“I’ll go first,” I say. “I’ve done this before. And you guys don’t have to come up with me. I understand.”
Emmy shakes her head.
“No, me first,” she says. “I’m the smallest. It’s best if I test them.”
Robert and I both start to protest, but Emmy shuts us down.
“Honestly, you both know I’m right,” she says.
I look up at the staircase again. The steps are wide and flat. The light, splintered wood looks OK, except for the part that has fallen in.
“If you stick to the sides…” I say, doubtfully.
“We’re going together,” Emmy says. “Follow in my footsteps. Like walking on ice.”
She ties her hair up into a high, messy bun and nods at us.
“OK,” she says. “Follow me.”
She puts her foot onto one of the steps and cautiously tests it. It neither creaks nor breaks.
Taking a firm hold of the brass railing, which, with its sturdy bolts in the wall, looks considerably more trustworthy than the steps, she cautiously starts to climb. I follow her slowly. Despite the cool day, the sweat beads on my neck. I imagine I can feel the wood bending beneath my feet, but so far it doesn’t worry me too much.
When we pass the hole, I don’t let it out of my sight. Out of the corner of my eye I see Max edging up behind me nervously, his jaw clenched, and behind him Robert with a furrowed brow.
Now I’m two steps above the hole, Emmy four. Only five steps until the second floor.
I turn my head to tell the others to tread carefully around the hole—both Max and Robert are much heavier than Emmy and I—but my voice is drowned out by an overwhelming crash.
The ground disappears beneath me, leaving me hanging in the air for a dizzying split second. A thousand thoughts run through my head, none of them connected. For a second it’s as though I’m trying to run in the air, and when I lurch forward to try to grab the step in front of me, that one disappears, too. I fall.
I hear someone make a short, surprised yelp, the sort of instinctive cry that’s gruff and throaty rather than high-pitched or light, and I can’t tell if it’s coming from me or someone else. My body is weightless. Then I land hard on my back, so hard that the breath is knocked out of me and I see black and red flash before my eyes.
In a few seconds my vision contracts to a single white point. Breathe, I have to breathe, but my lungs don’t want to cooperate, and my rib cage won’t move. I feel sick, and lie there opening and closing my mouth like a fish.
And then a lick of breath slips inside me, delicious and not enough. I gasp for air, pull it in again and again, until my throat begins to open and my rib cage expands.
Then I roll onto my side and retch. Thin saliva and honey, sweet and watery.
It slowly sinks in that I’m lying on the broken remains of the steps, my back in dazzling pain. We’re inside what used to be the staircase, the hole above us an open chasm through which the cracked paint on the ceiling gazes down at us. The staircase can hardly be more than splinters now; the entire thing has collapsed.
I dread looking at the others, but I have no choice. I pull myself up to sitting and look around.
Max is struggling up to all fours only a few feet away from me, his face frozen in a pained grimace. His nose is bleeding, and the blood is running down his chin. Robert is lying on his back, one leg bent, unmoving. My heart skips a beat, but then I see him start to move with a groan.
I look around.
Max. Robert.
Where’s Emmy?
NOW
Robert rolls over onto his side with a low groan. Max pulls himself up to sitting and wipes his nose, inadvertently smearing the blood across his face. He blinks his dazed eyes in shock.
“Emmy!” I shout. My voice swings up toward the ceiling, but dies out before it takes flight.
Could she have been thrown out of the door somehow?
I scrabble over the debris of rotted wood and out onto the hard stone floor, both hoping and dreading to see her there. But there’s no one.
This time I manage to suck the air right down into my lungs and shout:
“EMMY!”
And then it comes, like a blessing, thin and small up above.
“Here. I’m up here.”
The relief swells over me, temporarily subduing the throbbing pain in my back.
“Emmy! Where? Where are you?”
It takes a few seconds, and when it does come, her voice sounds choked as it drifts down toward me.
“Upstairs.” And then, a few seconds later:
“Jumped when the steps fell.”
By now Robert has emerged, and he shouts, too:
“Are you OK?”
His red hair is covered in splinters, and there’s a nick in his eyebrow. The blood has already started to dry.
The pain in my back has started to sharpen, a dull stab to the time of my heartbeats, but there’s no time to think about that.
“Broken ribs,” Emmy says. “I think. I landed on them.”
Her voice is strained.
“Don’t move!” Robert shouts, his voice surprisingly shrill. “We’re coming up to get you!”
I hear something that sounds like a cross between a laugh and a moan, and I feel like I can almost read her thoughts:
How will we get her down?
But right now that doesn’t matter. The important thing is to get up there.
Robert turns back and starts jogging down the corridor in long strides, and Max follows him, his arm pressed to his bleeding nose. As Robert runs, I see him limping slightly on one foot.
He looks around, then turns back.
“Shit,” he spits.
“Is there a supply shop or something?” Max asks.
I
