Chapter 3 #2
And late November in the mountains of Maine meant she had to find warmth.
The wall of glass surrounding the office at Deke’s Service Station and Breakfast Diner looked vulnerable. Scanning the ground, she found some cinder blocks dotting the snow-covered ground on either side of the donation box.
One throw and the glass would shatter. The building had to be warmer than out here. Plus, she’d set off an alarm and the police would come.
And then she’d be rescued.
Or... booked and charged with a crime, her mug shot all over the local news, Perry’s parents aghast, her arrest permanently on her record, banning her from ever working with children again.
Wait. No. Bad plan.
Bad, bad plan.
Bending down, she looked under the car. It would shield her from the wind, but nothing else.
And a determined animal could gnaw on her leg easily.
The road itself wasn’t an option. The nearest house was easily a few miles away, which meant walking on a snow-covered road in late November in Maine, in the dark. Either a band of coyotes would get her, or a plow truck would clip her before she’d reach civilization.
Hmm. What about a friendly coyote? A loner. They were warm, right? Maybe she could befriend one and snuggle with it under the car.
Good grief. Now she’d really lost it.
She had no choice.
Turning slowly, she eyed the donation box. Of average height and maybe slightly-above-average weight, she could do it.
“I have to climb in,” she choked out, her only witnesses a few squirrels in the woods.
At least, she hoped those were squirrels she heard.
Fisher cats were mean little buggers. Foxes weren’t fun, either, and a pack of coyotes or wolves could even kill if they wanted to.
She was unarmed, unprotected, and increasingly unhinged.
Think, think, think, she told herself, staring at the lever for the steel bin.
It was chest height on her. When she’d pulled into the parking lot, she’d parked near the donation box but not right in front of it, so she had to find a way to get herself up about two feet, balance her body, and climb in.
Climb in.
Hysterical laughter poured out of her, the sound wobbly as she shivered, her ribs tightening as her muscles contracted and tried to keep her warm.
“Ew. What if there’s an animal in there?” she said aloud, because why not talk to herself at this point?
She was a stupid crazy lady who threw her keys and phone in a charity bin.
“I’ll climb in, find my keys and phone, stack the stuff inside in a big pile, climb up it, and wiggle back out. That’s the plan, Kylie.”
Eyeing the box, she wondered if she was too short to climb out.
What if there wasn’t as much stuff in there as she’d thought?
What if the door worked in a weird way and you could get in but couldn’t get out?
Strategy demanded that she think these things through, even as her calves turned into slabs of frozen meat worthy of display at the local butcher shop.
Fate wasn’t handing her any real choices, was it?
Over by the gas station’s air pump, she spotted more concrete cinder blocks, a few broken but four or five intact.
By the time she stacked four cinder blocks in a pile that was frighteningly unstable but sturdy enough to do the job, her fingers were bright red.
She knew she’d have burning pain later as they warmed, but she’d left her gloves at home, a terrible decision that brought a heaping dose of shame for a woman born and raised in New England.
Standing on top of the pile, she grabbed the handle, pulled down, and stared into the abyss.
The abyss looked back.
“Hello?” she called into the space, as if a troll lurked inside, waiting to ask her the password.
Nothing replied.
Ears perked, she listened for scuffling noises that might indicate feral inhabitants.
Again, nothing.
A sliver of moonlight shone from behind her, illuminating the curve of the carabiner clip on her keychain.
She knew her phone must be nearby, hidden among a few small boxes, loose clothing of all description, loads of white kitchen-size trash bags, some re-used department store bags, overstuffed black utility bags, and what looked like a very broken plastic tricycle.
Her nose was cold, but not so cold that it was numb to the odor.
Oh, man.
Kylie had lived in New York City. She had wandered down back alleys after nightclub trips where she had some instant regrets and some that stretched on for days, but nothing compared to the smell in there.
It smelled like her own foolishness.
“There has to be another way,” she murmured, but deep in her heart, she knew there wasn’t.
Wendy was back at the apartment, half an hour away, sitting on a beanbag chair, triple-checking her flight from Manchester to New York City to Paris and working hard to bring her checked bag down to the 23 kilogram weight limit. How many scarves did she really need?
A new round of frigid shivering made Kylie envy all those scarves, which she would put to good use if she had them.
Suddenly, the yowls of a pack of fighting dogs cut through the relative quiet of the woods behind the gas station. Yipping and howling, the noise assumed a condensed quality, like someone took twenty dogs and crammed them into five.
Some of them sounded like they were in pain.
And close.
Too close.
“Coyotes? Foxes? Wolves?” she gasped, looking up at the sky as if chastising God. “Really? This isn’t bad enough?”
The dog sounds died down, then ratcheted up again, louder.
Closer.
Standing on tiptoes, she faltered, palm scraping against a metal edge, hard enough to nearly pierce her skin. She wobbled because she couldn’t feel her toes. They were that cold. If she didn’t do something soon, she wouldn’t even have the choice to climb in the bin.
Better do it now, while she could.
Just like that, she went from one choice to none.
Cold metal cut into her ribs as she leaned in and assessed the situation, the delicate balance of the levered door making her see the folly of her balance.
If she went in face down, head first, and the door closed on her, she could cut herself off at the knees.
When it was pulled down, the metal door formed a shelf, wide enough for three large trash bags.
Turning around carefully, she used her hands to boost herself up so that she was sitting on the door, legs dangling in front of her.
Then she pulled her legs up and curled herself like a kid hiding in a kitchen cabinet during hide-and-seek.
How would she tip herself in?
Unable to look inside, she had to rely on memory. She tried to imagine soft bags of clothing donations in there, ready to break her fall, soft and welcoming, like a mother’s arms should be.
“AAAAOOOooooooooo!” howled the pack, scaring her so abruptly that she pitched to the left, her shoulder pushing hard, and down she went.
The loud clang of the door slamming shut was buried by pure panic as she tipped in, falling and landing in a whuff!
of stale dryer sheets, faint mildew, moth balls, and something rotten.
It was pitch dark.
Hip screaming from the fall, she closed her eyes and took a couple of shallow breaths, rot assaulting her senses. Aside from the hip, she’d banged up her right shoulder, and a stinging sensation ran along the small of her back, where she’d scratched against something.
Good thing she’d gotten that tetanus booster two years ago.
But she was in, and she was warmer, and her hand brushed against something that jingled.
“KEYS!” she shouted, pawing for them, wishing her hand had touched her phone first. That, unlike her key ring, had a flashlight. Fingertips brushing against metal that clinked, she grabbed the keys and–
Huh.
Not keys.
“HANDCUFFS?” she gasped, feeling in the dark, a feather-like material making her drop the handcuffs instantly. They clinked against something. Instinct made her search, and thank goodness, because she found her phone.
Lumbering up on her knees, phone clutched in her hand, she swiped up, then hit the flashlight icon.
“LIGHT!” Her breath was a hot, humid cluster of air that made her feel warmer.
But illuminating the inside of this metal box didn’t help matters much.
It was as scary and stinky as she’d worried. Her landing had ripped open black and white trash bags, the half-broken, smelly donations a testament to the carelessness of the average person.
Because they didn’t care. Not one bit.
“Wendy, please answer,” she whispered as she went to her contacts, hit the name Wendy, and–
Call failed.
“What?”
She tried again.
Call failed.
And that’s when she saw the two most feared words on the planet:
No and Signal.
Right there, in the upper corner of her phone where the cell data bars belonged.
“No signal?” she screamed. “NO SIGNAL???”
Holding the phone up, she knee-walked to one corner of the bin.
No Signal.
The next corner–
No Signal.
The third?
Same.
The fourth was an exercise in futility, but she was a masochist and tried anyhow, the two words mocking her.
Standing on tiptoes, she managed to push the hinged door open a couple of inches. Maybe, if she held the phone up high, she could–
No.
Just… no signal.
Slumping to the center of the box, she muttered one profanity after another, until she sounded like a chicken.
“I had a signal in the car!” Looking at the wall, her high school physics raced through her mind. Was the metal blocking the signal? Had she accidentally put herself in a Faraday cage?
That wouldn’t be a problem when she got outside. Just had to find her keys, climb back out, and she’d be fine.
The keys weren’t hard to locate once she had the flashlight, and as she clutched both in her hands, she swore she’d never let them go, ever, again.
Superglue would be used if needed.
Climbing up a mound of bags, she reached for the top edge of the metal door.
Too short.
Panic hit hard as she looked around, the evidence clear. Eight plastic bags, one of them full of Perry’s belongings, two small cardboard boxes, and three brown paper bags stuffed with plastic stuff were it.
And the donation bin was eight feet high.
Of all the luck to climb in when the bin was relatively empty. Why hadn’t she thrown all of Perry’s useless belongings in first, then lost her keys and phone?
If she’d done that, the bags couldn’t have locked her out of her car.
There you had it: another way this was all Perry’s fault.
Piling everything into the tallest tower possible, she reached on tippy toe, barely able to push the door open an inch. It was easier on the outside because there was a handle to pull down.
Losing her footing, she felt backwards, shoulder slamming into the cold, hard metal side, her head narrowly escaping a bang.
In the distance, the coyotes howled again, perhaps fueled by her noises, or maybe just mating once more.
Joining in their screams, Kylie howled, too.
But the sound just echoed back on her.
She was stuck.
And it was entirely her fault.