Page 29 of Five Survive

“Okay, three, two, one.”

Oliver pulled open the door, and Reyna slipped inside on her hands and knees. She disappeared as Oliver reached in to switch off the light, closing the door after her.

He caught Red’s eye, watching, and gave her a grim nod.

A few seconds later, Reyna’s voice called through, “Okay, done!” and Oliver followed it back into the bedroom, flicking on the light, heading toward the closet and out of Red’s view.

“Red, come on,” Maddy said, pulling at her shirt and jolting her back.

Maddy stopped short of the sofa bed, her eyes up on the large overhead cupboards, where Red and Maddy had stored their bags. Getting them would mean standing right in front of the broken window. The shade was still breathing in and out, wind whistling through the ripped bullet hole, a faint trace of gasoline finding its way inside. Maddy’s hand shook as she studied the hole, looking back to where she had been standing to re-create the path of the bullet. Or that was what Red imagined she was doing; she knew Maddy and Maddy knew her.

“I’ll get the bags,” Red said, pushing Maddy aside, back into the safety by the table. She walked forward, crunching through the fallen glass, then raised one foot and stood up on the sofa bed. The fake leather squeaked against her shoes as she pushed up, her other leg hovering behind her. She opened the first cupboard, grabbing thedark purple side handle of Maddy’s new bag and swinging it out, muscles in her arms straining.

“How much did you pack?” she said, dropping the heavy bag onto the sofa, scattering more glass. Maddy darted forward to retrieve her suitcase, holding it in both arms, almost like a shield.

Red opened the other cupboard and reached for her bag, only noticing now that the seams were breaking at the side, loose black threads tickling her skin as she grabbed it. Dad wouldn’t like that; this was her mom’s old suitcase,Grace Kenny—Philadelphiastill scribbled in the luggage tag at the top. One of the last pieces of her handwriting they had left. Not the time to think of that, though. Not ever the time.

Red stepped down with the bag in her hands, turning back to Maddy, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor between the door and the kitchen counter, unzipping her stiff, new bag. The zipper snarled as she pulled it around the corner.

Red brushed some glass aside with her foot and settled down beside Maddy, her back arching as she leaned against the door, buttressing the side of her suitcase against Maddy’s.

She unzipped it, pushing the top flap open so it slapped the floor of the RV.

“No sudden noises,” Simon called over his shoulder, annoyed.

“Sorry,” Red called back over hers. She stopped; Maddy was staring at her.

“This is crazy,” Maddy said quietly, shaking her head, pausing to bite down on her lower lip. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

Red still couldn’t believe it either. For different reasons, probably, because she always half expected the worst to happen. Maddy was half full and Red was half empty, which reminded her: she needed to get Simon some more water.

“Are we gonna be okay?” Maddy asked, and suddenly her eyes were filled with tears, one escaping, making a break down her cheek.

Red swiped it away as it reached Maddy’s chin. “Yeah, we’ll be okay, I promise,” Red said, a promise she hoped she could keep. She tried to tell Maddy that with her eyes and nothing else, a slow blink.

“What if one of us gets shot?” Maddy said, her bottom lip threatening to go, ready to take her whole face down with it.

“No one’s getting shot.” Red held her eyes. “We are getting out of this alive,” she said, “you and me.” Alwaysyou and mewith them, since before they could walk and talk and think. And even before that, when their moms were best friends, their ownyou and mefrom the first day they met at college. Lavoys and Kennys, except their moms had had different names back then. Maddy wasn’t just her best friend, Maddy was family. “Come on, let’s look forresources,” she said in her Oliver voice that usually made Maddy laugh. It didn’t work tonight, so Red tried something else: “Maybe those six bulletproof vests I packed will come in handy.”

Maddy snorted, wiping her nose. “Maybe so will the functioning cell tower I brought in mine.”

There we go, a near smile at least. Maddy pushed open the top of her case and it was so packed that maybe she really did have a whole cell tower in there. Tall piles of clothes, neatly folded and separated into sections: underwear there, shorts that side, multiple pairs of jeans, three separate wash bags, shoes in pairs down the middle like grid lines. They were only supposed to be gone seven days, yet Maddy must have packed enough clothes for weeks.

Red glanced at her own case. No piles, no folding, no order. It was all chucked in together. Balled-up underwear buried in each corner, a watered-down mascara and a foundation that didn’t match her skin tone somewhere loose in there, never to be seen again. Apuddle of marbly-pink goop—which must mean her shampoo bottle had leaked—spreading over a lone sock. Her toothbrush stood up dead center, her nice shirt caught in its bristles. She’d been hoping she could borrow Maddy’s toothpaste, not that it mattered now.

“Red,” Maddy said, disapprovingly, looking down at the mess of Red’s suitcase. She burrowed her hand through, overturning clothes to see underneath. “Did you forget to even pack a bikini?” she asked, searching through the rest of it. Red had one bikini, blue and white, and Maddy was right: it wasn’t here.

“Guess I must have missed it,” Red said, trying to remember forgetting it.

Maddy turned to her. “And what the hell were you going to do on a beach vacation without a swimsuit?”

Red shrugged.

“Borrow one of mine, I’m guessing?”

She was annoyed, but at least if she was annoyed then she wasn’t scared right now. That was better.

“Don’t think it really matters anymore,” Red said. “We’re not making it to the beach.”

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