Will laughed again. “Lord knows I’m nobody’s fairy godmother. And you know it’s not like that. We’ve helped each other.” He squeezed my hand. “These past few months . . . I honestly can’t remember ever feeling so . . . I don’t know. Happy’s not quite the right word. Maybe . . . so on the verge of feeling like a real person.”
“You’ve always been a real person. People are still real, even when they hide things. And I know it sounds cheesy, but I’m proud of you for coming out to your parents.”
His smile began to droop, though I wasn’t sure why. “Thanks, Mattie-O. But we both have to admit I got lucky in that department. Not everyone has parents like mine. Some people get it from all sides, you know? Not just their friends, but their family, too. And their neighbors, their churches. I can’t even imagine.”
“It’s still a start.”
He shook his head. “It’s a start, but I’m beginning to wonder if it ever really ends.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I come out in high school, I still have to come out in college, and then at work. It’s like I’m facing an endless line of people assuming I’m something I’m not. And it’s great that more and more people are cool with it in this day and age, but I’ll always have to deal with the possibility that someone won’t be. And what if that uncool person ends up being my college roommate, or my boss, or my father-in-law?”
Will’s words struck a nerve, knocking something loose in my brain that I’d managed to bury until that moment. That first night, right before Will and I became partners in mutually assured destruction, he’d told me my escape act made him feel like a cream puff. But now I felt like the cream puff. I finally saw the fundamental difference between our secrets—no matter how strange people thought my hobby was, it would never threaten to knock me down the ladder of privilege.
My excuses for living a double life appeared to be dwindling by the minute.
I still couldn’t think of anything meaningful to say, so I just leaned my head on his shoulder. We sat like that for a long time.
***
Seven jittery hours later, I stood behind the bar at Salone Postale wearing the seafoam green dress and matching cloche hat. I ducked into the shadows when Stella came through the cough-syrup-colored door. Kyle, Connor, and Austin trailed behind her. I shuddered as they stepped over the threshold. The boundary I’d spent the summer building now officially had a gaping hole. My brother and his two best friends didn’t know it yet, but they’d just crossed over from their world into mine.
I watched from behind the bar as Stella showed them to their reserved table. Connor already had that look on his face. That look that made me want to punch him because he seemed poised to scoff at anything and everything. I thought he might actually laugh out loud while the performer onstage finished up his lengthy monologue about the rules of interdimensional time travel.
Naveen tapped me on the shoulder, dressed in his Mollusk Brigade uniform. “Ready?” he mouthed.
I nodded and waved at the rest of the Mollusk Brigade members standing behind him. They smiled at me, their instruments in hand. The monologist finished up his sci-fi warbling and the plum-colored curtains closed as he exited stage left. My stomach did a backflip as soon as Monty took the stage.
“The witching hour is nearly upon us, gremlins and ghouls. In less than an hour, All Hallows’ Eve will come to a close. But before we send you all into the night, we have one more act—a capstone to our evening of macabre revelry.”
“Bring on the Houdini chick!” one of the hecklers bellowed.
“In due time, my good fellow,” Monty said with a wink. “Tonight, sinners and saints, she’s got something the likes of which this hallowed stage has never seen. She’s got special guests. And it might get messy.”
The hecklers whooped, whipping an already amped-up crowd into a frenzy.
“Without further ado, the death-defying orphan you all know and love. The indelible . . . the incredible . . . the incomparable Ginger!”
Monty ducked offstage as the lights dimmed and Mollusk Brigade launched into a funeral dirge. They marched in an ominous line toward the stage, their horns droning and drums pounding. I followed behind them, head bowed. I spotted Will’s mom at a nearby table. She waved and I gave her a brief smile.
As we passed the table I’d reserved for my brother, I could hear Connor over the din of the funeral dirge. “Holy fuck, Kyle. That’s your sister. Jesus Christ. She’s finally going to kill herself, and she’s going to do it in front of us.”
Connor’s comment should have pissed me off, but all I could do was laugh. Kyle and I made eye contact, and I flashed him the most confident smile I could muster. He didn’t look reassured.
I climbed the stairs onto the stage where Will, wearing an old-fashioned straw boater hat and a seafoam green vest and bowtie, handed me a mic. Frankie stood next to him, dressed the same and shaking like a leaf.
“It’ll be fine, kid,” I whispered before putting the mic to my lips. “Hello,” I said to the crowd.
The hecklers whooped again. “Who’s the noob?” one of them shouted.
“I know most of you are familiar with my assistant, Will With Two Ls. The young man standing next to him shall be known as Francisco of the Sacred Sword. He, ladies and gentlemen, is my weapons expert.”
“Fran-cis-co!” The hecklers chanted. Frankie smirked at me, and I could almost see his rattled nerves starting to settle.
“Simmer down, groundlings. It’s story time,” I said. “In the year nineteen hundred and twenty-six, when this establishment was still a post office, my great-great-grandmother frequented many of the bars in this neck of Providence. But on October thirty-first of that year—the very same day that Harry Houdini met his maker—my great-great-grandmother’s jazz-soaked life was almost snuffed out when she came face to face with a vicious serial killer known as . . .” One of the girls from Mollusk Brigade filled the silence with a drum roll. “ . . . Olneyville Ollie.”
A few salon-goers gasped and one of the hecklers bellowed, “Ollie, ollie, oxen-free!”
“As a stevedore down at the docks, Ollie had seen his fair share of shady importing and exporting. But property crime wasn’t enough for Ollie. He had a thirst for blood, and a soft spot for brunettes. And Ollie didn’t shoot his victims or carve them up with a knife. He hunted them like game through the urban jungle . . . with a crossbow.”
The hecklers whooped and the fiery-haired bartender whistled from her post at the back of the room.
“When Ollie spotted my great-great-grandmother,” I continued, “flicking her cigarette outside a speakeasy just a few blocks from here, he loaded his bow and gave chase. My great-great-grandmother saw his shadowy figure barreling toward her and took off, weaving through darkened streets and courtyards.”
I glanced over at my brother’s table. Kyle and Austin blinked up at me. The look had been completely erased from Connor’s not-so-smug face. I could tell he had no idea what to make of Ginger the intrepid orphan or this crazy story about her great-great-grandmother. But if Will could come out to his parents, surely I could handle revealing my alter-ego to my brother and two twenty-somethings I wasn’t even related to.
“When Ollie began gaining on her, his mouth watering and bearded face sweating, she thought she’d breathed her last breath. Even from ten smoots away, she could smell the stench of the docks on him, and it sent a shiver down her spine. Ollie licked his chops as he loaded his bow and let an arrow fly. My great-great-grandmother ducked into an alley just in time to hear it whiz by her left ear. She was certain his next arrow would find its way straight through her skull, but in the corner of her eye, she saw a glimmer of hope—a jack-o-lantern left out on a back stoop. She snatched it up off the stoop and flattened herself against the side of a brick tenement.
“Ollie, of course, thought he’d backed her into a corner. He l
oaded another arrow into his bow and lurched toward the alley, whistling a haunting sea shanty. My great-great-grandmother’s heart hiccupped each time one of his big, black boots hit the concrete. Just as Ollie reached the alley and his sea shanty filled her ears with dread, she darted out and smashed that jack-o-lantern right into his hairy face. He reeled back, covered in pumpkin, and she ran. Her heels pounded the sidewalk until she finally caught a cab at the corner of Atwells and Knight.
“Tonight, in honor of my great-great-grandmother, I will escape from a net of chains, or meet a gruesome death by the point of an arrow.”
The hecklers practically lost their drunken minds as the curtain opened to reveal a tableau of jack-o-lanterns and an apparatus that Frankie had spent a week helping Miyu and me build. One of them knocked over a full beer, soaking their table, though none of them seemed to notice.
I gestured to a taut, loaded crossbow poised to rocket an arrow straight at the heart of a Mattie-sized slab of pine. The arrow’s steely point practically glowed under the stage lights.
“Francisco of the Sacred Sword, will you please tell the crowd what we have here.”
I handed the mic to Frankie, and he cleared his throat. “Um . . . yes . . . this is an antique recurve, pull-lever crossbow handmade in Portugal in the early twentieth century. I’ve loaded it with a modern 400-grain bolt—that’s a fancy term for, um, a big deer-hunting arrow. The trigger has been rigged with a thick twine brushed with a small amount of liquid butane. You know, lighter fluid. Once your restraints have been secured, I’ll release the safety and ignite the twine. You’ll have roughly two to two and half minutes to free yourself or . . .”
I stole the mic back. “Be honest with me, Francisco. If I don’t manage to escape, will this crossbow kill me?”
“The bow will launch the bolt at approximately three-hundred-fifty feet per second. At this distance, it would go straight through your chest, likely piercing your heart. Death, at that point, would be inevitable.”
“There you have it, ladies and gents. I know you’re chomping at the bit, so I won’t waste any more of your time with chit chat. Will With Two Ls, if you would be so kind.”
Will took the mic from my hand and Mollusk Brigade resumed their funeral dirge as he began chaining me to the slab, which Miyu had sardonically dubbed “the torture board.” Through the sheer fabric of the dress, I could feel the iciness of the steel crisscrossing my torso. When Will clicked the last of the four padlocks into place, I swallowed a lump in my throat and watched Connor cover his eyes with his hands.
“So help me, Mattie-O,” Will whispered. “You are not allowed to die on me tonight.”
The arrow’s pencil-sharp point stared me down. “Not planning on it,” I mumbled. My breath had gone ragged. Had I lost my mind? Is this really what it took to pull my brother out of the doldrums? Maybe I should’ve just bought him a few cheesy posters like the ones in Ms. Simmons’s office.
Too late, Ginger giggled in my mind. Will nodded and Frankie pulled out a Zippo. His fingers shook as he set the twine ablaze. The hecklers looked possessed, the fire glinting in their wide eyes. Frankie gave me and the band a thumbs up, and Mollusk Brigade abruptly ceased their funeral dirge and launched into a skronky rendition of “Muskrat Ramble.”
I snaked my arm upward, far enough to pluck a bobby pin from beneath my hat, and went after the first padlock. My vision swam and, for moment, I thought I might pass out. I’d expected my performance nerves to give me a hard time but hadn’t prepared for the mind-numbing terror that flooded through me as I stared at the antique crossbow, illuminated in horrific detail by the stage lights, in front of an audience that included my brother and his friends.
Think of all the blood, Ginger whispered.
Like an idiot, I let my gaze fall on Connor. The story of my double-great-grandmother had wiped the smug grin off his face, but seeing me tied up onstage had apparently replaced that look with a pale, wide-eyed expression of horror. For a split second, that old kernel of fear squawked in the back of my mind. If you wanted him to take you seriously, maybe you should have picked something less extreme.
I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath and commanded my brain to stop dredging up images of gaping chest wounds, splintered ribs, and jaded paramedics shaking their heads. Damn kids think they’re invincible, they’d say. I pictured my ghost screaming at their deaf ears. Don’t you get it? I know I’m not invincible. I’ve built my whole life around my keen awareness that I’m the polar opposite of invincible in every possible way. That’s the whole freaking point of this onstage insanity.
As I continued to hack away at the padlock, I unwittingly made eye contact with Kyle. If watching his kid sister flirt with the very real possibility of death didn’t make him realize life was worth living, I didn’t know what would.
My muscle memory finally woke up from its terror-induced stupor and an almost undetectable grin crossed my face when I felt the first lock pop open, loosening the chain binding my calves to the slab. I had to stretch sideways to pick the second lock. My obliques whimpered under the strain and the lock became a stubborn hunk of metal. I forced myself to focus, allowing the world to drop away. All I could hear was the sound of my own breath and my blood beating in my ears. The second lock sprang open, but I didn’t give myself even a nanosecond to celebrate. Two locks still stood between me and my life.
Lock number three took me less than ten seconds to take down, giving my hips a much needed quarter-inch of freedom. But my fingers had a sheen of sweat by the time I tackled lock number four. The bobby pin nearly slipped from my hand, and my heart almost stopped when I pictured it clattering to the floor. Olneyville Ollie’s sea shanty filled my mind’s ear, a reminder that death itself was gaining on me. As I stabbed desperately at lock number four, I tried not to think about how few seconds stood between me and an arrow through the heart.
When the lock finally clicked open, the chains slid downward, clanging on the floor. The sound made me painfully aware that “Muskrat Ramble” had screeched to a halt and the crowd had gone completely silent. Fearing I might be too late, I shimmed to the left just in time to hear the crossbow click into action.
The crowd let out a collective gasp of horror when the arrow slammed into the slab of pine. The sheer force of it knocked the wind right out of my lungs. With my feet still tangled in the pile of chains on the floor, I realized I couldn’t move. I looked down, praying that I wouldn’t see a mass of red blossoming against the seafoam green of my dress. The arrow had pinned the fabric hugging my torso to the so-called torture board, but missed my skin by a fraction of an inch.
I yanked the arrow from the wood and thrust it into the air, a tacit sign of victory.
After a few seconds of stunned silence, the crowd erupted and the band resumed their rendition of “Muskrat Ramble” at a volume that somehow seemed louder than their usual deafening cacophony.
I tried to take a bow, but the hecklers stormed the stage. The one with the glasses attacked me with a bear hug while the others whooped and started smashing the jack-o-lanterns. Pumpkin shards rained down all over Mollusk Brigade, but they played on, filling the room with brassy, victorious noise.
Monty bounded onto the stage with a mic in his hand. “Happy Halloween, poets and profits. And goodnight!”
With the blood drained from his face, Will took my hand. “It’s going to be like that every time, isn’t it? I’m going to have white hair by the time I’m twenty.”
“You’ll look very distinguished with white hair,” I replied.
Will, Frankie, and I waved to the crowd. I shot a quick glance toward my brother before we scurried offstage. He had his hands over his mouth and looked like he’d sweated enough saline to fill a kiddie pool. Connor looked like he’d seen a ghost, or like he was about to spew all over their reserved table. Of the three, only Austin looked jazzed. He whistled and shouted, “I know her!” with hi
s fists in the air.
Miyu met us backstage, hands shoved in the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt. “That’ll do, Girl Scout. That’ll do.”
I laughed and threw my arms around her. “I can’t remember if I ever said thank you. In case I didn’t, thank you.”
“In case I forgot to tell you you’re a sap, you’re a sap. That said, I don’t wholeheartedly regret inviting you to tea.”
***
Monty and Miyu surprised me with a backstage after-party, complete with a jazz trio and copious amounts of cheap champagne in plastic stemware.
“I promise I’ll pay for your dry cleaning,” I told Naveen between sips of bubbly.
“It’s not your fault those loonies at the front table lost their minds over your act,” he said. “Who can blame them? Besides, we’re just psyched we got to be part of the highlight of the evening.”
Miyu sidled up to me with a glass of champagne. “I’m just going to say one thing, Girl Scout. She would’ve been impressed.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes.”
“I think she’d be impressed with both of us. Look at you, out at a party.”
“Why do you have to turn into an after-school special every time I say something nice to you?”
I just smiled.
Stella made her way toward me and blushed when she spotted Naveen.
“Do you think she remembers trying to make out with me?” Naveen asked.
“Obviously,” I said.
“Right. I’m gonna go . . . uh . . . not be here.” He took off before Stella’s arrival would make things awkward for the both of them.
“He hasn’t forgotten I tried to make out with him, has he?” Stella whispered.
“Obviously.”
“Oh. Please kill me.”
I spotted Will through the crowd, flanked by Austin and Kyle. Kyle’s eyes were practically glistening. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him like that.
The Art of Escaping Page 19