“No, I acted that way because I was terrified,” I said. “It was all so overwhelming, I couldn’t even think about how I was supposed to act. Fearless is the exact opposite of what I was. I’m scared all the time,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but I wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe the feeling I had was not exactly fear—maybe I’d spent too long looking at it from a single perspective. Maybe I couldn’t tell the two apart: the will for something to change, the fear of the unknown. Possibly it was both.
The walkie-talkie crackled on the floor beside Cole.
“Well, this is sweet,” Cole mumbled. “And possibly not the best time, you think?”
But Ryan ignored him. “Kelsey, I’m not who you think. I’m not some hero.”
Why are you here? Cole had asked him. And suddenly, I didn’t want to know the truth. I could see on his face—he was about to become someone else. I could feel him shifting, his face cracking and rearranging even as he spoke, and I didn’t want him to. Like the picture of my mother on the passport. Like my own. Another side, another possibility, something meant to stay hidden that would become overexposed in the light.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“I did it,” he said, before I could stop him. But his words made no sense. Did what?
He cringed, ran a hand down his face. “It was me. My car. I was on my way to the station, and I was late, and I took the turn too fast—and I was on the wrong side, just for a moment.”
My heart stopped, my mind shifted.
The headlights. I took the shattered memory, filled in the gaps: A green Jeep. A boy in the seat, a shock of light brown hair, eyes wide in terror—
“I got back over in time, but it was too late. The lights must’ve scared you and you cut the wheel and—”
And I fell.
How had I not seen it? His need to come after me, to save me, to keep on saving me, to make sure I was okay…motivated by his own guilt. Not because of me.
“Oh my God,” Annika said.
My mouth must have been open, my face twisted and unsure, because Ryan winced, letting out a long exhale. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”
His fault, and yet. “And then you came after me,” I said. “You made a mistake, and you were scared, and you took the risk to come after me.”
He shook his head. “I lied to you. To everyone. I didn’t say anything, and people started thinking what they wanted, and it all got out of control. And now they think I’m something I’m not. I was so scared I was too late….”
Because I was his mistake. His wrong to right. The guilt he could not live with.
He insisted, the mayor had said. He was already climbing down into the car. He insisted it be him.
And he was still coming after me. Except. It wasn’t me he was after, it was himself he was trying to fix. A guilt to work off, for his own redemption.
I put up my hand, to keep him back. “Enough. Okay,” I said.
“I’m trying to apologize here,” he said.
“I already said. It’s okay.”
Cole coughed. “Are you kidding me right now? Can we maybe not do this right this second?” He cursed, and Annika sank to the ground next to him, pressed her hands with electric-blue nails into his side.
But Ryan continued. “It’s not okay. I ran you off the road and called nine-one-one and never said it was me. Never took responsibility. Didn’t want to lose my license and get kicked out of the department. And I let them treat me like a hero, and never said anything. I wanted to. I just couldn’t. Partly because it was you, and I already liked you, and I didn’t want you to see me any other way. Mostly, though, I’m a coward. It got out of control, took on a life of its own. I just wanted it to go away.” The words poured out as if he couldn’t stop them. As if this were a last confession, because he might not get another chance. He paused, looked down. “I thought it would. I thought everyone would just forget.”
“Okay. You’re forgiven. Just stop.” I turned around. Because what Ryan didn’t understand was that as soon as he shifted, so did I. I became nothing more than a debt to fulfill. A regret to undo.
“Just like that?” he asked.
As if he thought this conversation was simple. “Yes, just like that,” I said. “You’re forgiven. And you don’t have to do this anymore. You didn’t have to do this. Your slate is clear.”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain,” he said, and his hand was on my elbow, turning me back around. “That’s why I couldn’t say it before. Kelsey, I didn’t follow you home to wipe my slate clear. I wanted to tell you, but not for my conscience.”
“Kelsey…,” Annika said in warning. She had picked up the walkie-talkie, which had wound down to silence. “What are they doing out there?”
But Ryan was staring at my mouth, and we were in a dark corner of the room. And Cole and Annika were right there, right behind us, and there was blood on the floor and my hands. There was a nightmare on the other side of that wall. “Something’s going to happen,” I whispered.
“Hey, we’re going to be okay, right?” The side of Ryan’s mouth quirked up as he reached for me, and that’s when I knew he was lying for the both of us.
Carve out a piece of your world, and live inside it.
I cut my eyes to the side, as in We have an audience.
And the side of Ryan’s mouth quirked up, as in I don’t care.
Unafraid to just stand there in front of me, as himself.
Somebody mumbled under their breath, but I didn’t care. I didn’t listen. We’re going to be okay.
My pulse kicked up another notch.
Ryan pulled me closer, into the corner, and he kissed me, his lips soft on mine, his arms looped around my waist. Everything else fell away—the walls, the people, the versions of us hidden under floorboards and lies.
We were safe, and whoever we wanted to be, as long as we stayed inside this room. I wanted to stay and never leave. My hands made their way to his back, and then his shoulders, and then his hair, and I felt him pull me impossibly closer. But it was starting to feel like the type of kiss we were scared to break.
Prepare for anything, but know you’re always safe here.
I gasped, and Ryan pulled back.
“We’re missing something,” I said. “There’s another way.”
There was a way out. A way out without guns or weapons or bribery money. Without having to make that choice to trade my life for theirs.
This room, this house, was not meant to call for help. It was not meant to be a last stand. It was meant to protect, until we could find another way.
If my mom didn’t want the outside world to come for us, then there was another way out, for ourselves.
I smiled, a hand to my mouth, because I was sure of it. There was a way out of this room.
Ryan looked like he was still trying to regain his bearings after the kiss. I watched his face as everything shifted back—the walls becoming walls again, the people becoming people, the outside trying to get in.
“No, listen,” I said, his arms still linked around my waist. “There’s a way out. There has to be.”
“The way out is right through there,” Cole said, tipping his head toward the exit, just as something collided against the door once more. They had started up again, and they were in a room full of chemicals; if they decided to look around….Faster, we would need to be faster.
“The alarm doesn’t call the police. There are no weapons here to defend us. She didn’t think the police would ever come if she needed them—she didn’t want them to, for whatever reason. But she wouldn’t just…leave us here,” I said. “She was scared, but she was also smart. Look at this place. She would not leave us to be sitting ducks inside this room.”
“Well, there was that walkie-talkie,” Annika said.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t in here. It was up in her office. There’s something here. There has to be.”
<
br /> Don’t let me down, Mom.
The others looked at me curiously, disbelievingly, hopefully, in turn.
“This door,” Ryan said, pointing. “I didn’t notice it from the outside the first time we were in the basement.”
I nodded. “Things are meant to be hidden here,” I said. And so were we.
“Did she ever show you? Tell you something?” Cole asked. “I know you’ve been in this room before.”
But that’s the thing. She never told me about the passports, either. Or whatever she was hiding in her past. She never expected to leave this house.
What to do if men got inside.
She’d never told me, because she always expected to be here to help.
I placed my hand on the shelves, on the metal bars lining the walls from floor to ceiling, and looked at the metal base. I shook, and they gave. “These aren’t connected to the walls,” I said. And now the boxes were scattered around the floor, no longer weighing them down. “Help me.”
But Ryan already had the other side, trying to force the shelf away from the wall. Annika was working on the one against the opposite wall. Ours started to tip, and we only had a second to yell “Watch it!” before it came crashing down. The remaining boxes slid off the shelves, and everything scattered. Behind it, only thick concrete remained. I ran my hands over the cold wall, feeling for any seams, any hollows. I knocked on the spaces, and Ryan did the same. Ryan helped Annika pull her shelf unit away from the wall as well. I moved on to the third unit, pulled it out from the corners, inch by inch, as the metal feet scraped against the floor.
“Nothing,” Annika said as she kicked the wall. She was staring at the door again. The only exit we could find.
“Nothing here either,” Ryan said.
Cole was resting with his back against the door, staring at the mess. Annika shined the flashlight over everything, looking for any deviations in the walls.
What had my mother taught me? She had prepared me for this.
Look for the exits. The ones besides the obvious. Windows. Ceiling. Floor. There were no windows in this room. I looked up at the ceiling—there was a single vent, but it was too small for anyone to fit inside. And the floor was a floor.
Except.
That tile. “Check the other tiles,” I told Ryan. I kicked the debris aside and rolled the rug completely out of the way.
Annika dug her fingers into the edges next to the hole, trying to pry the tiles away, but nothing gave. “It’s all one big slab,” she said. “They’re not tiles. It’s just the design.”
We were stuck inside a concrete box. But someone had cut away this square in the middle of the floor. Someone had dug to make room for this hole, for this compartment to hide things inside.
Passports. Money. New names. Things you would need on the way out. A go-bag, for when you ran. Where, Mom? I thought, rocking back on my heels. How do we get out?
I crawled back to the hole, nudging Annika aside with my shoulder, and pointed the flashlight inside the hidden compartment. Inside the floor. Under the rug. It made no sense to dig a single hole to hide passports. Unless there was something more. Something already there…
A safe room within a safe room, Ryan had said, and then I was running my hands around the seams, tapping at the sides and the wooden bottom. I took the base of the flashlight and hit it against the walls. The sides were dull and unforgiving against the concrete. But when I hit the bottom—it echoed. It echoed because it was hollow underneath. Because there was a way out.
I dropped the flashlight, and Ryan picked it up, shined it into the gap again.
My fingers shook as I used my nails to pry the bottom lining up, a piece of plywood, and my entire body trembled with adrenaline as I saw what lay underneath: hinges along the seam, a lever in the middle. A way out.
Ryan and Annika hovered around me, watching. Cole made his way closer, dragging himself across the floor. I moved the lever, and the bottom dropped open—revealing a cold, dark tunnel below.
Annika shined the other flashlight. “It’s a tube,” she said.
“A drainage pipe maybe,” Ryan said. “Not a lot of room,” he mumbled.
“But enough,” I said. “Enough room.”
“Where does it go? What if it stops?” Cole asked. “What if we just get trapped somewhere else?”
“No,” I said, “it wouldn’t be here if it didn’t go somewhere. It’s a way out. It’s hidden. It has to be.”
Of course there was a way out. There were many ways out.
There were the passports under the floor. There was the door, right in front of me. And there was the pipe below us.
There’s always a way out. The problem was deciding which one to take—and taking it.
From the floor, the air felt colder—I imagined dropping down inside, an endless fall, and hoping for the bottom.
“How deep is it?” Annika asked, positioning the flashlight directly over top, the light cutting straight through the shadow. I could see the bottom, but there were no steps to get back up, and it was deeper than I was tall. Maybe if someone stood on someone else’s shoulders? Maybe.
Ryan backed away, shook out his arms. “Someone has to go first,” he said. And that someone would be him. He ran his teeth along his bottom lip. “And then you need to help Cole get down.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe there’s really a way out. Where does it go?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s somewhere other than here.”
Annika started laughing, “Holy shit, Kels. Holy shit.”
Goose bumps rose on my arms and legs, and there was a feeling of something sizzling in the air. Fear, or something else. Like water starting to boil. Like Ryan said, maybe it wasn’t just the fear.
We heard something pound against the door again. “Let’s do this,” Cole said. He pushed himself to standing, leaning to one side, a hand pressed into his side. Annika grabbed on to his other arm for support.
“Okay,” Ryan said. “I’ll go first, to help you all down.”
He eased his body to the edge of the hole. I knelt on the other side, holding the flashlight. “So,” he said, the slightest smile. “This has been fun.”
“Next time,” I said, “we’ll pick something better. Safer.”
“Like a padded room?” he asked.
“Ha.” I leaned across the gap and kissed him quickly, and when I moved back, he pushed himself off the edge and was gone.
He put his arms over his head as he descended, his feet scraping against the sides to slow his fall. When he reached the bottom, he shined the light back up toward us. “It opens up,” he called. “A little at least. It’s a tunnel. And I can hear some water.”
Which meant it went somewhere, and so would the tunnel. And so would they.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s enough space for all of us here, but we’ll have to crawl the rest of the way.”
Annika and I helped Cole sit on the edge, and Ryan waited at the bottom. Cole slowly scooted off the edge, and he grunted as he fell, Ryan bracing for impact at the bottom.
Annika pulled me close, whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry.”
As if she knew I could sense her wavering earlier, that I knew she had thought it, even if she hadn’t done it. But I understood fear. I was raised on it—I knew what it could do to a person, what it could turn you into, if you let it. I held her tight.
“Me too,” I said, and then she took herself to the edge and pushed herself over.
“Come on!” I heard Annika whisper-yell from the tunnel below.
I peered over the edge, and Ryan was looking back up, like he could read the indecision on my face. The door behind me, the pipe below. Out there were answers. On the other side of the wall were the only people who knew what had happened to my mother. The only constant in my life. The person who had promised to keep me safe—and always had.
He reached up a hand, like he understood. “Kelsey,” he said, and his voice wavered. “I would never forg
ive myself. Please.”
Impossible choices, and I had to start making them.
Little trades, like chips at your morality—strip away what you think you’re supposed to do, what you’re told you’re supposed to do—and keep chipping in the dark, until all that’s left is you.
I wanted my mother, I wanted to help her. But more than that, I wanted to be free.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the empty room.
I lowered my two feet into the hole, and I fell.
—
Ryan caught me around the waist as I slid to the bottom. His arms shaking, his mouth slightly open, he was staring into my eyes like he knew exactly what I had been thinking.
“I’m here,” I said. But I had to say it again before he released me.
It was dark and cold and musty, and the tunnel before us was darker and colder. We’d have to crawl. Cole was leaning against Annika in the space beyond.
Ryan shined the flashlight down the pipe, but all we could see were a few areas of standing water—no light at the end.
Annika put a hand to her mouth. “I can’t do it,” she said.
It was narrow, and we didn’t know where it ended, but it was better than standing still and waiting again. Act before the fear.
“I’ll go first,” I said. “Just follow me. Close your eyes if you need to.”
Ryan handed me the flashlight, but it clanged off the base of the pipe as I crawled, and I worried someone would hear us. So I tucked it into my waistband and moved in the dark. I felt Annika periodically brush against my leg, and I heard breathing, but I didn’t call out or check in on anyone. Didn’t want our voices to carry. Didn’t want to be found.
We kept moving. We could’ve been crawling deeper into the earth, or through the mountains, but we kept going. And then I heard a steady drip, just before I saw a faint light. I started moving faster, and eventually when I looked up, I saw the moon through the sewer grate bars above. Like the black iron gates at home, shadows against the night.
The Safest Lies Page 16