We leave here whole.
We leave here together.
Much later, their dumbwaiters dropped, and the doors opened. They both dragged themselves upright and then crawled to the backs of their cages. Noelle pulled out her tray. There was only one slice of white bread and one cup of water to eat and drink, respectively. But she stared down at what was on the other side of the tray, picking them up gingerly and turning them this way and that.
A tiny pair of nail scissors, dull and slightly bent at the end.
A grooming tool?
She turned to Evan, who held something of his own.
“Nail scissors,” she said, holding up the small tool and looking with confusion at what he was holding.
A hammer with a rubber head? “What is that?”
“It says on the side it’s a chime mallet,” he told her. “Like, an instrument or something.” He turned it over, staring down at it for a few seconds, and then tapped it on his open palm. It looked light, less than two pounds. The head was rubber, solid but unlikely to hurt anyone. And it would definitely lose against a Taser and a gun. Disappointing.
Evan raised it uncertainly and paused before dragging it along his bars. He let out a small huff that might have been a laugh. “Ah,” he said, “accompaniment for our songs. Someone enjoys our singing.”
Or is mocking us for it.
She looked down at the scissors. They were small and flimsy. They wouldn’t successfully go up against a Taser either. Even if she managed to hide them and bring them out at an opportune moment, they’d probably break when they struck something solid. Not that the guard ever got close enough for them to do something like that anyway. They were useless. Except . . .
Noelle sat down, inspecting her long, dirty fingernails. She’d chewed a few off, and another couple had broken. But those ones were jagged and bothersome. Yes, she had aches and pains and had suffered in ways great and small, but her instinct was to groom herself, and the fact that she could not had stolen a bit of her humanity. She took a few minutes to trim them all while Evan experimented with the sounds the chime mallet made on the different bars of his cage.
She turned toward him. “Here,” she said, sliding the small pair of scissors across the floor. “Clean yourself up.”
He scoffed. “Not exactly running for prom king here.”
God. The thought of school or dances hadn’t been something Noelle had thought about for what seemed like forever. Prom. Ha. How ridiculously simple. Maybe she’d even have worried about it in her old life. Would someone invite her? Or would she pretend not to care and make plans for a girls’ night with Paula? She’d never even considered being prom queen. But Evan . . . Evan had been a shoo-in for prom king.
King.
All those half-drugged girls, naked and draped in gems. They made him feel like a king.
His voice. Unbidden. She pushed it aside and mustered a chuckle. Evan put the mallet on the floor and sat down to trim his own nails. She watched as he did it, seeing that the small grooming errand was making him feel, if not like a king, at least a tad more human too. That was good. Perhaps whoever had sent them had done so understanding the small pleasure. Or maybe it was worse than that. Maybe whoever had sent them had been given some advanced notice that their fingernails would be torn from their fingers in the morning, and this was a sick inside joke. She swallowed, refusing to let her mind go there. In any case, she had a specific use for them in mind, and it wasn’t just to trim her nails.
Evan started singing low and slow, mostly under his breath, as he focused on his chore. She turned away from him and pretended to pick at a scab on her arm but listened intently to what he said.
Her heart raced as he sang and then plummeted as he explained what he was going to do.
Evan . . . no.
Yes, he insisted. Yes.
Oh God, oh the sacrifice. She clenched her eyes shut, picturing what he’d described in fewer than five words. She couldn’t allow herself to grimace, in case they were watching closely and her expression tipped them off that they weren’t merely mumbling nursery rhymes. She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. Okay. They had no choice.
She turned and he looked up, their eyes meeting. He picked up the mallet and dragged it over the bars, certainty in his gaze.
Oh, Evan.
On a silent exhaled breath, she turned away. He was right. The plan must be enacted now, before things got bloodier. Before they were each missing parts of themselves that would make an escape attempt impossible. These two new tools had made the decision for them. They had what they needed to try.