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She shows me her blistering hands, I can just make them out as smoke pours in from under the door.
“I tried to open the door but the handle was too hot.”
“Okay. Come here.” I wrap her from head to toe in the foil blanket and look around the room. “Can you hold on to my neck?”
She nods.
“Even if it hurts?”
She nods again and her eyes fill with tears.
“Okay.”
I crouch down and she wraps her legs around my body. Thank God she’s not too heavy.
I look around her bedroom and find a jump rope. I tie it under her butt and around my waist.
“I can’t hold on to you so you have to hold on to me, but not too tightly or I won’t be able to breathe.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t look. Okay? Just close your eyes and keep them closed.” When she doesn’t reply, I urge, “Pinkie swear it.”
“I swear it.”
I shift her, feeling uncomfortable and constricted, then I move to the window and break it with a little wooden chair.
Who puts a little girl in a bedroom with only one tiny-ass window?
She whimpers when I lean out and then whimpers louder when I pull back.
Flames are creeping up the side below the window. It’s no wonder the room is suddenly feeling warmer.
The power of fire is insane.
“Hold on tight,” I say, feeling sick and dizzy.
I rip open the door, shielding my face from the heat. The metal of my piercings is scorching my skin but I don’t have time to deal with those.
There’s no way down. When I step out of the room, the house groans and the stairs and hall collapse.
I dart across, catching us on the banister. It digs uncomfortably into my stomach but I right myself and bound up the stairs, trying to keep us low as possible. I feel clunky with the extra weight and lack of breathing.
It’s hotter up here. If that’s even possible. But there are no flames.
I kick a door but end up using my skirt on the handle when it doesn’t budge. I was hoping it would just crumble like the rest of this fucking place. My hand stings from the contact with the metal.
I’m on the third floor. I’m in Presley’s room. I can tell it’s his from how dark it is, and the fact there are sports socks on the floor by a hamper and clothes strewn all over the place.
I open his side window and stick my head out to breathe and look around.
There’s a pipe I can scale like I did at the school but it might be too hot. The ground beneath looks like it’s caving in and I wonder if that’s the basement collapsing or the foundations.
SHIT.
It’s our only chance. There’s a wall I might be able to get to…
I don’t know what to do.
I’m panicking again.
“Are you holding on?” I ask, terrified now, I can hear people screaming. My time is running out.
“I’m holding on.”
“Don’t look down, okay?”
“Okay.”
I double-check the room for any other ways out but then I hear this high-pitched hissing sound mingling with the roar of the fire. It’s the weirdest noise. Like boiling water through a spout.
“Fuck,” I mutter through dry lips when I feel a rumble.
Then there’s the sound of an explosion that rattles the entire house and I hear things start to collapse. Groaning, creaking… My ears are ringing. Paisley is screaming and holding too tight. People outside are crying and screaming my name.
People care… they care…
I have to get us out of here.
“We gotta go,” I whisper and climb out of the window faster than I’ve ever climbed before. This house is coming down.
I grip the pipe and swing our bodies around but the momentum is too much. I almost fall but, somehow, with sheer luck and mad skill, I manage to hold tight.
The pipe is hot but not unbearable so I start to climb down it, focusing on the people screaming my name and Paisley’s.
“SHE’S THERE!” is shrieked in the distance.
“Here I am,” I murmur, coughing so powerfully I have to stop climbing for a moment.
I manage to make it down an entire floor before the pipe starts to get too hot and wobble precariously.
I pick up the pace, knowing that in a moment I’m going to have to leap from the pipe to the boundary wall. I’m still too high. If I land wrong, which I probably will, I’ll likely never be able to dance again.
“I’m scared,” Paisley sobs. “I want Mommy.”
The pipe can’t hold my weight, it starts to come away from the wall.
“Oh shit,” I say as it slowly moves outwards. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
It leans and I can do nothing but hold on for dear life.
“Please God, if you’re real, don’t fail me now. It seems cruel to let me get this far.”
The pipe leans more and more.
