by David Gordon
Sami stood behind Alejandro while he punched in the numbers written on the notepaper. She was nervously watching the hallway behind them, but all she saw was the shadow of the officer behind the plexi-glass.
There was a metallic click and a clunk behind her. When she turned, Alejandro was pushing open one of the big, metal doors. He slipped inside and she was right behind him.
Once inside, together they gently closed the door. The moment it closed they heard its inner workings click and whirr and finally clank, locking them in.
They turned around. Sami was now looking down a wide hallway that had three more hallways branching off on either side. Large signs at each of these hallways marked them as L1, L2, L3 on the left and R1, R2, and SC on the right.
“Where are they?” Sami whispered.
Alejandro pointed to the last hallway on the right and whispered, “That one. Cell block SC.”
“What does SC mean?” she asked.
“Solitary Confinement.”
“How do you know they’re there?” she asked.
“My dad drinks and talks,” said Alejandro. Then he pointed up at the security cameras poking out of the ceiling and said, “We have to hurry. You never know when they’re watching.”
They crept down the hall. At first all was quiet except for the constant buzzing of the fluorescent lights. But as they neared the hallways to cell blocks L1 and R1 they heard two men quietly arguing. When they looked around the corner of R1 Sami saw a row of cells with bars in front of them. The voices were coming from one of the cells. One of the men started to sing very badly, and the other one told him to shut up. Alejandro whispered in Sami’s ear, “The drunk tank.”
As they continued creeping down the main hallway, Sami looked to her left, down cellblock L1, and saw another row of cells. But they were quiet and seemed to be empty.
Then they came to cellblocks L2 and R2, and again they peered around the corner to see if it was safe. They saw no one down R2, but did hear someone snoring loudly. When they turned to look down L2, however, they saw a pair of hands hanging out of one of the cells. Apparently a prisoner was standing in his cell, leaning against the bars. Alejandro pulled Sami back and they crouched down.
“He might be able to see us when we walk across,” he whispered.
“What do we do?” Sami asked. Alejandro shrugged and shook his head. Sami looked back at the big metal doors they had come through, and thought about Shareen and Alexi being dragged through them into this terrible place. Her fear evaporated and she stood up. “No,” she said. “I’m going to try.”
Alejandro stood up beside her, and they started across the openings of cellblocks L2 and R2. Halfway across, as they had feared, a rough voice from the cell in L2 shouted at them, “Hey! Hey you!”
Sami whipped around to face the prisoner and, in her fiercest voice, said, “Shh!” Then she stared at him with her fiercest face.
The startled prisoner pulled back from the bars, and quietly watched them. The children walked on like they owned the place. Sami, though, kept her fierce eyes on the prisoner to keep him quiet until they had walked out of sight.
At the end of the hall, they turned right, into cellblock SC. It did not look like the other cellblocks, including L3 across the hall, which seemed to be empty of prisoners. There were no bars in SC. Instead there was a long, steel wall, with four steel doors. In each of the steel doors there was a small window with wire in it so that it could not be broken.
Sami and Alejandro hurried to the first door and got on their tiptoes to peek in through the little window. The cell was a small, pale green room, bare of anything except for a narrow bed, a chair, a small table that folded down from the wall, a tiny sink, and a toilet. No one was in there.
They looked into the second cell, but it was also empty.
When Sami looked over the edge of the tiny window into the third cell, she saw Shareen, lying on the bed. She was staring up at the ceiling.
Sami tapped on the glass with her fingers. Shareen looked over at the window. At first she looked confused. Was she imagining things? Then Sami tapped again and waved her over. Shareen leapt to her feet and rushed to the window. She wiped tears from her eyes, then put her hands to the glass and started talking. But her voice was muffled by the solid door and Sami could not make out what she was saying. Then Sami felt Alejandro tugging her down.
“Here,” he said as he grabbed the handle of piece of metal slotted in the door. When he slid the piece of metal to the side, it revealed a narrow opening in the door. When Sami bent down to peer through the opening, there were Shareen’s beautiful, golden eyes looking back at her.
“Sami, is that really you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “Where’s Alexi?”
Shareen glanced to her right and said, “He is in the next cell.”
“Are you okay?” asked Sami.
Shareen did not bother to answer that, but instead pressed closer to the opening and begged, “Sami, is Brian safe?”
“He’s okay. We have him hidden at—”
“Do not tell me!”
A picture of Mr. Sombra flashed in Sami’s mind, and she understood immediately why Shareen did not want to know where Brian was; she was afraid that Mr. Sombra—or someone like him—might be able to get that information from her. Sami nodded and said, “Well, he’s okay.”
Shareen exhaled and closed her eyes briefly. Then she opened them (startling Sami with their golden brightness) and asked, “Why are you here?”
The answer to her question came from the little tinkling and scraping sounds Alejandro was making as he tried out one after another of his dad’s keys on the lock on Shareen’s cell.
Shareen pressed as close as she could to the slot in the door and tried to see what Alejandro was doing, but she could not. “What are you doing?!” she asked in a panicky voice.
“We’re going to get you out of there,” said Sami.
“No, no!” said Shareen, shaking her head. “You must not!”
“You can’t stay in there!”
“But I must!”
Now Sami started shaking her head. “No. No way. ”
“Sami!” pleaded Shareen. “It will make things worse!”
Sami continued shaking her head. “No it won’t! We’re getting you and Alexi out of here!”
Before either of them could say anything more, Alejandro straightened up, looked disgusted, and said, “Forget it!”
Sami scowled at him. “What?”
He held up his dad’s key ring and said, “The key isn’t here.”
“Good!” said Shareen.
But Sami ignored her and demanded of Alejandro, “Where’s the key?”
He could only shake his head. “I don’t know.”
Sami slumped against the cell door, feeling helpless and beaten.
While this was going on, the prisoner in L2 must have been thinking about how strange it was to be shushed by two kids in the cellblock, because he started yelling again.
“Hey!” he called out. “Hey, you kids! Come back here!”
When Sami and Alejandro heard this and turned to look, they saw a tiny, red light turn on beside the security camera at the hallway entrance.
“That’s it,” said Alejandro. “They’re watching now. We got to go.”
“But we can’t!” said Sami, even though she knew they must.
“Sami!” ordered Shareen. “Sami, listen to me!” Sami looked at her. “I do not have time to explain everything now. But you must help Brian return to Adonae,” Shareen said, “to tell them what has happened.”
“How am I supposed to—?”
Shareen stopped her. “Just listen. In Alexi’s office there is a transporter.”
“Holy mackerel!” Alejandro blurted. “Where?!”
Shareen said, “It is flat and rectangular and grey—“
“The scanner!” Sami realized.
“Yes,” said Shareen. “Brian must stand on it and—“
Clan
g!
The door to the cellblock had just been opened. Sami and Alejandro froze. The prisoner was still calling out, “Hey, come here! Hey!” Alejandro scurried to the corner of SC and peeked around the corner in time to see an officer turning down L2. Alejandro could hear the officer say, “Quiet down! What are you making such a racket about?” Alejandro hurried back to Sami.
“We have to go right now!” he hissed. Then he bent to the slot in the door and instructed Shareen, “Bang on your door and yell!” He grabbed Sami. “Come on!”
“Wait!” pleaded Shareen. Sami resisted Alejandro’s pull for a moment and looked in at those golden eyes. “Five six zero seven,” said Shareen. “Remember.” Then she stuck the fingers of one of her hands through the slot. Sami squeezed them—she made sure to include both of Shareen’s thumbs—then allowed Alejandro to yank her away.
Immediately, Shareen started banging on her door and yelling. Without any hesitation, Alejandro ran across the hallway to L3, dragging Sami behind him until they were hidden behind the corner. They pressed themselves against the cell bars and tried not to breathe.
A moment later they heard the officer’s footsteps coming their way. When he got to their cellblock he was drawn by Shareen’s yelling and, so, did not look down L3. Instead, he turned down SC, calling out, “Hey! Knock it off! I said knock it off!”
As soon as the officer had turned into SC, Alejandro and Sami slipped around the corner into the main hallway. They hurried but tried not to make any noise with their footsteps. As soon as they started passing by L2 and they could be seen by the prisoner there, Sami immediately flashed her ultra serious face at him and put her finger to her lips. The prisoner looked puzzled, but obediently and quietly watched them pass.
As they rode the elevator back down, Alejandro stared up at the floor numbers flashing on and off… 4… 3… and finally 2. Sami thought he looked like he was trying to use his willpower to make the elevator move faster.
“You better hope that they haven’t told my father about this yet,” he warned her.
The elevator doors slowly opened. Sami and Alejandro stepped out and looked over at the front counter. Mrs. Lightfoot and Lieutenant Garcia were gone.
“Uh oh,” said Alejandro.
“There you are!”
They whipped around to face the accusing voice. Alejandro’s father was advancing toward them. His face was dark with anger and his hands were balled into fists. Sami’s mother was right behind him. They were coming through a pair of swinging doors. Sami got just a glimpse of a cafeteria behind them before the doors closed.
“Where have you been?!” demanded Alejandro’s father.
When Alejandro heard that, he quickly whispered to Sami, “We’re okay.”
His father jabbed a finger at him. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
Alejandro backed to the counter and his dad followed. “I just wanted to show Sami your office,” Alejandro said calmly.
“My office!” roared Lieutenant Garcia. He turned to glare at Sami. Alejandro stuck his hands in his pants pockets. His dad turned back to him and demanded, “How did you get up there?”
“We were worried about you,” said Mrs. Lightfoot.
“We were just looking around!” insisted Sami. “I thought it would be cool to see a policeman’s office, is all!” When she had started answering her mother, Lieutenant Garcia had turned back to glare down at her again. At that moment, Alejandro swiftly pulled the keys from his pocket and set them on the counter behind his dad. Then he walked away to stand beside Sami.
Lieutenant Garcia’s lips were pressed tightly together and his eyes were squinting at Alejandro. “How did you get up there?!” repeated Lieutenant Garcia.
Alejandro shrugged. “Just waited until someone was going up to four and jumped on with them. I told ‘em that you said it was okay.”
“You told them I said it was okay?” Lieutenant Garcia snarled.
During all of this, Sami’s mother had been looking from one to another of them, trying to figure out what was really going on. She had no idea, of course, but she could tell that the sooner she got Alejandro out of there, the better it would be for all of them. She almost dove between Lieutenant Garcia and Alejandro and announced, “Alejandro, your father said you could come to our place until he gets home.” She grinned at Lieutenant Garcia. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah, but now—” he started to protest, but Mrs. Lightfoot had already turned back to Sami and Alejandro.
“So it’s all set! Come on children,” she said as she shoved them toward the open elevator. “You’ve already made me late for an appointment!” As she continued to push them ahead of her, she glanced back over her shoulder at Lieutenant Garcia. “Don’t worry! We’ll take good care of him!”
Alejandro’s father put his hands on his hips and said, “Make sure he’s home by six.” Then, as the elevator doors were closing, he pointed at his son and shouted, “And buddy, we’re not done with this!”
The three of them were hurrying down the walkway toward the police station parking lot when Mrs. Lightfoot suddenly grabbed Alejandro and Sami by their shoulders and halted all of them.
“So, you two…” she said angrily, “Where were you? What were you up to?” When Alejandro started to open his mouth, she said to him sternly, “And I want the truth.”
“Please, we’ll tell you in the car, Mrs. Lightfoot,” he begged her. “Please, can’t we just go now before someone shows my dad the video?”
Mrs. Lightfoot narrowed her eyes at him and demanded, “What video?”
Sami said, “The one of us trying to break Shareen out of jail.”
Mrs. Lightfoot stared at the children with eyes now as big as saucers and a wide-open mouth. “Oh my god,” she gasped, and started dragging them as fast as she could to the car.
Chapter 18
“Boo”