Aunt Sophia frantically parked her dirty, heavily dented little sedan in front of the house. Behind us, several threatening police cars—and even a helicopter overhead—continued to follow, and with the obvious exception of the helicopter, the drivers of those vehicles simply resumed their chase on foot.
With my youth and athleticism, I was able to climb over the fence into the backyard pretty easily. My aunt was not so lucky, so I hurriedly unlocked the gate to let her in, thought for a second about closing it and locking it again to slow down the boys in blue, but then decided it wasn't worth it, and instead just kept on running.
Repeated shouts of "Stop!" did nothing to stop us. We circled around the house, threw open the cobwebby cellar door, and dived inside. One more door, and then I'd be back in my own body, and hopefully Lily, too. Bunnies in heat would have awed at the speed at which I hopped down those steps towards the trapdoor.
"So this is it?" Aunt Sophia said breathlessly as I opened the trapdoor. It almost seemed to exhale when I finally exposed it to the musty air for the first time in days. "This is the trapdoor?"
"Yeah!" I said. I gripped the sides of the square doorway leading into the ground and was about to dive back in, but then I heard the gun being pulled on us.
"Stop," he said. This time it worked. I looked up and saw a middle-aged mustached police officer walking down the steps to join us. "Don't move. Either of you." Several of his comrades were not far behind him.
My aunt raised her arms in surrender. I groaned.
"I'm twelve years old!" I said, looking at the pistol he was aiming at us. "You can't shoot me!"
"I don't want to shoot anyone," he said. "But after the mess you two made in the city today, I think it's safe to say you're both wildly unpredictable."
"She made me do it," Aunt Sophia said.
"You fink!" I argued. "You agreed to it!"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time."
"Don't you want your daughter back?!"
"What is that supposed to mean?!" the officer said. "Aren't you her daughter? Aren't you Lily Armstrong?"
"Only in body. Now if you'd just let me go down this trapdoor—"
"No can do, Lily."
"My name is Claire."
"She's my niece," Aunt Sophia clarified, if you'll pardon the pun. "And she can take care of herself," she said as she turned to me. "Can't you, Claire?"
I was confused. "What are you…?"
"Let her go," Aunt Sophia said to the officer. "Take me in. I'll take the heat for this."
"Aunt Sophia!"
"Do you have a better suggestion?" she said. It was meant as a rhetorical question, but it didn't stay that way.
She had a point, but I had a trapdoor.
"Follow me!" I said quickly, and I jumped down into the trapdoor.
As before, I found myself standing in a hole just deep enough for me to still keep the uppermost tier of my body above ground.
"Aunt Sophia!" I shouted.
"I'm right here!" she replied.
"Get out of there," the annoyed police officer said.
"Come down here and close the door on us!" I told my aunt.
"Come on, stop horsing around. Get out of there. There's nowhere else you can go."
"Oh yes there is!" I said in defiance of the officer and the reality he was used to. "Come on!" I begged my aunt. "You're not going to jail for us, Aunt Sophia!"
Aunt Sophia sighed and scooted over to join me under the trapdoor.
"What are you waiting for?" another police officer said. "You've got them! Arrest them!"
"In a minute," the first officer said, turning back to look briefly at his colleague. With a small laugh, he explained, "There's nowhere they can go from here. Let's just see what happens."
"This is squishy," Aunt Sophia said.
"I don't think it's meant for two people," I said. I looked up one more time at the police officers waiting to arrest us, then grinned and waved goodbye. "Bye," I said, and I closed the trapdoor over my aunt and I.