Poison at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  More sniffs. “Really?”

  “And I’m scared of pretty much everything.”

  Sniff. “You? No way.”

  “Every hour of every day,” I said honestly. “And my sense of humor is always getting me into trouble. I have all these funny things going on in my head, but they’re too stupid to say out loud.”

  “Huh.” There was a long moment of silence. “So it’s not like you’re laughing at me on the inside?”

  I shook my head. “More like I don’t want you laughing at me.”

  A large sigh gusted out of her. “I wish I’d known this a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  Inside the furnace, there was a loud click!

  Claudia went still as stone. “What was that?”

  Fear slithered around my neck, choking me so tight that I couldn’t get the words out. “The thermostat,” I finally managed to say. “It’s . . . the furnace is going to turn on.”

  “Nooo!” Claudia screamed.

  I shut my eyes. I love you, Jenna. I love you, Oliver. Oh, Pete . . .

  And the furnace roared to life.

  • • •

  The metal against my shoulder rumbled. Hot air blew through the furnace, through the ductwork and out into the house.

  Where was the ka-boom?

  I opened my eyes. There should have been an earth-shattering ka-boom, but all that was happening was a normal heating cycle. My face went wide in a huge smile. Not dead. We were definitely not dead yet and wouldn’t be for years and years. All we needed was to loosen the strap that held us together, break the string that was cutting off the circulation to my hands, stop Kirk’s gas leak, and get out of the house without creating a spark.

  “Aren’t we going to blow up?” Claudia asked.

  “Not yet.” I sniffed. “Smell that? The gas is leaking, but there’s not enough in the room yet to hit the combustion point. We have time.”

  “How long?” Her voice quavered.

  No idea, is what truth demanded I tell. However, telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth doesn’t necessarily get the best results. I pushed my mind away from the philosophical question of convenient morality, and said, projecting as much confidence as I could, “Long enough.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because . . .” Because thinking we didn’t have enough time to escape would render me a helpless puddle of tears, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Because the psi—that’s pounds per square inch—of gas flow hasn’t yet reached the saturation point. We’re okay until the next time the furnace cycles on.”

  “Really?” Claudia asked.

  Actually, I had no idea what I was talking about, not for sure, but having two of us being teary puddles was pointless. “Sure. The furnace won’t spark again for . . . for quite some time.”

  Claudia squirmed. “Ow. That string hurts. How are we going to get out of here?”

  “That’s an excellent question.”

  “You don’t have a plan?”

  “Not yet.” I had some inklings of something that might work, but a full-fledged plan? Not even close. “Do you?”

  “Me?” She sounded surprised. “I thought . . . I mean . . . I figured you would, that’s all.”

  “Sorry. I got nothing.”

  There was an odd sort of heaving at my back. “Claudia, are you okay?” Which was a stupid question, but I didn’t know what else to ask.

  “You, you . . .”

  More heaving. I frowned and tried to look over my shoulder. “Are you laughing?”

  Her muted giggles became outright laughter. “Yes,” she gasped. “I shouldn’t be. We might die any second, and I know what you said about having lots of time was to keep me from being too scared, but I just assumed you’d have it all figured out.”

  “Well.” I strained against what now felt like wire around my wrists. “You know what assuming can do.”

  Her laugh faded into a snort. “When we get out of this, we don’t need to tell anybody how dumb we were, do we?”

  When we got out, she’d said. Maybe being tied up with Claudia wasn’t going to be the death of me. “I won’t if you won’t.”

  “And I won’t if you won’t.” She giggled. “We should pinkie-swear.”

  I wriggled my hands around as best I could. “Can you reach?”

  “Almost.” She gave an oomph of effort. “There. Is that your pinkie?”

  My throat was too dry to talk. I coughed, then said, “I don’t know. I can’t feel my fingers anymore.”

  “But I can. Why can’t . . . ?” Then she remembered. “You tied me. Kirk tied you.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Neither one of us stated the obvious fact that Kirk had tied me up a lot tighter than I’d tied Claudia. “Is there any chance you can wriggle your hands loose?”

  She struggled, grunted, struggled some more. Panting, she said, “I loosened it a little but I can’t get free.”

  Not a huge surprise, but it would have been stupid not to try. I looked longingly at the faraway scissors. “I don’t suppose you carry a pocketknife, do you?” I felt the shake of her head. “Scissors?” Lots of moms carried scissors in their purses. You never knew when you’d need to cut bubble gum out of someone’s hair.

  “In my purse,” Claudia said. “But it’s in my car.”

  “That’s where mine is, too. Along with my cell phone.” I was definitely not prepared for an evening of escape.

  “We could try and, well, kind of muscle ourselves free.” Claudia started rocking back and forth. “Maybe we could break something that will—”

  “Stop,” I said sharply. “Doing anything like that might make sparks.”

  She stopped abruptly. “Right. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  And that somehow reminded me that Claudia hadn’t heard me put all the pieces together. “This is all because Kirk has been embezzling from his company. Cookie must have figured it out because she was his regular teller at the bank. She must have seen all the deposits he was making into his account.”

  “He was the worst broker in the business,” Claudia said. “Everybody in town knew that. Why didn’t Cookie tell the police if she thought he was stealing?”

  “I don’t know.” What I suspected was that Cookie believed more in the eye-for-an-eye-and-a-tooth-for-a-tooth style of punishment. That she preferred her own style of justice to what the court system could hand out.

  Behind me, I felt Claudia’s shoulders sag. “Okay, then,” I asked briskly. “There are two primary issues we need to deal with. One is that we’re tied up here with no one to rescue us and no one to hear us even if we scream all night. Two is that gas is leaking into this basement, and if we don’t escape, we’ll succumb to either gas fumes or the impending explosion.”

  Claudia gave what sounded like a small snort. “That’s what you do when you’re scared, isn’t it? Talk in long sentences and use big college words.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to sound snotty. It’s just something I do to distance myself from difficult situations.”

  “You’re still doing it,” Claudia said, with a slight giggle. “And you don’t have to apologize. It’s kind of cute, in a weird and geeky sort of way. Now that I know why you do it, I mean. I always thought you were just showing off.”

  Claudia Wolff was telling me not to apologize? Surely the world was indeed coming to an end.

  But I didn’t want to think about that.

  “Do you have anything in your pockets?” I asked. “Pants pockets, coat pockets?”

  “Nothing that will help us. How about you?”

  “A couple of tissues.” I thought a moment. “And there might be a peppermint.”

  “Come to think of it,” Claudia said, “there might be a pen in one of my pockets.”

  “If I stretch,” I said, “maybe I can reach into your pocket and get it.”

  “What good is a pen going to do us?”

  “I only tied one knot in the string
around your wrists.” Unlike Kirk, who had tied numerous knots in my string. “All we need to do is break one of those strands and your hands will be free.”

  “That makes sense,” she said in a dubious tone. “But still, how is a pen going to help?”

  “No idea. But I’ve lost almost all feeling in my fingers, so if I don’t try soon, I won’t be able to try at all.”

  There was a short silence, punctuated by rhythmic blowing noises from the furnace and the thumping of my own increasingly frightened heart. “Okay.” Her voice was small.

  She guided me with her voice. “A little to the right . . . No, the other right. That’s it. Keep going, you’re almost there . . . Okay, that’s it. Is there a pen?”

  My fingers were so lifeless that if there’d been a live mouse in Claudia’s coat pocket I wouldn’t have felt it. “I’m not sure.” I hitched myself closer. But there was nothing in her pocket to be found.

  “No pen,” I said.

  The smell of gas insinuated itself through my nasal passages, up into my brain, and permeated my thoughts with despair. I sat up straight. No. I was not going to let despair win. I was not going to give up and I was not going to die. Not tonight.

  “Your other pocket,” I said. “Let me try. You never know what a mom might have stowed away. You might have something you forgot about in there.”

  Claudia shifted around to make my access as easy as possible. “I suppose,” she said listlessly. “But I’m sure it’s empty.” She started to say something more, but her words faded off to silence.

  Which worried me, because Claudia always had something to say. A cramp in my shoulder that had formed when reaching for the pen reappeared in a slightly different location, but I timed my grunt of pain with a stretching motion so I wouldn’t scare anyone, including me. “Are my fingers in the right place?” I asked. “It’s hard to tell.”

  “A little to the left. Okay, that’s it. Just reach in.”

  My fumbling fingers weren’t cooperating in the least, but I shoved them forward, hoping for the best, praying for the best, and tried to distract myself with inane conversation.

  “Moms find all sorts of weird things in their pockets. Someone should do a research paper on it. Wonder if I could get a grant.”

  “I really smell gas now,” Claudia said.

  “Oh, Claudia,” I breathed. “Oh, my dear Claudia.”

  “What? What?”

  “You have boys. You have three boys.” Named Tyler, Taylor, and Taynor, but I wasn’t going to think about that right now.

  “I’m not sure . . .”

  My smile, which she couldn’t see, was big and happy. “Thanks to one of your boys, you have a toy car in your coat pocket.” My lifeless fingers hadn’t been able to tell what it was, but when I’d slid it up to the insides of my wrists, my skin had identified the shape.

  “It was broken,” Claudia said faintly. “There was a sharp piece. I didn’t want Taynor playing with it. He might have cut himself.”

  And in doing so, she’d saved us. “I’m going to pull it out, okay?”

  We made the transfer oh so carefully, and Claudia immediately started sawing away at the string around my wrists. “I can’t tell,” she panted, “if I’m using the sharp part.”

  “Keep at it,” I said. “It’ll cut. Just keep at it.”

  “I can’t,” she said weakly. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. For all I know I’m using the wheel to cut with.”

  “You can,” I told her. “You can and you will. Say it after me. ‘I can do this.’”

  “Beth—”

  “Say it! ‘I can do this.’”

  “I can do this,” she said in a monotone.

  “Now say it with feeling. Say it three times.”

  “I can do this.” She sighed. “I can do this. I can do this.” But on the last one, her voice grew stronger and she kept going. “I can. I can do this, can’t I?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You can.”

  She went back to the sawing. “I can do this.” Each word synchronized with a stroke. “I. Can. Do. This. I. Can—”

  My wrists fell apart and my hands dropped to the floor. “You did it,” I whispered. “You did it just fine.”

  She whooped. I used the stubs at the ends of my arms—stubs that had once been my hands—to push myself to a half crouch. “Claudia, can you grab the end of my sleeve? If I pull out of my coat . . .”

  With oofs and grunts and a fair amount of sotto voce cursing, my thick winter coat slithered off my arms and onto the floor. I lifted my arms and started squirming out from underneath the strap Kirk had tied around us.

  Inside the furnace, there was a loud click!

  Chapter 21

  “Beth?”

  I wanted to tell Claudia not to worry, to let her know that it would be okay, to tell her things would be fine in the end.

  But there wasn’t time.

  There was no time to talk, no time to think; there was only time to act, and I had to act and move fast, faster than I’d ever moved before, because if I didn’t, there would be no time left for either of us.

  “Beth!” Claudia shrieked.

  In one simultaneous motion that I could never have achieved if pure panic hadn’t been pushing me, I shoved the strap up over my head and propelled myself forward, a sprinter starting the race of her life.

  How long ago had that heart-stopping click been? One second? Two?

  No time . . .

  I lunged across the room.

  “Beth!”

  Abandoning reason and using instinct alone, I launched myself into a full-length horizontal stretch, arms out high above my head, reaching and lengthening every muscle and every joint and every cell in my body.

  Have to get there, have to reach, have to make these useless fingers be useful, have to . . . have to . . . have to . . .

  With my eyes focused hard on the object of my desire, I extended my hand, reached . . . reached even farther . . . and pulled the furnace’s plug out of the wall with a satisfying thwip!

  I crashed to the floor.

  “Beth?” Claudia asked tentatively. “Are you okay? You sounded like you might have hurt yourself. And, um, are we going to be okay?”

  No matter how much gas leaked into this room and no matter how low the temperature in the house dropped, without electricity, the furnace would never turn on. “Hang on.”

  Carefully, oh so very carefully, I walked to the nearest window. I was wearing rubber-soled boots, but if there were stones lodged in the boot treads, a spark could undo us. I stood below the small window and looked up at the single pane. No crank to wind out a casement window, no side-by-side panes to slide, not even an old thumb latch to open. To open it, I’d have to break the glass.

  Gas was heavier than air. Would breaking the window do us any good?

  Behind me, Claudia coughed and I realized how strong the gas smell was.

  Maybe breaking the window wouldn’t do any good, but it couldn’t hurt. As long as I didn’t create a spark, of course.

  I stood on my tiptoes, bent my wrist, and bashed at the glass. Sharp tinkles fell away and fresh air rushed at me as did the lessons from middle school science class.

  Gas is heavier than air. Cold air is heavier than warm. The new air would mix with the gas, and if not dissipate the gas completely, it would buy us enough time to get free of the house.

  “We’re almost out of here,” I told Claudia. I paused to suck in one long selfish breath, then went to grab the scissors. Just before I picked them up, I stopped short. My fingers were still merely lifeless sausages at the ends of my hands. If I tried to pick up the scissors, I’d drop them on the floor. The metal scissors. On the concrete floor. With a lot of gas still floating around.

  Not a good idea.

  Hmm.

  I looked at the scissors for a long moment. Thought hard. Got a plan.

  “Careful,” I muttered to myself. Using my elbow, I slowly slid the scissors off the edge of the shelf. Th
ey plopped nicely into the coat pocket I was holding open with the other hand. “Here,” I said, walking over to kneel behind Claudia. “Can you reach into my pocket? If you can get hold of the scissors, you can use the blade to—”

  “To slice the string,” she said, reaching backward with her strung-together wrists. She slid her working fingers around one of the scissor handles and pulled it out of my pocket. One, two, and three easy sawing motions later, she’d cut herself free.

  “Hallelujah!” She raised the scissors in her hand and hauled back to toss them across the room.

  “No!” I jumped in front of her upraised arm, only it was too late; she’d started her throwing motion and couldn’t stop.

  The pointed blade sliced through my coat, through my sweater, through my shirt, and into my skin. I gasped. Searing red-hot pain. Burning white pain that was turning wet with . . . oh, eww. “Don’t drop the scissors,” I managed to say. “Whatever you do, don’t drop them.”

  With one hand, Claudia pushed the strap up over her head and was free. “I cut you! Why did you jump in front of me? You’re bleeding. Oh, Beth, you’re bleeding!” She laid the scissors on the floor and hauled us both to our feet. “We have to get out of here. That gas smell is still way too strong. Come on.”

  She put one arm around my waist.

  “The scissors,” I said, trying to explain. “The gas. They might have sparked.”

  Claudia stopped. Looked back at the innocent household object that had come so close to sending us to kingdom come. Looked back at me. “So you saved us twice,” she said seriously, starting us walking again.

  If she’d been Marina, I would have said that I’d really only wanted to save myself, though since she’d been there with me, there hadn’t been much choice. But it was Claudia and she didn’t exactly understand my sense of humor, so I said, “Yeah. Well.”

  “Can you make it up the stairs? I’ll help. . . . There you go.” She came up behind me, supporting me, half pushing me, which was completely unnecessary because I could tell my wound wasn’t that deep. “You know,” she said, “when I cut you free and you were moving really fast, I thought, well, I thought you might be running away and leaving me alone.”