Page 104 of Not For Keeps
Another groan. A loud one, somewhere above. The ceiling is shifting—warped, heavy. The sound makes my stomach drop. I brace myself, shielding Maya with my arm as a beam somewhere outside crashes to the floor with a thunderous slam.
The air rushes in afterward like a vacuum broke. Smoke pours under the door, black and fast. I cough hard, chest splitting open. When it passes, my limbs feel too heavy. I glance down, trying to wiggle my toes. Nothing. Just a deep, numbing throb where there should be movement. Like my leg’s gone quiet.
Not paralyzed, I tell myself. Just hurt. Just swollen. Just…not now. Don’t panic now. I can’t let her see. I can’t let her know.
“If anything happens,” I whisper, the word barely audible, “You stay low. Crawl if you have to. Call for help. You don’t stop until someone finds you.”
Maya bolts upright. “No! Don’t say that. I’m not leaving you!” Her voice breaks, and for the first time, her fear shows all the way through. She wraps her arms around my waist, as far as they can go, and buries her face in the side.
“You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever known,” I whisper. “I love you more than anything.”
She lifts her face, smudged with soot, and presses a kiss to my cheek. Her lips are cracked, dry. Her eyes shimmer with unshed tears. I let mine close. Just for a second. Just to rest them.
But a crash snaps them open again. Closer. Louder. A vent? A support beam? Smoke crashes in like a wave. and I lose sight of everything.
“Maya,” I gasp.
“I’m here,” she cries. “I’m right here.”
I reach for her hand. She finds it instantly. And even though I’m shaking, even though I don’t know how much longer we have, I hold on. Because we’re still here. We’re still here.
Chapter Thirty-Four
MATEO
Everything is on fire.
The hallway groans around me, beams cracking like brittle bones, the walls gasping smoke as if the building itself is choking. Sparks rain down from the ceiling tiles, embers skittering like fallen stars across the floor.
I charge forward, ducking beneath a broken beam, my boots slamming into the warped linoleum. My flashlight cuts through the thick air, slicing through plumes of gray like a blade. My lungs are tight. My vision tunnels. Every thought narrows to one thing: Get to them.
I know this wing. Analyse once told me they got stuck with the worst classroom. The one with the drafty vents, busted heater, and cabinets that fell off the hinges if you breathed wrong. Room 24. She said it like a joke, laughing the way only she can. Analyse. She could always turn something broken into something beautiful.
I hold on to that detail like a map etched into my ribs.
A wall of heat slams into me as I round the corner. The air shifts, more violent, more alive. Debris blocks the path ahead—wood, tile, melted plastic—but there’s just enough space under the wreckage to drop to my knees and crawl. Smoke churns thick and black, coiling like a living thing. Embers flicker across the rubble like dying stars in reverse.
“Analyse! Maya!” I yell, voice ragged, the smoke clawing at my throat like it wants to take something from me.
Nothing. For one gut punched second, I hear nothing. Then?—
“Mateo!”
A small voice, muffled and cracking. But it cuts through everything like a prayer.
“Maya?!”
“We’re here! In here!”
My entire body jolts. I surge forward, heart punching against my ribs, trying to claw its way out.
Room 24.
Smoke bleeds from the doorframe, thick and furious. The door is warped from the heat, the handle blackened and missing. I don’t think. I just move.
One kick. Two. On the third, the door splinters, groaning open as smoke explodes outward in a wave of heat and ash. Flames snarl along the edges of the wall. Paper peels from the bulletin boards. The air tastes like chemicals and grief.
“Mateo!” Maya throws herself into my arms. She’s shaking. Her little face is streaked with soot, her cheeks blotchy with tears. I drop to one knee and wrap my arms around her.
