She pulled the straitjacket’s crotch strap tight, worsening my wedgie, then shackled my ankles with two distinct clanks. My head was swimming, but I somehow managed to register that the thick, stainless steel was cold. I took another deep breath and tried to focus on the chilly smoothness of the steel around my ankles, the scratchy canvas of the straitjacket against my arms, and the single bead of sweat dripping down the bridge of my nose.
Miyu clipped the two dangling steel cables to the imposing metal bar soldered between my shackled ankles. She tapped me gently on the shoulder, and I positioned myself on the floor, ready to be hoisted skyward and suspended from the rafters. As the steel cables cranked upward with a metallic rumble and screech, a strange sort of quiet fell over the audience. Perhaps everyone in the room, including me, was experiencing a simultaneous realization—This is really happening. This is really happening, and we’re all letting it happen.
As their stunned eyes probed me, I realized I probably looked even more vulnerable and amateurish than I felt. I prayed there wasn’t some creeper in the audience getting off on seeing a seventeen-year-old girl strung from the ceiling by her ankles. The thought made my stomach turn for the billionth time that day, and I swallowed a bitter burp.
“The intrepid orphan has a choice, sinners and saints,” Monty said. “She can hang there until the blood rushing to her head causes her to pass out, or she can free herself.” I looked toward him and realized he was staring at me with an uncharacteristic expression of concern.
I let out the breath I’d been half-holding and relaxed my tensed abs and shoulders. This gave me the tiniest big of wiggle room within the straitjacket, and I used it to muscle my right elbow toward the floor. The steel cables creaked and clanged as I thrashed, loosening the jacket. Aided by gravity, I forced my elbow over my head. I snagged the arm strap with my teeth and began to pull. I’d practiced this almost a hundred times, but the effort still made my jaw ache. With one final yank, I freed my arms.
It might have been my own excitement, but I thought I could feel the energy in the room shift. Someone in the back, maybe the tattooed bartender, let out a high-pitched whoop as I glanced at the hecklers up by the stage. They sat silently, staring at me with wide eyes, their drinks untouched on their table.
And out of that shifting energy, something dark and strange was born. Some very small part of me—just a smirking shadow in the cobwebs of my soul—took a breath and opened her mischievous eyes. She had gestated in a plum-colored womb, subsisting on scraps left behind by all the eccentrics who ripped their hearts right out of their chests and left them beating on a bloody stage. That ravenous orphan Monty told the crowd about spoke to me from inside. Grow some perspective, she said. This, my friend, is worth all the fear in the world.
With my newly-freed arms, I undid the crotch strap and let the jacket slip over my head and onto the stage. I felt exposed, but not in a bad way. Without all that heavy canvas, my skin could breathe and seemed to come to life, like it wanted to take on the world.
“Ladies and gents,” Monty shouted. “The incomparable Ginger has freed herself from the straitjacket.”
The crowd applauded and the hecklers finally snapped out of their trance. “I don’t even care that her hair’s not red!” one of them shouted.
“Don’t stop now, Girl Scout.” I wasn’t sure if Miyu actually said it, or if it was just her voice in my head.
My abs protested for a moment as I hoisted my torso upward and grabbed onto the metal bar with both of my sweaty hands. I hugged the bar with my armpits and the shackles slid up my calves toward my knees, leaving me in a suspended fetal position. I pulled a bobby pin from my hair, snapped it into a pick and a torsion wrench, and got to work on the first shackle. Achy fire spread across my abs and back and through my strained thighs. When the pain became too intense to tolerate, I let go of the bar and swung back toward the floor.
“Can she do it, poets and prophets?” Monty asked. “The suspense is terrible,” he said with a gleeful giggle. “I hope it’ll last.”
I gritted my teeth and forced myself upward again. After two excruciating minutes of sweating profusely under the stage lights, the first shackle opened with a springy, glorious pop. I dangled by one leg for a moment while the crowd cheered. I swung myself toward the ceiling again and hoisted my free leg up over the metal bar to support my weight.
I don’t know how long it took me to pick the second shackle. The more deeply I focused, the more lost I got. Time seemed to drop away. I was vaguely aware of the audience, and of Miyu and Monty, but they seemed faded, like memories confined to a photo album. The bobby pin, the shackle, my achy, sweaty fingers—these were the only things that were real. My mind felt clear, but not empty.
The second shackle gave way, and I gripped the bar with both hands and allowed my feet to dangle. The bar dropped slowly toward the stage and the moment my sneakers touched the floor, I felt like I’d just woken up from a hazy but pleasant dream. The hecklers were on their feet, and even Miyu was clapping.
“That’ll do, Girl Scout,” she mouthed at me.
“Ginger, the intrepid, chestnut-haired orphan,” Monty said as he beckoned me toward the front of the stage. “And her mysterious assistant, The Hummingbird.”
Miyu bowed and I followed suit, though my bow came out more like an awkward curtsy.
Naveen, still dressed in his marching band uniform, pulled me into an unexpected hug after I slipped between the closing curtains. “I’m so happy I gave you that flyer,” he said.
“Me too.”
***
I drove home just after midnight, my arms and legs jangly with adrenaline. I’d already used the “sleeping at Meadow’s” excuse earlier that week, and knew I was going to have to sneak in and offer up some reason for breaking my eleven-thirty curfew in the morning.
My parents’ room was dark when I pulled into the driveway, which I hoped would give me at least six hours to come up with a plausible explanation for my lateness. Kyle’s bedroom light was still on, but I assumed he’d probably fallen asleep while playing War is Fun or Super Japanese Animation Racing or whatever brain-melting video game he was drowning his sorrows in lately.
When I shoved my key into the front door, I smiled. For the first time, I recognized the lock as an easy-to-pick, five-pin tumbler. Keys are for suckers, Ginger the intrepid orphan whispered in my mind. I slipped into the kitchen guided only by the light of the clock on the microwave and pulled off my sneakers. Guinan greeted me with a few sniffs before returning to her dog bed. I tiptoed toward the living room and nearly swallowed my tongue when I heard a creak on the stairs.
“Hey,” Kyle whispered.
“Hey.”
“Who were you out with?”
“Uhhh . . .”
He grinned at me. “Just a heads up, mom and dad were bugging me about it. They thought you might be out with some girl named Meadow. Not the one with the gazelle face from middle school, right?”
“She doesn’t have a gazelle face. More like a constipated giraffe.”
“That’s more like it,” he said. “Changing the subject and injecting a little humor. Now you’re learning. I thought I’d never have a chance to pass down all my tricks.”
With his brows raised conspiratorially over a pair of bright eyes, I saw a flash of the old Kyle. I caught a shimmer of the golden boy who could get away with murder, plotting something sneaky with Connor behind my parents’ back, like claiming they’re going camping with Austin and his dad for the weekend and then driving to New York City instead. Only, it wasn’t Connor he was conspiring with this time. It was me.
My phone buzzed and I dug it out of my shoulder bag—a text from Miyu.
>Time to up the ante, Girl Scout. Tomorrow we cure you of your fear of drowning.
“Was that text from Meadow?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah, she can’t find her wa
llet and thought maybe she left it in Stella’s car.”
He laughed. “Wow. Even I almost believed you for a second. The good thing is Dad actually seemed impressed that you have friends other than Stella. But Mom . . . Obviously she was a teenage girl once. She knows what’s up.”
“What does that mean?”
He squinted at me. “It’s a guy, right? Connor thinks so, too.”
I should’ve been thrilled that they’d so epically missed the mark. I should’ve been psyched that Connor suspected I was canoodling with someone other than him and was maybe, possibly, jealous. But really, it just pissed me off. Even my feminist mom had assumed that when a preoccupied seventeen-year-old girl periodically goes MIA, it must be because of a dude.
I glared at Kyle as I made my way up the remaining steps. “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,” I whispered.
He snickered. “You really do have secrets.” He snagged my arm just before I could slip into my room. “You don’t have to listen to any of my advice, but one tip: You can squeeze an extra half-hour to forty-five minutes out of your curfew if you call home with an excuse. Watching a long movie, hit traffic, didn’t realize what time is was, whatever. But don’t do it every time and don’t push it over an hour.”
Despite his dumb, twenty-one-year-old guy assumptions, my big bro really just wanted to be a big bro. “Thanks,” I mumbled.
“You’re welcome.”
My phone buzzed a second time, right after I closed my bedroom door. I assumed it was Miyu with more ominous comments on my future training, but it was a text from a number I didn’t recognize.
>Ginge! It’s Stella. My roommate is a sneaky genius who gave the admins a decoy phone and kept her real one. She said I could text you. How’s your summer????
In my amped up state, I wanted to give that sneaky genius a little piece of my mind. One, that’s my BFF you’re rooming with. Back off, bitch. Two, thanks for letting her borrow your phone. Three, you suck for letting her borrow your phone because I have so many things tell her, but I’m not ready so just get off my freaking back, okay?
Instead, I texted back.
>Hey. Cool. Good.
>What happened?
>What? Nothing. I said good.
>Something happened. You are being cryptic, even for you.
>How can you tell thru a text?
>I just can.
Change the subject, dumbass, Ginger whispered in my mind.
>Whatever. How’s your summer?
After a long pause, she texted one word.
>Good.
>You suck.
>I’m just kidding, Ginge. :) Sorta. I have to go but I’ll tell you more later.
Maybe I was just losing my mind from a combo of adrenaline, curfew breaking, and cryptic texts, but it sounded like Stella had a secret of her own. But it was Stella, so it was probably something like radically deciding to stop using Oxford commas for the summer.
I threw my shoulder bag on my bed and started rifling through my record collection, searching for the perfect sound to both capture my night and make my heart stop going pip-pip-pip-pip-pip. I settled on Herb Alpert and basked in the trumpets of the Tijuana Brass but couldn’t get my jangled nerves to settle. Everyone in my family, plus Connor and Stella, knew I was up to something. And I had no idea how much worse it was about to get.
My first U.S. tour brought me only to the major cities—New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago . . . Each day felt like a sprint. Get up, get on a plane, fly, land, perform, sleep, repeat.
My second tour gave me some breathing room. My assistant and I rented a van and I booked dates in a few smaller cities. Austin was kitschy and offbeat. Minneapolis was cold but friendly. And St. Louis had mouth-watering frozen custard.
But as we drove along endless stretches of highway, I could feel something on the East Coast tugging at me, pulling me forward like a vortex.
The night we barreled down Atwells Ave in Providence, the white lights strung over Federal Hill made my eyes widen and my grin broaden. At first, I brushed off my excitement, chalking it up to lack of sleep and too many hours of highway hypnosis. But when I took the stage at Salone Postale, I realized my instincts had been spot on. This place was different. The crowd looked like any other crowd—full of art school dropouts and irreverent beatniks—but there was something rising off of them. A hunger for something raw and real. A hunger for something they’d never seen before.
I scanned their faces. I saw them licking their chops, their pupils dilated, incisors ready to devour my act. All except one. A boy who was almost a man didn’t clap or whoop or cheer. He just smirked and brushed his dark hair back. He kept his hands firmly in the pockets of his leather jacket.
I couldn’t wait to meet him.
– Akiko Miyake, Providence, April 1, 1981
Mattie Has Something to Prove
My lungs were screaming at me to take a breath. My brain was knocking assertively at all my nerves and reflexes. Hello? We’re drowning here. Now might be a good time to do something.
But I didn’t give in. I knew what would happen—I’d inhale a mouthful of water that would feel like a prickly ball of fire and spend the next two hours hacking and coughing all over Miyu’s bathroom floor. I could feel her hand firmly against my neck, holding my head under the lukewarm water in the bathtub. I signaled for her to let me go, but she was even more determined than me. I suffered for another ten seconds before she released me, and I yanked my head out of the bathtub and fell back onto the ceramic tile, gasping for air.
“You’ll have to do better than a minute-thirty, Girl Scout.”
Miyu and I had spent the better part of the last week in that bathroom, practicing deep breathing and muscle relaxation and then straining my lungs to breaking point. “I just need thirty more seconds,” I said. “Two minutes and I’m good, right?”
She nodded. “Though it doesn’t hurt to give yourself a little wiggle room. And during the real deal, you’ll be moving around, using up more of your oxygen. Do as many deep breathing exercises as you can stand this week with this.” She handed me a plastic mouthpiece with a tube on one side. “It’s a lung expander. Athletes and Navy Seals use them.”
“Not planning on going to the Olympics or running a black op, but okay.”
“Some cardio couldn’t hurt either, Girl Scout.”
“Ugh. I hate running. It makes me feel clompy.”
“Then do some Jazzercise or play badminton.”
“You really did have a weird childhood.”
She scoffed, but the slight curve of her lips told me she was giggling on the inside.
The following week, after I’d exhausted myself with an hour-long aerobic kickboxing session, we moved from the bathtub to the swimming pool in her backyard.
“It’s kinda chilly,” I said as I dipped my toe in.
“I don’t wanna hear any whining, Girl Scout. I had this bitch cleaned just for you.”
“I feel honored.” My tone was sarcastic, but if Miyu had bothered to have her swampy pool cleaned, she probably had a fair amount of faith in me.
I sat on the edge by the deep end as Miyu chained weights to my ankles.
“You just want me to pick these locks underwater?” I asked.
“You say that like you think it’s going to be easy.”
“At this point, I could pick a lock in my sleep.”
“Sleep is one thing. Completely submerged is another.”
And, as usual, she was right. As soon as those weights pulled me to the bottom of the frigid pool, and I found myself staring up through the chlorinated water at the sunny sky, I forgot all of my breath training. The bobby pin slipped from my pruney fingers, and I scrambled along the bottom of the pool, searching for it as panic set in. By the time I found it, my lungs began to protest. I dropped the pin a second time and Miyu let
me thrash around on the bottom for a full twenty seconds before diving down with a snorkel mask to free me.
When I surfaced, I drew in a desperate, greedy breath as I clung to the edge of the pool.
“Not so cocky now, huh, Girl Scout?”
“You bitch,” I coughed.
“Just for that, next time I’ll let you struggle for a few more seconds before I swim down there to rescue your ass.”
That first day in the pool, Miyu had to rescue me five times. It wasn’t until halfway through day two of pool training that I successfully picked one lock while submerged before panicking and throwing in the proverbial towel. But as my body grew more and more accustomed to cold water and oxygen deprivation, the more focused my mind became. My pruney fingers turned from fumbling disasters to nimble instruments of liberation.
With two weeks in the pool under my belt, I successfully picked three padlocks while submerged and increased my breath hold to a full two minutes. After doing a victory lap around the pool while Miyu did one of those obnoxious slow claps, I dried my face and damp hair with a towel.
“I’ll go change and then we can head into Providence,” I said.
She scowled at me.
“I conquered my fear of pool. You can deal with your aversion to leaving your house for a few hours.”
It only took ten minutes of coaxing—less time than I thought—to get Miyu across the threshold and off the porch.
“Deep breaths,” I said.
“You and Monty can handle cleaning the tank,” she barked. “Why do I need to be there?”
“You’re the one who wanted to go with an aquarium escape as my next act,” I reminded her. “Plus, the tank is a prized historical artifact. Monty can’t handle that kind of thing without adult supervision.”
She huffed and stomped onto the stone walkway, briskly making her way to Stella’s car.
The Art of Escaping Page 8