Chapter 37 Nicky
NICKY
Ricky pulls on the old hatch that will lead into the hidden space between the roof and the top floor of the old building. The darkening sky leads me to believe it’s going to rain soon. If we can’t get inside, this escape plan is going to suck balls.
“How’s it going?” I ask, watching from the fire escape ladder a few rungs below him. He glares down at me before turning back to his task.
“You want to trade places?” Ricky asks. “Because if you think you can do better, I’ll gladly trade you.”
“You know I don’t want to trade,” I reply, trying to keep annoyance out of my tone. “I’m well aware you’re the stronger of the two of us.”
“It’s been over six years since we snuck in here last. The hinges are rusted and stuck from lack of use, kind of like when we first found it. Just give me a second.”
“Okay, I’m not in any hurry,” I say and glance around as the wind picks up. The heavy clouds are moving over head. “It’ll be fun to get rained on with 40 mile per hour gusts while hanging on to a slick, rusty, metal ladder about ten stories off the pavement. Yeah, good times.”
“Fuck you,” Ricky grumbles, doubling down on his effort to pry the hatch open with his bare hands. Moments later, my attention is drawn from watching the clouds to a sound from Ricky.
“Umph!” The wood finally gives, causing Ricky to swing back at an alarming angle. A jolt of fear shoots through me as I watch him struggle to keep himself from falling. He manages to hang on and pull himself back to the ladder.
“Got it!” he calls down, giving me a huge grin. “I knew I’d get it eventually.”
“Well get going so we can get inside before we get soaked,” I call up to him. “I don’t want to be wet and cold for hours.”
“All right, already, I’m going,” Ricky yells back. “You are such a girl sometimes.”
“It’s not being a girl to not want to catch pneumonia, asshole!”
Ricky laughs as he climbs inside the opening, only to peek down at me once he is inside.
“You are too easy, man. It takes nothing to get you riled up.” More laughter filters down to me as I pull myself up the last couple of rungs.
He moves back out of the way so I can crawl through the narrow opening.
Once inside, it takes some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkened space. The small crawl space has a musty odor. The ceiling and floor both have several dark stains indicating the roof has been leaking for some time.
Ricky, on his hands and knees, crawls farther inside to where we’d made a hideout of sorts all those years ago. I follow along behind him also on my hands and knees.
“So much for staying dry when the rain comes,” I comment, pointing toward the ceiling stains.
As if I’d called the it, rain begins to come down in a torrent.
The sound is overwhelming in the cramped space.
Within minutes, I begin to feel drops hitting my back and the plopping sound of water.
I really hope the room is in better shape than the crawl space.
After crawling several feet through old ductwork, we reach our well-hidden room. We’d built it inside the attic space of an old office building, using some drywall that had been stored in the attic. We’d portioned off a small alcove and gathered some meager belongings.
It doesn’t appear that anyone has found it, but very little of what we’d left behind appears to be usable. Mice have had made nests with the cushions we’d used for seats and they’ve chewed into the trail mix I’d left. Not that I’d expected it to still be edible after all this time.
“I sure hope the mice haven’t chewed up the money we left,” Ricky murmurs as he removes the loose floor board that covers our hidey-hole.
“Oh, shit!” I exclaim. “I hadn’t thought about that. I hope they haven’t either. I’m starving.”
“Me too,” Ricky agrees. “I didn’t want to eat or drink anything while we were with dear old dad. I wouldn’t put it past him to drug us so we couldn’t get away.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I say, leaning over Ricky’s shoulder to peer into the hole he has uncovered.
He reaches inside and pulls out the old Gameboy box.
Relief washes over me when I see him pull out a stack of bills.
“Hell, yeah! Finally something is going our way.” Ricky grins at me and bends down to the hole once more.
A clap of thunder sounds so close it jars the building.
“Fucking hell!” Ricky exclaims. “That’s one hell of a storm.
Looks like dinner will have to wait since you’re so worried about catching pneumonia.
” He draws out the last word and gives me a smirk.
I roll my eyes but otherwise choose to ignore him.
“Okay, so when the storm lets up, we’ll head to the public library,” I say. Ricky gives me a confused look. “Remember what the guys told us to do if anything ever happened to us and we needed help? Jason reminded us the other night to send an email if we got separated from him.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ricky nods. “I’d forgotten all about it after everything that happened. Wait! We don’t even know if Jason is alive.” His voice drops to almost a whisper.
I swallow hard around the lump that forms in my throat as I recall the last time I saw Jason.
His body was lying in the hall outside the room Ricky and I had been sleeping in.
Blood was pooling around his head, and he wasn’t moving.
I hadn’t been able to tell if he was breathing or not as we were herded out of the room.
A man, I now know is our father’s half-brother, had shoved me out the door before dragging me down the hall and out the front door. Another man had Ricky at gunpoint, ensuring we would cooperate.
“We still need to do what he said,” I counter after clearing my throat.
Ricky gives me a knowing look, but doesn’t say anything about the tears in my eyes.
I suppose it’s because we are twins or because of all the shit we’ve lived through in our almost eighteen years, but he’s never given me shit over being emotional.
Our father used to beat me when he’d see me cry.
He’d say how it was a sign of weakness, that I needed to be tougher like Ricky.
Ricky has always been more like our father and much better at hiding his emotions.
Yet he isn’t anything like our father. He’s never teased me or made me feel less than for having feelings that I couldn’t hide.
“Jason said that Kelvin monitors that email address, too. We just need to send an email with the code word.”
“Do you really think Kelvin will be able to find us?” Ricky questions an hour later as we are climbing down the still wet fire escape. “How is sending a one-word message going to help him know where we are?”
“Kelvin is a whiz at tracing stuff on the internet,” I answer while making sure to place my feet in the middle of the next rung. “He can hack into security cameras, traffic cameras, and easily trace where an email is sent from, especially since we are using a public computer.”
“How do you know all of that?” Ricky asks, sounding almost awestruck.
“Kelvin has been showing me how to do some stuff,” I inform him. “I’m nowhere near as good as he is, but I’ve learned a few things.”
“Where was I when you were learning all this?”
“You were out with Sonya Mitchel.” Ricky comes to a complete stop for a moment.
He glares up at me, then continues to climb down.
I almost feel bad for reminding him about the school tramp who he’d believed wasn’t like what everyone had said she was.
I guess he still hasn’t gotten over catching her in the locker room with the captain of the football team in a rather compromising position.
“Anyway, yes, Kelvin will be able to track us once we send the email,” I say. Ricky jumps to the ground, and I follow a minute later. “Once the email is sent, we are going to find some food. My stomach is starting in on my back bone.”
“So dramatic!” Ricky teases, in an obvious attempt to distract himself from feeling too much. “Are you turning into a sissy?
“First, you’re worried about getting pneumonia. Now it’s your body eating itself from lack of food. What’s next? You going to have leg cramps from climbing ladders and walking twenty blocks to the library?”
“Fuck you, asshole,” I grumble, giving his shoulder a shove. “You’re starving, too. Don’t deny it.”
“So easy,” he chuckles and punches my upper arm. “Come on, drama queen. Let’s get going.”
We reach the library much sooner than I expect, which is a relief. I hadn’t been kidding about starving. I’m beginning to feel a bit lightheaded from lack of food and drink. It’s been close to twenty-four hours since I last ate or drank anything.
At least the rain has stopped, so we didn’t get soaked on our way here. Stepping into the library, I’m hit with the familiar scent of old books. I follow Ricky over to the room where they have several computers available for public use.
Ricky grabs a chair in front of an empty terminal.
I grab another chair and pull it over to sit beside him.
He logs onto his Gmail account and starts a new message.
It doesn’t take long to type out the email address and code word Jason gave us the night we’d gone to his house.
The computer makes a swishing sound followed by a pop up saying ‘email sent’.
“Should we wait for a reply?” Ricky glances at me.
“No, we need to get on the move. We have no idea if Dad can track us by computer or not,” I remind Ricky.
“I don’t think he could, but he might have someone in his employ who can,” Ricky comments, looking around the library nervously. “Let’s go and hope that someone is monitoring that account.” We leave the library and head down the street to find some food.