Page 99 of Five Survive

The bathroom door opened soundlessly, buried under the song, and Maddy stepped out in Red’s flannel shirt and her jeans, dark stains at the knees. She had on Red’s tattered sneakers too, the laces done up neatly, double-knotted.

“Good.” Oliver beckoned her over. “Okay, do you have a hair tie?” he shouted into her ear. “You need to tie yours back in a ponytail, the same height as Red’s.”

Maddy always had a spare hair tie on her wrist, sometimes more actually. Red often borrowed them, never gave them back becausethey all got lost somehow.

Maddy pulled up the sleeve of Red’s shirt, revealing a black hair tie sinking into the flesh of her wrist. She rolled the band into position over the base of her thumb and fingers, and turning to study Red’s hair, she gathered her own up, running her fingers through, pulling the strands to the crown of her head. She secured the hair tie around the ponytail, once, twice, three times, then pulled it tight.

Oliver looked between the two of them, Red and Maddy, and again, frantically, eyes narrowing.

“Not quite right,” he shouted. “Yours is too long.”

Knife still in hand, Oliver backed up to the table, reaching for the scissors with his spare hand. He didn’t ask Maddy first. He spun her around, the heels of his hands on her shoulders, and he grabbed the length of her ponytail with his knife hand. He opened the scissors, positioned them about three inches up from the ends of Maddy’s hair, and he snipped. It wasn’t a clean cut, sliding through, opening the scissors and closing them again and again until the end was hacked off. Uneven, but Oliver seemed pleased with it.

Shards of Maddy’s light brown hair scattered to the floor. They glittered, not quite as much as the glass had, but they still held the light.

Oliver moved her back to study her again, dropping the scissors.

The scissors. They were a weapon too, right? Could Red get to them? And then what? She couldn’t stab Oliver Lavoy with them. She could threaten to, but he’d know it was an empty threat. And his might not be. Notrock paper scissors,butscissors knife rifle.Scissors lost every time in that game.

“Yours is too neat!” Oliver shouted. “Red’s hair is messy. Can you pull some bits out at the front, and some lumps at the top of your head?”

Maddy nodded, teasing out wispy strands of hair to frame her face like Red’s bangs. Pulling at clumps in the ponytail, so they stuck up on her head.

“Better!” Oliver shouted, and that smile was back, the one that didn’t belong. “Perfect.” He gave Maddy a shake on the shoulders. “You can do this, you know.”

He didn’t wait for her to disagree. He walked past Red, knife gripped hard in his hand, circling the kitchen counter where themusic was loudest. He opened the lid of the saucepan and reached in, removing two phones, one with a marble orange case. He thumbed at the screens, probably checking the battery levels. “Okay,” he shouted over the noise. “Take your phone and Reyna’s. Actually, take Simon’s too, he’s on a different network.” He pulled out a third phone. “You keep driving until you find a house and some help, or until the first bar of signal appears on one of these phones.”

He bundled the iPhones up in one hand and walked over, passing them to Maddy. She nodded, slipping two into her back pockets, one at the front. Oliver was blocking her, Red couldn’t see Maddy’s face, her eyes, but she could imagine the fear in them. Was this really going to happen?

“Look at me, Maddy,” Oliver barked, reaching his spare hand out, knocking a finger under her chin. “You can do this! Walk calmly out the door, turn to the side as soon as you can, that’s where you and Red look most alike, in profile. Walk to Don, take the keys out of his hand, then straight into the truck. Shut the door, start the engine. Back up, turn, and then drive the hell out of here. Not fast while you’re still in view. But once you’re past those trees, you put your foot down, understand? Drive as fast as you can into some signal, or to a house and a landline. And when you call the police, remember to tell them it’s an active shooter and they need to send officers right away. Do you know where to send them?”

Oliver shifted and Red could finally see Maddy. She looked frozen, welded to the floor of the RV. A quiver in her lower lip as she searched Oliver’s face for the right answer.

“McNair Cemetery Road,” Simon was the one to answer. “That’s the road we turned off down here. I remember. They’ll find us if you tell them that. Tell them to look for headlights.”

Maddy nodded, swallowing her bottom lip now, eyes glazed withterror, like she couldn’t even listen, like words were just noise battering against her ears.

“Maddy!” It was Arthur now, stepping around the swell of music. “I really don’t think you should do this. You shouldn’t. It’s too risky. There must be another way. Red?” Arthur looked back at her, desperation in the pinch of his mouth.

Red shook her head, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes to see Maddy this scared. Her Maddy.

“Don’t go,” she said. “Don’t do it, you don’t have to.”

“Shut up, you two!” Oliver roared, puppet head rolling loose on his neck as he whipped back to Maddy. “Don’t listen to them, they don’t understand. This is going to work, okay? Maddy, Madeline, look at me. It’s going to work and you will be fine. You’re going to save us all. You. You’re going to save us. It will work. It’s a Mom plan, a win-win.” Oliver’s voice was raw from shouting, cracking at the edges, just like his smile. “You get out of here and call for help. And once you’re safely gone, we can let the sniper know we still have Red. That will protect us in the meantime. She’s obviously worth something to them.”

But not to anyone else, clearly. Red once thought Oliver looked at her like a spare sister. She’d been wrong about the second word, though, the one that mattered.

“Don’t go, Maddy!” Arthur said, and there were tears in his eyes too. “Don’t! Red?!”

She was trying. But Maddy was listening to Oliver, and he had the knife.

“Maddy!” Red cried.

“Oliver, can we think about th—” Reyna began.

“It’s okay!” Maddy shouted above their voices and the music, nodding her head too fast, eyes rattling with it. “It’s okay, everyone.I can do it. I’m going to get help for you, I promise. I can do it! I can save you all!”

“You don’t have to!” Red yelled back. “Just because Oliv—”

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