The Amazing Collapsible Safehouse

It was Dani—Lieutenant Dan—who broke the trance.

"SCATTER!" she screamed.

Then the whole auditorium was a flurry of motion and fear. They'd discussed what to do in that situation, but it had never happened. It never should have happened.

The girls clung to each other, a survival instinct. Anne was awake and terrified. The banging still rang through the air, punctuating every few seconds, like a hellish alarm. Dani tried to drag them through the screaming, running crowd, but Kat's panicked brain remembered a very important item.

"Mom's bracelet!" she cried. "I've got to get it!"

"There's no time!" Dani tried to say. Her every instinct was telling her to run, like a scared animal.

Kat was gone in an instant. Anne's hands were still reaching out where she'd been holding her sister's sleeve, a moment before. The most impulsive member of the four climbed over their chairs, dodged into the aisle, and ran to the scaffolding. Everything around her was chaos. Kids were shoving anything they could grab into bags. Some were just fleeing, not knowing if the theatre was surrounded, not knowing where they were running to. Kat fought the crowd up onto the second floor and ran into the hallway. Two girls dashed past her. In a blind panic, Kat ran the wrong way, getting a good view of the lobby as she skidded to a stop. She was just in time to see the police swarm into the building.

She turned on her heels and ran straight to the ballroom. She practically power-slid to their beds. Where had Anne put the bracelet? Kat tore up their beds, shoving valuables and clothes into backpacks. She and Anne weren't going into the foster system. They couldn't. They'd be separated. Someone—several people—were thundering down the hallway to the ballroom. Kat found the bracelet (it fell out of a pillowcase) just as the doors banged open.

"What were you thinking?!" Julie yelled.

The three other girls rushed in. Dani started securing the doors.

"No talk time! Plan, now!" the Rroma girl called.

"Back out the balcony?" Kat offered. If she had a plan when she ran off, that was it.

"Cops are coming up the stairs! We're pinned down!" Julie said. She quickly gathered up bags with Kat.

Anne was busy looking for another way out. All the doors were being blocked, but the older girls were missing something.

"How about here?" Anne pointed to the old elevator doors.

All girls stopped and stared at it. Behind the ancient, closed doors was just a long shaft. The elevator car was taken out when the building was abandoned, there was nothing there.

"…It'll do." Dani said. "Kat, help me open this. Julie, drag a mattress here!"

"I don't like the sound of this…" Julie said, doing it anyway.

Kat and Dani tore boards away from the old elevator and pried open the ancient doors. It wasn't hard to do, the whole place was so old. Dust billowed out of the black hole. The girls paused to look down the two-and-a-half-story drop. They couldn't even see the bottom.

Dani kicked the mattress over the metal edge. They heard it hit with a whumpf.

"Okay, who's first?" she asked.

No one volunteered.

There was a sound of rattling at the doors. An adult male voice shouted to others. That was all the motivation they needed, no one protested the crazy idea.

"I'll make sure it's safe." Dani secured her backpack and stepped to the edge. She didn't let herself consider the possibilities—maybe there were metal mechanisms sticking up at the bottom, maybe the mattress landed on its side—she just stepped out over air.

Her whole body tensed up. It felt like her stomach was flying up into her chest. The only thing she had time to think was, 'Is this what flying feels like?' when she hit the mattress, hard.

Dust flew wildly around her head. She caught a mouthful of it when she turned around to stage-whisper, "It's safe!"

She scrambled out of the way just before Anne landed with a little "oof!". Dani pulled the little girl to the wall and caught the bag her sister tossed down.

"You all right?" Kat called.

"That was fun!" Anne called back. Dani reminded her to be quiet—there were cops in the lobby, just outside the elevator.

Kat hit the mattress legs-first, and the force of the fall almost made her faceplant. She crawled to safety and all three girls looked up at the open door.

Julie was silhouetted against the star mural. Her face was scared and conflicted. Her friends motioned for her to jump, but she was frozen. Julie didn't have a fear of heights, really. It was more of a…healthy respect. A healthy respect made worse by the fact that she couldn't even see her friends. Her Gryffindor-ism didn't help her when she was staring down a black abyss.

Bang! The battering ram was at work on the ballroom doors. Cops were about to get in! Julie looked from the door, to where her friends were. The door wouldn't hold. She'd be caught, and they'd find her friends…She held her breath, closed her eyes, and jumped. The seconds felt like years—abruptly ended by a harsh landing on an ancient mattress.

Julie scrambled off the bed just as a flashlight beam swept through the dust. All the girls held their breath. Something was amiss…Dani spotted it on the corner of the mattress—Julie's glasses. She snatched them up just before the light illuminated that spot.

The beam swept left, right, and then clicked off. A man in a police cap stuck his head in and looked around some. The girls were sure they were caught, but he pulled his head back, and shouted to the other cops to look in the bathrooms again. He didn't see anything. The girls could breathe.

They waited a few minutes in the dark. They made sure one another were all right. Julie dared ask the question, "What do we do now?" and Dani answered truthfully.

"We go back up." She pointed at the service ladder, little more than rusty iron bars stuck to the concrete wall.

"I don't like the sound of this, either." Julie said.

Kat was a bit less casual. "You mean we could've climbed down?!" she hissed.

"No time, they'd have caught us! Hate me later—we need to get to the fourth floor!" Dani said back. Anne was already climbing. Dani slung her own bag on her back, Anne's bag on her front, and climbed after.

"Careful! No one fall!" Kat whispered up the line as she climbed after Dani.

Julie dusted off her glasses (a waste of time, more dust just settled on them). With a heavy sigh, she started climbing. She was super—SUPER—careful on her way back up.

Anne's head popped up over the edge of the metal plate. Everyone was relieved to hear there were no cops in the ballroom. Dani told the little one to keep climbing.

"What's on the fourth floor?" Anne asked.

"J's office."

They kept climbing. Something skittered by, clinging to a pipe. Dani glanced down and silently noted it was a long climb up—but a short trip down. They could see the ceiling and all the rusty machinery when they reached the fourth floor. It was the last floor the elevator stopped at.

And the doors were closed. It appeared fate wasn't on their side. Dani got Anne to climb a little higher, linked one arm through the ladder, and tried her best to pry the doors open.

On the other side, the ex-priest called Mr. J was desperately throwing together papers. His office-slash-apartment, in what used to be the projector room, was a wreck. A fire safe in the corner hung open. Rhonda stood by the ladder to the roof. She was more panicked than she'd ever been. More panicked than J had ever seen her, even when Tighten attacked.

"You—you can't do this—how'd they find us this time, James? You paid off the precinct for a whole year!" she babbled.

J finished shoving bills into a go-bag (the theatre's meager funds). "I dunno. Someone must've tipped off the chief." He gave the bag to her and took her shoulders. "Regroup somewhere safe. I'll join you if I can."

"James, I'm not letting you—"

"The kids need you." J said in a forceful voice. "Now go, you don't have any time!"

Rhonda couldn't find the words to tell him how stupid he was being. She couldn't even look him in the eye. She just took the bag and walked out the door. J watched her go, eyes panning over the elevator doors as his second-in-command made for the stairwell. When she was gone, he did a double take. Were the elevator doors moving? Nah, that was impossible, there was no way—

Christ on a skateboard, the doors were opening.

J said some un-priestly swears under his breath before he got the situation. He caught a glimpse of a dirty kid's face in the dark and leapt into action. It only took a second to get the elevator doors open—the things were so old the mechanism was broken, he thought about duct-taping 'em shut last summer but was glad he didn't. Mr. J grabbed the first kid he could get to and pulled them away from the 4-story drop.

"What are y'all doin?!" was all he could think to say.

"Sump'n crazy." Anne said from his arms.

"I know that!" Mr. J quickly put her down and pulled the other kids up, as fast as they could be pulled. There were only four of them. Just four dusty, scared kids standing in his office. He didn't know how many others got away. At least those four were safe…

Dani—loyal Dani—looked awfully young and vulnerable when she asked, "What do we do, J?"

There was a ruckus outside, at the bottom of the stairwell. Mr. J dodged to the door and looked out. Rhonda hadn't been caught, it was just cops caught in a kid's homemade booby trap.

"You four get outta here. I'm gonna hold 'em off. Cause a distraction." The adult swept up some loose bills and handed them to Dani. It wasn't much, but it was all he could give to her. It might just save those kids' lives.

She numbly held the money and said about the same thing Rhonda did.

"J, you can't do this. It isn't worth it. J, you're—you're dark-skinned, they won't take it easy on you—"

"I'm not asking. Go up the service ladder, onto the roof. Use the fire escape. That's an order, Gypsy girl!"

"I won't let you! I won't let you!"

Mr. J was already stepping away. If Julie wasn't holding onto Dani, afraid to let her follow, Dani would've followed.

"Keep each other safe!" J called. Then he was gone.

Kat and Julie both had to drag the teen away. Anne ripped boxes away from the metal service ladder. Kat went first to fling open the hatch. The girls emerged into the windy, damp night. Dani was with them—heartbroken. Mr. J was just the last in a long string of losses she had no time to grieve.

The fire escape was a rusty, creaking structure. It seemed like any puff of wind would tear it away from the side of the building. It groaned under their sneakers. If any cops were in the alley underneath, they surely would've been caught. But all the cops seemed to be inside. The four girls escaped into Metro City—tired, scared, and with nowhere to go.