“Will you even fit?”

Ignoring how the room started to spin, I tipped my head back to measure the space with my eyes. The vent was a little more than a foot square. “I think I will if I put my hips on the diagonal.” I would do it even if I had to strip naked. Even if it left gouges in my flesh. When I dropped my gaze back to Jenny, a wave of dizziness rolled over me. With my good hand, I steadied myself on the wall.

Her dark eyebrows drew together. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. Everything hurt, and I was so tired. I forced myself to ask the question that had been circling in my thoughts like a shark. “Have there been other girls?”

“I don’t think so. And you’re the first person I’ve seen except Sir in the last ten months.”

I guessed that counted as good news. If we were the first two girls to get taken, then Sir hadn’t had a chance to get good at it.

I flipped the switch in the bathroom to get more light, then stood on tiptoe for a closer look at the screws.

The top of each one was marked with two grooves in the shape of a cross. “They’re uh”—I tried to remember the term—“Phillips head screws. And you’re sure you don’t have a screwdriver?”

She rolled her eyes. “Do you really think he’d let me have something I could stab him with?”

Sarcastic Jenny was better than freaked-out Jenny. “I’m assuming that means you also don’t have a table knife.” What else might fit in the groove? “Do you have a dime? Or wait—maybe I have one in my wallet.”

“I don’t have one, and neither do you.” Seeing my confusion, Jenny elaborated. “I looked in your wallet to figure out who you were, remember? All you have is two quarters and a nickel.”

It was weird to think about how she had gone through my things while I was unconscious. Maybe living like a caterpillar in a jar for the past ten months had made her forget the concept of privacy.

After retrieving my wallet, I still attempted to use the coins I had, but they didn’t fit in the slot. Next I tried to fit my library card into the cross. But the long straight edge was a tiny bit too wide, as was my Wilson ID card. My driver’s license fit but was too flimsy. When I tried to turn it, it just flexed.

Then my eyes fell on the CDs next to the boom box. “Maybe one of these would work.” With my good hand, I managed to open a CD case for a band I had never heard of. Four guys all with ridiculously overgrown beards.

She looked stricken. “But those are the only CDs I have.”

Jenny was really starting to get on my nerves. “If this works, I’ll buy you a million CDs. Besides, you’ll still have the tapes.” To demonstrate, I pressed the button for the boom box’s tape player. Instead of playing some greatest hit from 1985, what came out was a girl’s voice, high and pure, unaccompanied. The girl was singing about how she was going to fly away on a bright morning when life was over.

I pushed the button again to turn it off. I knew that voice. “Is that you?” I asked.

She looked away from me. “I’m in choir. Or at least I used to be. I record myself and then I play the song back and sing the harmony.” Her face colored, flushing the parts that weren’t already red. “It makes me feel less alone.”

JENNY DOWD

Savannah stood directly under the vent, her head tilted back and her good arm straight overhead. “Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey,” she chanted as she slowly turned the CD she’d finally managed to fit into one of the screws.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

Her eyes didn’t shift from the point where the CD met the screw. “It’s how you know which direction to turn.”

“Isn’t that just counterclockwise?”

She made a raspberry sound. “That’s kind of hard to figure out, especially when it’s over your head and not right in front of you.” As she spoke, the CD slipped out of the screw slot. She squinted, poked her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, and reset the CD. Slowly, she began to twist the disc.

Savannah was so focused, without a single doubt. She seemed to think that getting out was going to be easy. Like we could just unscrew the vent, pull it down, climb out, and go. Like there weren’t worse things waiting for us out in the dark.

But what if she was right? What if it had been possible to leave all along, and I’d just been stupid enough to accept it this whole time?

A crow of triumph interrupted my thoughts.

“Yes!” After setting aside the CD, Savannah used her fingers to finish twisting out the newly loosened screw. She set it on the bathroom counter. Then with a grimace, she shook out her arm.

Rex was still out there. But Sir was probably asleep, the way Savannah said. And maybe she was even right that together we could figure out a way to get past the dog. After all, my wrists wouldn’t be duct taped. And if I went with her, there would be two of us.

We could still fail. We could still be killed. But her question kept echoing through me. Which was worse? To die or to keep living like this?

For the past ten months, I’d been existing in a stupor. Hunkered down, telling myself that the most important thing was simply to survive. Savannah was forcing me to wake up.

She picked the CD up again and set the edge of the disc in the next screw, but this time when she turned, it didn’t budge. She kept twisting it even as the silver plastic flexed and started to bend. Finally it broke. The snapping sound made us both jump. The broken piece fell to the carpet as she turned the CD to an unbroken edge. Now it lacked its earlier rigidity. Each time she tried to twist the screw, it was the disc that gave instead, creating a series of small cracks until finally a second big piece broke off. Meanwhile, the screw didn’t seem to be moving at all.

“Maybe try a different screw?” I ventured.

Without saying anything, Savannah moved on to another screw. Eventually she was able to loosen it. But her victory came at the expense of all my CDs. She piled the increasingly smaller shards next to the bathroom sink.

When Savannah turned to set the second screw next to the first, she staggered and nearly lost her balance.

“Here. Let me do it.” I held out my hand for the biggest remnant of CD. “You’re so tired you can’t even stand up. You should lie down for a while.”

“I’m fine.” Her face was covered by a slight sheen of sweat.

“You don’t look fine.” Savannah was starting to remind me of toddlers I babysat. The more tired they got, the more they protested they were wide awake. My gaze fell on her splinted arm. Her fingers looked like sausages, red and plump. “Look at your hand. It’s all swollen.”

“Yeah, well I think we have more important things to worry about than my hand.” She made a face, but still handed over the CD shard. “Okay, okay, I’ll sit down for a second.” She leaned against the wall and slid down until her face was even with her knees. She tipped her head forward.

It took me a long time to seat the piece of CD in the screw. Thoughts crowded my head. If I let Savannah go out there by herself, how would she manage against Rex with one hand? And meanwhile, I would be all alone. Could I stand to go back to never having anyone to talk to? And it wasn’t like staying put would keep me safe. Sir was already mad at me for things I couldn’t control, like my face not healing. How much angrier would he be once he realized I had known what Savannah was doing and done nothing to stop it?