Now. Right now.
This was the opening.
This was Peter’s chance to take his fate back into his own hands.
No sooner had Mandy’s shoes disappeared from sight up the winding wooden stairs, when Peter set to work. Rolling over to the telephone handset in the hamster ball took no more than three seconds, probably faster than if he was moving on foot. Peter pried his tiny fingers with careful precision down into the hinged opening, with focus a hamster would never have managed, and felt the door aching to snap open. The hinges strained.
Peter gritted his teeth. He’d fashioned himself an adventurer when he was just a young boy. He’d turned the world into his jungle: every surface a track, every height a destination, every door a window. This was what he’d been preparing for. Putting his full, almost inconsequential weight into the effort, Peter gave the door one last yank, kicking his legs up into the air. The door clicked open, allowing the boy to plop out onto the floor on his side.
He could still hear her pounding footsteps upstairs, a feat that probably took some real effort, as the girl was more on the slimmer side than not. She was truly slamming the ground on each landing and, he suspected, purely for his detriment. A reminder of what she could do at all times if he stepped out of line as he guessed Sparky had.
Fortunately, it was also a handy tool for motion-tracking the carefree little psycho.
“Thanks, Mandy,” Peter whispered breathlessly as he took off at a jog, careful to conserve his energy for the post-call push. With each step, he carefully noted the sound of her falling shoes. Before he knew it, Peter was upon the phone, clambering up onto its sloped plain and reaching for the handset.
This wasn’t a plan, like Erica said. He’d hardly dedicated more than a few brain cells to scheme. This was just a solution laid out in front of him for the taking. All he had to do was take it.
The phone came unhooked from its resting place even easier than the hamster door. Lowering to his haunches, the boy imagined himself a front lineman preparing to keep the charging blockheads from taking down his offense. Two good shoves, and the phone clunked to the floor. Perhaps a bit costly, to require a sound, even a soft one, that might alert Mandy, but by this point, Peter was all in. There was no turning back.
Peter turned around and lunged for the “9.” The steps were coming so naturally now. His body didn’t quake. His mind didn’t allow the entrance of “what-ifs” that might derail his efforts. This was for all the marbles. The boy stomped down against the rubbery number pad, watched it light up to recognize his press, then sidled his shoes between the others. He planted his foot down on the “1,” careful to let it rise back up, then stamped again. Two consecutive glows. So easy he could’ve done it tied up and in his sleep.
Heart in his throat, the freshman dove silently off of the landline’s platform and scurried to the upper speaker of the handset, waiting for the dial tone and the voice of the emergency receiver. He pressed his ear to the nearest opening in the plastic cusp, his hands flattened to the cool concrete below. Only now was he aware that his pulse was thumping like a spooked bronco.
Nothing. No thrumming tone as the call went through to the authorities. The only sound was the continuing pounding of Mandy’s footsteps upstairs.
Once again, Peter didn’t allow himself panic. He launched himself in a single bound back upon the platform of the phone. Stomping with greater fortitude this time, he started with the end-call button, then closely examined the numbers to ensure they lit up as he stepped on each.
9. 1. 1. The same optimistic glow as last time.
Peter nearly tripped with the speed of his turnaround, planting himself against the floor to listen to the handset.
Nothing. Not a soul, nor a voice to be heard. As silent as the low twilight he’d experienced with mounting horror in the blind confines of Mandy’s pocket on the ride over here.
That no-panic mental rule he and Erica had decided upon was getting more difficult to maintain.
No. No. No.
There was no folding right now.
With withering regret, Peter rolled back to his feet and sprinted for the opening in the hamster ball again. It wasn’t pretty, but his odds of being found were still much better if he stayed inside the toy and kept the charade moving, first by rolling around the room for the girl’s amusement, and maybe with a marathon of ScreamSight later. He’d eat his body weight in Hot Heads and watch every damn movie in the horror series three times in a row if that was what it took to keep him in one piece until Mandy’s front door came crashing down with the full force of justice. The boy folded his hands together for the dive into the ball.
Unfortunately, Peter discovered he couldn’t leap back inside Sparky’s old prison, because Mandy’s ragged converse shoe was resting comfortably between him and the door, conveniently with a leg and the rest of the girl’s monstrously massive body attached as well.
Peter skidded to a stop, at last feeling the adrenaline and momentum catching up. He smacked onto the floor, his head an inch away from the rubber-rimmed sole of Mandy’s converse footwear. Her foot tapped only once, quieter than perhaps she ever had in his presence. Though for all that silent little thump meant in Peter’s psyche, she might as well have dropped an anvil down on him from the sky.
Dispensing with subtlety, Mandy gave Sparky’s ball a good, hard kick to the side. It sped through the air, clattering against the wall so hard that Peter heard the plastic crack. The door he’d pried open with such difficulty popped from the hinges as though by depth charge.
“You know…” she said with a steady sigh, fists planted on her hips. “I don’t know if you learned this in tiny-boy school before you went to real-people school, but stuff kind of only works if it’s plugged in.”
Peter felt as though his brain was coming apart flake by flake as he watched Mandy crouch down, fish below the dresser, and victoriously withdraw the end of the landline between her thumb and index finger. Present, and probably even functional, but not plugged into the wall. There was electricity, but no connection to the outside world. It might as well have been a paperweight.
For what felt like the hundredth time in such a short span of time since they’d arrived at the Delaney household, a quietude hung in the air between Peter and Mandy like a full hornet’s nest just waiting to drop and hit the floor. Peter remained crouched on the floor, somehow instinctively feeling it was best to remain here, as if he might avoid whatever was happening inside the girl’s head if he kept close to the ground, and nearer to the stature she seemed to believe he actually held.
Meanwhile, the dim ovals of Mandy’s hazel eyes might well have been spinning in her skull, preparing to drill outward to their target. Her hands were folded neatly over one another like a resting jungle cat as she, too, remained crouched on the ground beside the dresser, albeit still with a pathetic size advantage over her guest.
“I guess this is my fault,” Mandy mumbled without blinking. Her soft voice caught Peter so off guard he almost fell off his haunches. “I always get my hopes all high that maybe things will be different now, with anybody who I try and be friends with. I give it my best, and they still do stuff to be mean and make me look bad. Like the people at school. Like my cousins. Like Sparky. Like you.”
Peter felt as though a sewing needle was passing through the small of his back and into his body, though of course nothing was touching him now but the cold, hard floor.
“That’s why I have to test my friends sometimes, just to make sure they’re not faking so they can leave me again,” Mandy said. “I mean, who the heck keeps the phone they use on the floor? That’s just crazy. That’d make me crazy. Wouldn’t it?”
“Uhh… p-”
“Wouldn’t it, you little piece of shit?” Mandy snarled through bared teeth. She jerked forward on her forearms, bracing herself against the upper edge of the dresser as she suddenly arched higher above Peter’s cowering body. “Answer the question. Wouldn’t it make me CRAZY?”
“No!” Peter heard his voice crack in that single syllable. He could feel his limbs shaking now.
“You’re lying,” she accused. Her hands, shaped back into claws, reared again. Their shadows fell hot over Peter’s trembling fingers on the concrete. Peter could hear the froth churning in her throat like a riled animal. “Tell me the truth. Wouldn’t it make me crazy if that phone was actually for using instead of just a way for me to KNOW, once and for ALL, that you’re not my friend, you’re just a slimy little bug who doesn’t deserve my friendship anymore. Isn’t that RIGHT?”
“P-Please, no! It’s not true, Mandy, it’s-”
“DO NOT… LIE… to me one single more time,” Mandy threatened. Her hand was upon Peter now, her palm flat on his back and forcing him spread-eagled against the chilling ground. With one ear to the earth and his chest a mere inch away, Peter could hear his heartbeat railing through the concrete as Mandy’s nails positioned themselves at his sides, primed to strike if he spoke the wrong word again.
“YES!” Peter yelped, more out of fear than even physical pain. “YES.”
“Good boy,” Mandy said silkily, the shredding intensity of her voice swallowed just as quickly as it began. Her nails flared away from Peter’s body, and instead she collected him back into her fist. Her digits resumed their usual ironclad grip around his sides, this time bracing so hard Peter could feel his sides bruising. “Oohh, somebody’s shaking. See, I told you you wouldn’t last through the ScreamSight movies. I told you! But I guess you were lying about that, too, huh, just like you lie about everything that comes out of your stupid little freak mouth?”
Mandy’s fist collapsed with one final clench around Peter’s body. Her fingers drove deeper and deeper around. It was, without question, the hardest the boy had ever been squeezed in someone’s hand.
Harder than Amy, for all her possessive grandeur and shows of strength; harder than Stella, as she changed the rules of double dares for the sake of standing on him; harder than any of the curious, conniving little kids who’d ever snatched him up like a toy throughout his wretchedly dangerous life.
Peter screamed. He felt the tears welling against his will around his eyelids.
“Hey, I guess we’re getting to the truth now, huh? Finally! You get scared AND you can hurt. Just like me.” Mandy softened her grip and opened her hand, allowing Peter to splay out into the pair of her open palms. The boy moaned, shaking as he massaged his sides, his cheek laid against the very fingers which just finished coiling him. He didn’t felt any bones break, though he was fairly certain it was only by a hair. His vision swept into swirling dizziness again, much worse than when Mandy had tossed him around in the hamster ball.
“So much for starting out fresh, Peter-Rabbit,” Mandy said. She lowered an index finger over Peter’s face, causing him to flinch with the expectation of having his oxygen deprived by the pad of skin. Instead, she began to stroke his hair, and next his cheeks, in a show of bizarre soothing. “But it’s okay. If I can’t use you as a friend, I still know the next-best thing.”