He stared for a second, then nodded and scooted off the desk. His knees buckled, and Suzy caught him, seeing now how pale he was. She started pulling him toward Ms. Hacking’s desk, but he straightened himself and shrugged her off.
She saw Peter kneeling next to Aiden, saying something to him. Suzy didn’t wait to watch.
She ran back to Ms. Hacking’s desk, both glad and scared to see that she was the only one left in the room besides Peter, Phil, and Aiden. She hurtled onto the desk, onto the computer, and jumped.
There was a moment when she wasn’t sure she’d get her elbows up, but she kicked, and her equilibrium shifted.
As she pulled herself up into the cramped ceiling space, she heard more than saw her classmates up ahead, scurrying through the dark like giant rats. Some of the sounds seemed distant, maybe even past Ms. Ablom’s class.
Jeff caught her attention from where he had been waiting for her. She could see the relief in his face, but he sounded angry as he stage-whispered, “Hurry up! Spread out your weight, and try to put your weight close to the cables.”
He pointed out the thin cables that connected the ceiling grid to the steel girders above. “And watch out for sharp edges. Everything is sharp up here.”
They both started off slowly as Suzy’s eyes adjusted to the near-pitch darkness of the ceiling space. “How are we going to find the janitor’s closet?”
“I know it’s that way,” Jeff began. Then there was a grunt of pain from behind, and they both turned.
Aiden was climbing up, pushed from below, but still struggling, his face a mask of agony. Tears streamed down his face. Suzy started toward him to help, but Jeff hissed, “NO! We have to stay spread out!” Suzy made an unhappy sound but held still.
“Aiden, you have to spread out your weight and stay close to the cables,” Jeff hissed, but Aiden wasn’t paying attention. Each time he was lifted up from below, he would try to get his elbows under him and lift his legs up, but then he would cry out and drop from view.
Below them, Suzy heard shouting. It was sibilant and coarse, like a snake chewing rocks. There was a roar, followed by the sound of breaking glass and desks falling.
Peter suddenly replaced Aiden, pulling himself up into the ceiling space in one swift movement, then scrambling toward them.
Suzy turned and began racing away as fast as she could move, on hands and feet. She was trying to keep her weight as close as possible to the supporting cables, but she soon found the cable ends were vicious where they wrapped back around through the eyelets of the hanging grid.
Behind her, she heard a cry, and she looked back to see Phil trying to pull himself up through the hole. His face was alive with terror and pain as he tried to pull himself up with his injured hand. Then there was an abrupt jerk, and he was gone, sucked back down into the classroom with awful force.
Suzy had thought she couldn’t move faster, but she did. She flew across the grid, weaving through the mess of cables, pipes, and wires, throwing herself forward almost blindly, away from the classroom.
She rolled over what looked like a tube slide from outer space – some sort of shiny, poufy conduit, and as she scrambled to catch herself on the other side, she cut her index finger on something. The pain brought her up short, and she finally registered Jeff’s voice.
“SUZY! COME BACK! You’re going the wrong way!”
Suzy looked around and found herself alone except for Jeff, who was waving to her from the other side of the air duct. “Look!” he gestured along the length of the duct, “The furnace is in the room with the janitor’s closet. This way.”
Suzy was shaking all over. She took a deep breath and felt sore in the base of her throat, like she felt after crying. HAVE I been crying? She wondered as she wiped her face. She nodded to Jeff, and they moved off along the duct, one on either side. Soon, they heard whispers.
“No! Stay back. We’re getting too close; we’re going to fall through.”
“Quit pushing me! Hey GET AWAY from me!”
The voices were coming from Jeff’s side, and Suzy heard Jeff saying something to them, but she kept going. Another fifteen feet, and she saw a place where the duct was coming up from below. The janitor’s closet should be under her, or nearly under her. She reached down and fumbled for the edge of a ceiling tile, which she lifted gingerly.
The room below her was dark, but she could make out the furnace and a rack of brooms and mops on one wall. She looked for a good place to drop down; the ceiling was at least ten feet high. Then she heard Peter on the other side of the pipe bark out, “You’re too CLOSE!”
There was a little grunt, then a yell and a crash. Someone – or several people – had fallen through. Suzy looked down again; they hadn’t fallen into the janitor room.
There was a guttural shout from down the hallway and running steps. A voice below her, in the hallway – Paola? – was frantic. “Open it, open it!”
Then Jeff’s voice, near crying, terrified. “It’s locked!”
Suzy hurled the ceiling panel aside and dropped through the hole into the janitor’s room. She hit the concrete floor hard and couldn’t breathe for a second, but in that second, she was already
