30
Sage
Eight hours buried
I scraped and dug and clawed at the plywood with all the energy I had left.
With every few strokes of the belt buckle, I felt the ceiling for a sign that I ’ d finally broken through the piece of wood. It felt like I was making progress, especially after I got used to the best way to hold the belt buckle. However, I had no idea how thick the plywood was. All I knew was that, little by little, the place I was digging was turning into a shallow crater in the ceiling.
I kept my eyes closed while I dug, to keep the tiny wood splinters that were falling onto my face from getting into my eyes. The bucket I was standing on stayed steady, but every few minutes I still called down to Bonnie, “ You awake?”
“ Yeah, I ’ m awake,” she said, but as the minutes ticked by and my legs and arms got shaky, I worried that I was going to need a break before she did.
A song from Sesame Street kept trying to work its way into my brain, but I didn ’ t quite know the words. Something about putting one foot in front of the other. I ’ d stopped watching Sesame Street years ago, but Bonnie had been obsessed with Snuffleupagus since she was a baby, and she turned the show on whenever she beat me to the TV.
My hands shook and my shoulders burned as I dug the belt buckle into the wood with one more satisfying scrape. My foot wobbled on the bucket, but I didn ’ t fall.
“ Are you okay?” Bonnie whispered.
“ I can try doing it, if Sage is tired,” Rose piped up, but her words were split in the middle with a big yawn.
I shook my head. “ I ’ ll be okay,” I told Bonnie. Then, “ Thanks, Rose. Everybody else is too short though—except maybe Ms. Jessa,” I said, “ but she ’ s shorter than me, too.” Saying it made me want to cry. I wasn ’ t sure how much longer I could go without a rest.
“ I could try,” Ms. Jessa said slowly. “ But I weigh at least three times what you do, Sage, and I ’ m shorter. I ’ ll sink lower on the mattress pile.”
I swallowed back a lump in my throat. The mattresses were limp and bendy—which made them easy to fold in half. However, that also meant they sank down when you put any weight on them. Ms. Jessa was “ curvy,” the word Mom told me and Bonnie we were supposed to use instead of “ chubby.” She wouldn ’ t be able to reach the plywood, no way.
It was all up to me.
I shifted to the other foot, trying to keep my legs from shaking, then switched to my left hand.
As I made the next scrape into the plywood, pushing up as hard as I could to get the belt buckle in contact with as many splinters as possible, two things happened:
First, I heard the faint sound of tires moving along the dirt and gravel, getting louder by the second.
Then, I felt the belt buckle sort of pop upward while I pushed it into the ceiling. My knuckle scraped across sharp bits of wood, but I held on and pushed harder until I heard a cracking sound.
I gasped, which made a few of the kids—and Ms. Jessa—whisper, “ What happened?” at the exact same time.
With the sound of the approaching tires in one ear and that beautiful cracking sound from the plywood in the other, I pushed with all my might, making sure to brace on the ceiling with my other hand so I didn ’ t topple over onto Bonnie beneath me.
I gasped again as more splinters prickled against my skin, and something warm and wet trickled down my hand.
But then it happened.
My fingers pushed through the fist-sized hole I ’ d just made in the plywood ceiling.
I suddenly felt so dizzy with excitement I worried I was going to fall down on top of Bonnie.
The tires stopped and a door—this one creakier than the others I ’ d heard—opened, then shut a short distance away. Was this a different car than the gray van and the white van? Neither of their doors had creaked. What was going on? Should we scream for help?
I took a big, deep breath. “ I made a hole,” I hissed down to the others. “ And there ’ s a new car up there right now, but I don ’ t know if we should—”
“ Can you—” Ms. Jessa whispered, but all of a sudden I could hear voices coming from somewhere past the hole.
“ Shh, ” I said, then listened as hard as I could.
“ Don ’ t freak out, okay? It is what it is,” Greasy Hair said.
My blood chilled, even though I was as sweaty as I ’ d ever been in my life. Greasy Hair was back. What was he talking about? What would make Jeepers freak out?
Please don ’ t look down here, I begged them in my mind, hoping that whatever Greasy Hair had to say would keep them away. If I just had a little more time, I was sure I could keep scraping until the hole in the ceiling of the bunker was big enough I could somehow wriggle my body up into the big wooden chimney we ’ d climbed through with the ladder earlier.
“ Why would I freak out?” Jeepers asked, his voice harder to hear.
“ Just don ’ t freak out. It ’ s too late for that.”
“ For shit ’ s sake, just tell me what happened,” Jeepers said, louder this time.
Then another door opened and slammed.
Greasy Hair said something else, but I barely registered it because my mind had suddenly put two puzzle pieces together.
I knew who Jeepers was.
Jeepers was Mr. Edward. The bus driver at Bright Beginnings, who swore at all of us when that apple went rolling down the aisle and got stuck up front.
“ For shit ’ s sake.” That was what he ’ d said that day. I ’ d never heard anybody else use that swear, and the way he said it was strange … drawing the phrase out, making it a long sentence instead of just three words.
He ’ d only been driving the bus for a week when the apple disaster happened.
That was the last time he drove the bus. Rose said her mom called Bright Beginnings and complained, which meant Mr. Edward probably got fired.
Was that why he put us down here? Because he was mad about getting fired?
For shit ’ s sake. The words and the way he said them rolled around in my head. He ’ d been saying that exact same thing, that exact same way, all night long.