She shot him a devious smirk. “Yeah. Tell them all to watch.”
She fell. The jacket turned over the cord, holding her, and she wrapped her legs around the wire. The other children watched in awe as she crawled upside down to the other side.
They were moving, and that was a start. “You go next,” the girl called across to the boy.
Crying unabashedly, he slipped his knitted scarf over the cord and bound it to his wrists. He slowly eased his way off the beam and wrapped his ankles around the top of the wire. It took him ages to move even an inch.
“Kelvin, you gotta move faster,” the girl urged impatiently from the other side. “There are others waiting.” However, only a few of the others looked willing to even attempt the cross.
“I... I’m...” Kelvin stammered. He was a third of the way across now and shaking uncontrollably.
“He looks like he’s gonna piss himself,” another girl behind Enne, around nine years old, said loudly enough for Kelvin to hear. Enne was torn between shock at her language and fear that Kelvin actually might.
He was halfway across now. The nine-year-old took off her jacket to go next.
Kelvin’s scarf snapped.
He didn’t react fast enough. His ankles unlatched, and he fell, screaming. The girl on the other side reached out desperately, as if she could catch him from so far away.
The crowd shrieked when Kelvin hit an old conveyor belt with a bone-crunching thud. His blood splattered across the metal, and his neck was bent at an unnatural angle. Enne hurriedly looked away, fighting her urge to be sick.
One of the boys behind Enne vomited into his hands. The girl on the other side hugged the beam and stared down at Kelvin’s body, moaning to herself.
The crowds grew louder at the gruesome display, and the chaos below them became more and more violent. As the protesters brawled with the whiteboots, several other officials were making their way toward the stairs. Toward them.
“Time to move,” the nine-year-old squeaked. “My jacket isn’t gonna break, so I’m going.”
She made it across. By that time, the first girl had crawled off the beam to the window. Lola and Enne shared a look, an unspoken agreement to wait until the other children had crossed, despite the whiteboots charging up the stairs. Lola closed her eyes and pressed her face to the beam. Every few seconds, she lifted one hand to make sure that her top hat was still pinned to her hair.
There was crying and pauses and cursing, but no more accidents. Everyone reached the other side.
“I should go last,” Enne said to Lola. “I’ll be the quickest.”
“If I die, I will haunt you. And your children. And your children’s children—”
“Just go.” They didn’t have time to waste. The whiteboots had made it to the ceiling’s rafters. Although they were admittedly far away, they wouldn’t be for long. Lola wore the mark of an assassin—the whiteboots very well might shoot first and ask questions later.
“Muck,” Lola murmured. She put her coat around the cord and slid upside down. During that split second of falling, she bit on her lip so hard it bled. Lola muttered to herself and moved inches at a time—quickly, in a worm-like fashion that would’ve made Enne laugh in any other situation—and was three-quarters of the way there when her hat slid off, exposing the white of her hair.
Gunshot.
It missed. Lola shrieked and grabbed hold of the beam on the other side. Two more gunshots. Enne crouched, her stomach in her throat.No. Please no, she thought.I didn’t even want to come here. I shouldn’t have come at all.
Lola pulled herself onto the beam and slid forward on her stomach toward the window. She motioned for Enne to hurry, but Enne was frozen. A bullet clattered off the beam below her feet.
Enne recited Lourdes’s rules to herself.
Don’t let them see your fear.
She took her first step on the cord. She was steady.Breathe.
Never allow yourself to be lost.
She took another. A gunshot whizzed past her outstretched arm.
She ran. Quickly, lightly.
One stride. Two strides. Three strides. Then she slipped.
