Escape Room (Underlined Paperbacks)

by Stoffels, Maren

  “You okay?” Miles puts his arms around me. His embrace suddenly feels like this Escape Room, something I can’t escape from. My heart is thumping so hard that I’m scared Miles will hear it.

  It can’t be true. Can it?

  Miles pushes me away a little. “You’re breathing so fast.”

  “Just give me a second.” I look away, scared that he’ll see how frightened of him I am. If he’s really with Cleo, then he’s at least as crazy as her, maybe even crazier. The whole time he’s kept up the pretense that he was on our side. He made me believe that he liked me.

  Or…Cleo’s lying. She must be. She’s trying to drive us all apart; that must be it.

  Miles isn’t a fake.

  But then my gaze comes to rest on the photos.

  On the dresser, among a few other frames, there’s a gold one with a photograph of a blond girl.

  It must be Lia, of course.

  But why does she seem so familiar?

  I’ve seen this girl before. But that’s impossible, isn’t it?

  A razor-sharp image: that photograph, in a brightly colored frame, surrounded by other pictures. On a bookshelf…

  Julie’s bookshelf.

  Then I look more closely at the other photographs and recognize someone else. There’s a couple in a photograph with a wooden frame. The man has dark hair and eyes that look exactly like another pair of eyes I know.

  I realize that I’m holding my breath.

  The man in the photo is Miles’s dad.

  Has Alissa recognized the photos? She walks to the door and locks it. She stands there with her back toward me, so I can’t see her face.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  It’s a while before she answers.

  “I don’t want to see them again.”

  I feel a tingle in my stomach. She believes me. She’s chosen me.

  I think about the note in my pocket. As soon as we get out of here, I’ll have to destroy it. Alissa must never get to read it.

  When Cleo wrote that I was with her, I couldn’t believe it. Why did she betray me? Was it because I’d agreed with Alissa when she said that Cleo was really sick?

  I think about Sky’s hand. That was when I knew Cleo would go much further than she’d promised. I can’t stop her now. Everything’s happening so quickly. Caitlin, Mint’s hair, Sky’s secret…

  All that matters now is Alissa’s safety. I have to make sure Cleo doesn’t do anything to harm her.

  I sit on the bed. The details of this room are so scarily good that I have to look really hard to spot the differences.

  This is my room, but at the same time it’s not.

  It’s a set.

  Alissa is standing by the photos again. I need her to get away from there as quickly as possible.

  “I’m sorry about your friends,” I say to distract her.

  “Friends are shit,” she says quietly.

  When we’re out of here, she’ll eventually forget Mint and Sky. I didn’t want it to happen that way, but Mint ruined everything.

  If she hadn’t seen me in the meadows, if she’d kept her mouth shut, she’d still have Alissa as a friend.

  But Mint is a troublemaker. She’s just like Peyton, Karla’s best friend. Peyton gossiped about me when she thought I couldn’t hear her. “It’s like Miles doesn’t have any emotions.” Those were Peyton’s exact words. “He hasn’t cried even once about what happened.”

  What I really wanted to do was to make her shut up, but instead I just stood and listened. Karla said that I was struggling, that I wasn’t a talker. She stuck up for me, but I still felt insecure. I knew it was only a matter of time before Karla would bring it up with me again.

  And that last afternoon on my bed, she asked how my therapy was going. If I felt that I could talk to the therapist about everything.

  She asked at completely the wrong moment. All I was wearing was my boxer shorts, and she was lying under me with her shirt unbuttoned.

  “You know me” was my simple answer.

  “You have to talk,” Karla said. “To me too.”

  “I can think of better things to do.” I tried to kiss the subject away, but Karla pushed me off.

  “You’re not doing well. I can see that!”

  “I’m doing fine.”

  “So why do you always keep your mirror covered?”

  I looked at my wardrobe, with the towel hanging over the mirror.

  “What do you want?”

  Karla sat up. “I want to know what you’re thinking.”

  She really didn’t want to know that. I didn’t even want to know that myself.

  I pulled my T-shirt over my head. “I’m not thinking much.”

  “There’s no need to be embarrassed.” Karla placed her soft hand on my cheek. “I’m here for you.”

  I melted at her touch. “Don’t…”

  “There was nothing you could do, Miles.”

  I needed Karla to stop talking. It felt like my blood was made of soda water. It was bubbling and fizzing.

  “I know you feel guilty, but you shouldn’t. You have to move on. I know that you—”

  “You don’t know anything!”

  Karla was startled by my loud voice.

  “You still have both of your parents, so don’t tell me to move on, because I have nowhere to move forward to. There’s only back.”

  I knew I should stop, but a waterfall of words came pouring from my mouth.

  “I disgust myself. Okay? I’m disgusted by my perfect face, without any scars. And I’m mad at you because you still want me, even after everything.”

  Karla did up the buttons of her shirt, her fingers shaking. Her bright-red bra, my favorite, disappeared from sight. And, for some reason, that made me even madder.

  “I murdered my father. You know I did. I’m a murderer.”

  Karla grabbed her shoes from the floor and started walking toward the door. Desperately, I clasped my hand around her wrist.

  “You’re staying here.”

  “You’re hurting me.” Karla pulled away from me and headed out into the hallway.

  “You wanted me to talk, didn’t you?” I was right on her heels. “Well, now I’m talking!”

  She was going to leave. I had to stop her. I ran after her, blocked the way. Her eyes darted from the front door to me and back again. There was nowhere she could go.

  “Let me go.”

  “Where to?” I realized I was panting. “To see Peyton? So you can gossip about me again?”

  Karla’s face froze. Now she knew I’d been eavesdropping on them, and that made her furious.

  “I should have listened to her. You really are disturbed.”

  I grabbed hold of Karla. It happened so quickly. In a flash, my hand was around her throat. I pressed my thumb into her skin.

  Even before I realized what I was doing, a sharp pain went through my shin. Karla had kicked me. I let go of her, and she ran to the front door.

  “No!” I clawed at her clothes. We fell through the door together and onto the floor outside the apartment.

  “Everything okay here?” The neighbor came outside. Karla stormed to the elevator. I watched her go, and I knew I’d lost her for good.

  * * *

  —

  I look at the comforter under my hands. This was the same comforter I had on my bed on the day it all went wrong.

  Then I hear the sound of breaking glass.

  “It’s locked.” Mint looks at me, panic on her face.

  I want to say it’ll all be fine, but how can I say that when I don’t believe it myself?

  Alissa is in there, with him.

  Miles is with Cleo.

  All that time when I liked him, he was with her.

  Was he the one who made sure I found the flyer? Must be.

  I’m reeling, but if I sit down now, it’ll feel like I’m abandoning Alissa.

  Mint looks at me with big eyes. “Alissa locked the door herself! That’s why she gave u
s that strange look. She’s trying to protect us.”

  Miles’s mind seems to be elsewhere. If I want to do it, it has to be now.

  With my elbow, I nudge the wooden frame with the photo of Miles’s dad. It falls, and the glass shatters on the wooden floor.

  “What are you doing?” asks Miles.

  I quickly bend down to pick up the shards of glass. “Just an accident.”

  I look at the biggest piece, which is half under the dresser. That’s the one I want.

  “Careful,” Miles warns me. “You don’t want to cut yourself.”

  All that time, I didn’t notice anything. I thought he really liked me.

  I reach for the shard of glass. The tip is razor sharp, just as I’d hoped.

  I stand up with the shard behind my back and the photograph in my other hand. I have to know who Miles is, why he’s doing all this.

  “Who’s that?”

  Miles looks at the photo, and I see that he’s startled. “What…what do you mean?”

  “Well, the man’s your dad, but who’s the woman?”

  A muscle in Miles’s temple starts twitching. He doesn’t say a word, but that tells me everything. I’ve driven him into a corner. There’s nowhere he can go.

  “That’s supposed to be Lia.” I point at the photograph of the young blond girl, which is still on the dresser. “I saw it at your mom’s place too, on the bookshelves. So what’s that photo doing here, in this Escape Room? Why is there a photo of your dad here? How do you know Cleo? Who are you, Miles?”

  Miles’s eyes narrow. “Julie isn’t my mom.”

  His words hang in the room, like a thick fog.

  “Julie’s my aunt. That…” Miles points at the photo in my hand. “That’s my mom. She’s dead too.”

  I don’t get it. That’s impossible. I went to Miles’s house. Julie introduced herself as his mother. Or maybe that’s just what I thought because that’s how things should be: children live with their parents.

  “This is my old room,” Miles says, looking around. “My bedroom in our old house. My mom was a family doctor, and my little sister, Lia, wanted to be a ballerina. Cleo’s copied our entire house.”

  I can hardly breathe. Miles is making it worse by the second. What’s he saying now?

  Cleo and Miles. Miles and Cleo. What’s their connection? Somehow I already know the answer, but it won’t get through to me.

  “Who is Cleo?” I ask anxiously.

  Miles looks right at me. “Cleo’s my sister.”

  “Who is Cleo?” It asks.

  I hold my breath.

  Will he finally choose me?

  “Cleo’s my sister.”

  The word is out.

  Was that so hard, little brother?

  Cleo is Miles’s sister.

  Now I remember the photo of Julie and a friend, sitting outside a café with two huge ice cream sundaes. That wasn’t a friend in the photo. It was Cleo. She had dark hair back then, like Miles. She must have bleached it later. Otherwise I’d probably have recognized her at the entrance to the Escape Room.

  I remember Miles pulling me in here. I thought he was doing it to help me, but he was just making sure that Cleo could carry out her plan.

  “I want to explain it to you,” Miles says, standing up.

  By reflex, I take the shard of glass from behind my back and point it at him. “Don’t come a step closer!”

  Miles puts his hands up. “Okay, okay, calm down….”

  “You let Sky’s hand get hurt. You let Mint’s hair be cut.”

  Miles looks at me in despair. “I had no idea Cleo would go that far. I really didn’t! I only came along to protect you. Don’t you get it?”

  “Why us? What do you guys want from us?”

  “Not ‘us.’ ” Miles looks down at his feet. “Mint and Sky are collateral damage.”

  I hold the piece of glass in front of me. “What do you mean?”

  Miles takes a deep breath. “It was all about you from the start.”

  Cleo wanted to scare Alissa. Just to scare her. That’s what she told me.

  But then Sky’s hand got trapped in the hatch. I thought at first that it was an accident, until I realized that my sister had started a completely different game, all by herself.

  I couldn’t go back. I was locked up, just like the rest of them.

  “About me?” Alissa gasps. “What did I ever do to you?”

  I knew Alissa only from Cleo’s stories. Cleo had been following her for months, and she kept talking about the documentary with Alissa’s interview. I didn’t want to watch the documentary. I wanted to leave the past alone.

  But Cleo couldn’t do that. She became fixated on Alissa, and then she came up with a plan to get her to the Escape Room.

  It was pure chance that I got to know Alissa. It was only when she introduced herself to me that I realized this was the girl my sister had been talking about for months.

  And I liked Alissa right from the very first second. There was nothing I could do about it. She touched something inside me, and that hadn’t happened since Karla.

  I tried to talk Cleo out of the plan, but she wouldn’t listen to me.

  She kept repeating that it was a sign that I’d met Alissa, that it meant it should all go ahead.

  And then Alissa called to ask if I’d go with them to the Escape Room. Cleo had left the flyer at the pizzeria, and Sky had found it.

  What was I supposed to do?

  All I could do was go along, in the hope that Cleo would rein herself in if I was there.

  I had to go, so that I could protect Alissa. I needed to make sure all three of them got out safely.

  Over the past year, Julie had warned me about Cleo several times. She said my sister was confused, that she needed help. But Cleo’s over eighteen. She can decide for herself, and she didn’t want any help.

  She was a genius at fooling the social workers, smiling at all the right moments, and getting away with everything. She convinced our doctor that she was fine, that she was even thinking of resuming her studies.

  But I knew she wasn’t fine. Cleo retreated more and more to her dorm room. When I was there, all she talked about was Alissa, or about the Escape Room, where she had a part-time job. The people there thought her ideas for the Happy Family were so good that they actually built the room.

  “Wait until you see it, little brother,” she said. “All of the details are just right.”

  I never told Julie what Cleo was up to. If she found out that Cleo was having a replica of our house built…

  I couldn’t betray Cleo. She is my sister, after all.

  She’s the only other one left of our family. Dad, Mom, Lia—they’re all dead.

  “You’re alive,” I say to Alissa. “That is what you did to us.”

  I don’t want to talk about this. It physically hurts. But Alissa needs to understand why Cleo’s doing this.

  “Our old house doesn’t exist anymore,” I say. “Everything’s gone. Burned down.”

  Alissa’s eyes widen. I can see that the cogs inside her head are starting to turn. And then I have to tell her. The story that my psychologist is so eager to hear, the story that Julie’s been trying to drag out of me for months.

  “I was out the night when it all went wrong. Dad told me to be home by ten, because it was Christmas Eve and he wanted us to be together. I thought it was dumb. Ten o’clock was for little kids. And I was seventeen.

  “We went out dancing: Karla; her best friend, Peyton; and me. I was mad at Dad because of the fight we’d had before I left the house. The three of us got blind drunk.

  “When I finally headed home at twelve, there were clouds of smoke above the houses. I remember thinking it was exciting. I even sped up. But when I got to our street, it turned out that it was our house that was on fire. I instantly sobered up.

  “I ran to the fence, and a firefighter held me back. He shouted that his buddy was inside, and that I should wait outside. He asked me ho
w many people were in the house, and I told him four. Cleo had already moved into a dorm room, but she was at home that night because of the holidays.

  “It was driving me crazy, waiting there. The flames were licking the bricks, and there was smoke everywhere.

  “Cleo came out. She had a big burn on her neck, and she was leaning on a firefighter. She was coughing, and she fell into my arms. She said she had to go back, that Lia had been calling for help. The firefighter shook his head.

  “ ‘You guys stay here. We’ll help your family,’ he said, and he went back. His buddy went with him. I watched them run into the burning house.

  “As Cleo was helped into the ambulance, the inferno spread.

  “It was so incredibly hot where I was standing, but it didn’t even occur to me to move away.

  “Cleo came back. She’d fought her way out of the ambulance, and she had a blanket around her shoulders.

  “I held my sister. I was scared she was going to run back inside for Lia. And at that moment…something collapsed. My mom and dad’s bedroom, I think. The neighbors standing around us were screaming and shouting, but Cleo and I were both silent.

  “More firefighters went into the house. They were shouting, but I didn’t know the names. And then a man came out. The same man who had brought Cleo out. The man who had promised to help our family. His whole face was black. He could barely stand. The ambulance guy gave him an oxygen mask.

  “The firefighters didn’t do anything else after that. All their attention went to the other fireman. Dad, Mom, Lia were forgotten.”

  “M-my dad…,” stammers Alissa. “That man was my dad.”

  I look up. “So now you get it.”

  It’s deadly silent in the room.

  I see Cleo again, standing with me behind the fence. She collapsed, clung on to me like a child to its mother. I had to keep standing, for her. But I was tired, so tired.

  “My dad lost a good friend that night.” Alissa’s voice is trembling. “He was ill for months. I told you that.”