake her. But what was the point? The screws weren’t budging. I found myself lying down next to her.
I don’t know how many hours went by. When I woke up, Savannah was swearing as she looked at the two remaining screws. “They’re both stripped!”
I got to my feet and looked at the vent, squinting. I realized it was easier to see the screws because the sun had risen. Both screws were no longer topped with crosses. Now they were more like circles.
“But there are only two left.”
Tears sparkled in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter if there are two or twenty. There aren’t edges to work against anymore.”
And then things went from bad to worse. Outside, Rex began to bark.
After dropping to the floor, I scurried to the door. I pressed my eye to the tiny sliver where the tarp had slipped across the window. Through it, I saw Sir. A lightning bolt of fear shot down my spine. He was coming back.
“Get back into bed,” I scream-whispered at Savannah, who was staring at me with blurry eyes. “Get back into bed and pretend you’re still unconscious.”