THIRTY
Trevor sat on the pile of blankets with his arms wrapped around his knees, watching Zach go through the clothes in the closet and occasionally touching his forehead, which had finally stopped bleeding but still hurt worse than any headache Trevor had ever had.
“Anything good in there?” he asked.
Zach shook his head. “Some of this stuff looks like it’s a million years old.” He pulled out a funny looking shirt with stripes. A boy’s shirt, but too big for Trevor. Maybe it would have fit Zach. Trevor wondered if there was a kid living here with the crazy man, if maybe he had a son or a little brother or something.
“Old clothes aren’t gonna get us out of here,” Trevor said and frowned at the shirt.
“Nope.” Zach returned the shirt to the closet and closed the door.
“Maybe you should try your mommy’s phone again.”
Zach looked like maybe he thought that was kind of a dumb idea, but he reached into his pocket for the phone and pulled it out anyway. It was as red as a dodge ball or Superman’s cape. Zach turned on the phone and stared at the screen. The phone beeped once, and Zach’s eyes opened wide, but then it beeped again, and he frowned.
“I had one bar for just a second,” he said. “It’s gone now.” He watched the phone’s screen for another minute, then held the power button again until the phone shut off. He flipped it closed and returned it to his pocket.
“Maybe we should try and get outside,” said Trevor.
“You think?” Zach said, rolling his eyes.
“No,” Trevor said and touched his head. “I mean maybe the phone might work better outside.”
“Well, yeah, it usually does.” Zach came over and sat down on the blankets near Trevor. “But how are we supposed to get out there? We’re locked in here, and there’s no window.”
Trevor nodded and sat quietly for some time. “I’m hungry.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“I never got my popcorn,” Trevor said. He didn’t want to cry about some stupid popcorn, but he could almost feel it happening anyway.
Zach didn’t say anything, just reached up and touched himself on the forehead.
Trevor leaned back a little, thinking, staring up at the ceiling, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Once, at Daddy’s house, there had been a dark spot on the ceiling in his bedroom, a spot his daddy said was from water damage. His daddy said he was going to fix the spot, but one night, before he could, Trevor was sleeping and some of the ceiling fell down on his toy box and got gray powder gunk on his action figures. Daddy had gotten the mess all cleaned up and the ceiling fixed, but first Trevor had touched the gunk in his toy box, and he still remembered how soft it felt, like wet sand or cookies that were old but not
“I have an idea,” Trevor said. He got off the pile of blankets and moved to the closet.
“There’s nothing in there,” said Zach. “We already—”
Trevor flapped a hand at him. “Just wait.” The closet door swung open, and he smelled old clothes, the smell of garage-sale boxes full of other people’s old, used-up shirts and pants. He reached in and tugged on the first thing his hand touched, a plain blue sweater with a torn sleeve that looked almost big enough for a grown-up but not quite. The hanger holding the sweater slipped off the wooden closet rod, and the sweater fluttered to the floor by Trevor’s feet.
“What are you doing?” asked Zach from the blankets.
Trevor said, “Help me,” and pulled down another piece of clothing, this time a pair of denim cutoffs, the fringed bottoms of which Trevor could only just reach. Zach joined him at the closet door, and together they took down the rest of the clothes, making a pile on the closet floor that came up past Trevor’s knees. When the last item was off the closet rod, Trevor asked Zach to push up on it.
“Why?”
“Just see if it’s loose,” Trevor said, head aching. “We might be able to use it.”
Zach did, and the rod popped out of the plates nailed to the wall on either side of the closet. Zach fumbled with the rod for a second and nearly dropped it, which might have made the bad man catch them, but then he got a real good hold of it and took it out of the closet.
“Okay,” said Zach, “so what are we going to use this for? Bash the guy’s brains in? Ram the door?” He held the wooden pole at his side; it was just a little taller than he was.
Trevor shook his head and said, “Come here.” He led the bigger boy to the other side of the room, to an area just beneath the dark spot on the ceiling, which was a couple of ruler lengths across. “See that?” He pointed up.
Zach looked at the water damage but didn’t seem to understand. He eyed Trevor as if he thought this was some kind of joke, then looked up again. “What?” he finally said. “That stain?”
“It’s not a stain,” Trevor said, meaning that it wasn’t
Zach raised the closet rod and touched the gray area with the tip. Some of the ceiling in the middle of the spot flecked away and fell down on the two boys’ heads. Trevor smiled. Then the whole section began to crumble, and it came down on them like dirty, heavy snow. Trevor managed to get his arms over his eyes and mouth before the bulk of the mess came down, but Zach kept his hands wrapped around the closet rod, and he ended up with a whole face full of the crud.
Trevor brushed dust out of his hair and looked worriedly at the door. The falling ceiling hadn’t made a loud sound, but it hadn’t exactly been quiet either. Trevor expected the crazy man to come bursting in, maybe with a