I want to shake my head. Not with carbon monoxide filling up this liminal space. But then I refocus on the twine-tied bodies, and I realize I need to try my hardest to get through the rest of this escape room for everyone who will never be able to: Charity. Malachi. Santo. Tobias. Matt.

  Pathetic or not, monster or not, fraud or not, I need to do this for all of us.

  I glance back at the functioning monitor—6:39—and inhale. “Okay,” I tell Guinevere.

  She laughs, but her eyes are spilling over with tears. “There’s the Steffi I know,” she says.

  A quick glance over our new surroundings reveals that we’re trapped inside the long, narrow industrial meat locker with an assortment of cardboard boxes, a line of metallic racks filled with white-papered cylinders, a final blinking security camera next to another set of speakers, and a third LCD monitor. This is the smallest of the three rooms inside Arsonist’s Revenge, which means it can’t contain that many clues. And that’s good for us.

  “Start searching through those boxes,” I instruct Guinevere. “I’ll start sifting through all this fake snow, see if I can uncover something.”

  Almost as soon as I start sweeping through the synthetic snow with my Converse sneakers like my life depends on it, because it kind of does, my heartbeat stutters. Because right underneath the first burlap-sacked body, tucked away beneath a coat of shimmering polymer flakes, is another photograph.

  I bend to pick it up. In this photo, taken at Pigeon Forge’s BREAKOUT: Hijacked, the seven of us are perfectly frozen: Tobias with a knowing smirk, his black-and-white Magnus Carlsen T-shirt partially hidden by Matt flipping off the camera. Charity with her long ash-blond hair down and her hand up to form half of a heart with Santo. Malachi next to him, cheesing at the fact that he didn’t have to act as our Game Master for once. Me, with my head on Guinevere’s shoulder, holding up half of the sign we’re both supporting: WE (ALMOST) BROKE OUT! For once, nothing about the picture is out of the ordinary. It’s just a normal photo.

  A lump forms in my throat. This is from the last escape room all of us completed before the fire. And even though it shouldn’t be such a gut punch, it is. For a second, I remember the moment we took it—the artificial click of the camera, my bright smile, the laughter that followed—and even if we did not, in fact, escape in time, we’d had so much fun.

  Guinevere finishes upending the last cardboard box; about a dozen more white-papered cylinders tumble out of it. “Is that another photograph?” she asks. When I don’t answer, she claps fake snow off her hands before she comes over to peer at it. “Man,” she says. “Santo looks so different in this one, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “Happier, I guess.”

  “Hmm,” Guinevere says, as though that’s not exactly what she had in mind, and then she reaches out to turn my wrist so that the photograph flips with it. There’s a cipher on the back. Caesar, from the looks of it. Too easy. But our time limit makes it annoyingly dangerous.

  “Oh, I know this!” Guinevere glances at me. “Remember the tape deck I was listening to earlier? It was in Morse code, but it said E equals twenty-one.”

  The date of last year’s accident.

  “Great. Help me decode it?” I ask Guinevere. She nods, and then the two of us attack the cipher from opposite ends, singing through the alphabet under our breath and swirling letters in the fake snow until our newest clue sits in plain text: YOU NEED THIS TO LEAVE.

  “There,” Guinevere says, breathless and a little disappointed. “It’s a riddle.”

  Her expectant gaze flicks to me, the barest hint of a smile curving her full lips, and despite the frigid air of the meat locker, my cheeks warm. Jesus. I’m exhausted and hungry and tired, and I still don’t understand how to fucking feel about her, this girl who acts like she wants nothing to do with me one second and then helps me solve a Caesar cipher the next. Part of me wishes we’d been working alongside each other like this the whole night, me and the version of Guinevere who’s buried deep beneath the biting facade she’s built up to manage her pain—I mean, fuck, part of me wishes we’d been spending every moment together in the months after Matt died. She wouldn’t have had to say anything, even. It would have just been nice to have a friend.

  But instead, both of us pulled apart after that one tear-streaked post-funeral Jeep kiss, and afterward the silence between us was so thick and strange that I didn’t know what to do with my hands, whether it would be socially acceptable for me to wipe Guinevere’s dark lipstick from my lips. And the whole time she had looked so terrified even though snot was dribbling from her nose, and then she’d just sniffled and hopped out of the passenger seat and it was like the kiss hadn’t happened at all, like she hadn’t leaned over and opened her warm mouth against mine while she was still crying and froze when I didn’t kiss her back because she was scaring me and I couldn’t tell if she actually wanted it; and so I just kept sitting there, wondering if I had imagined the whole scenario, stuck in fight-flight-freeze in her driveway until Judge Mitchell-Moore walked out and asked me what the hell I was doing in front of his house, only he didn’t say that; he just said, Maybe you should go home, Stephanie, in that tired old voice of his, so I did.

  I exhale sharply and refocus on our latest clue. The carbon monoxide is definitely getting to me, but I need to keep my eye on the prize, Peanut.

  “Steffi?” Guinevere says quietly. “I don’t know the answer to the riddle, but the packaged canisters are stamped with our birthdays, in case that means anything.”

  I glance at the discarded papers from what she’s already unwrapped. One is melting by my Converses—the edges of the red-inked words BEST BY: 11/24/05 are seeping pink lines into the white powder. Jesus. From this vantage point, I spot at least eight containers with the Cesari twins’ birthday: 5/20. There are a couple with Tobias’s: 9/29. Charity’s, 6/19. Mine is 2/15: a day after Valentine’s Day. Guinevere’s, 11/24, takes up an entire locker shelf.

  “The accident,” I murmur, staring at the overwhelming number of wrapped containers. “We need to find one with five–twenty-one. The fire started at midnight, so that’s the day Matt died.”

  Guinevere moves off toward the end of the meat locker, shoving aside burlapped body bags and tossing aside paper packaging. I reach forward and tilt the metal shelf until its wrapped containers spill out onto the fake snow. “Two piles,” I call, picking up cylinders at random: 11/24, 9/29, 2/15. Beside me, Guinevere tosses rejects while I pile up my own by the still-locked mirror door.

  “Anything?” she asks.

  I rush to the next shelf. “No. You?”

  “I don’t… Hold on, yeah, actually. Look at this.”

  I’m over to her immediately. Guinevere tears away the butcher paper on the 5/21 package, and I scowl at the golden cryptex beneath the wrappings. It’s just another puzzle to solve. With our luck, a vial of acid will sizzle away my skin the second I open it.

  “Don’t look so bitter—you’re good at these.” She hands the seven-ringed cylinder to me. “You’ll figure it out.”

  I can’t tell if it’s a threat or a promise.

  Carefully, I tug at the cryptex’s endcap. It doesn’t look like it’s made of the sturdiest metal, and for a second, I wonder if I might be able to open it by loosening the screws with my Swiss Army knife. But whatever is inside may be dangerous: The only way to unlock it safely is to align the correct phrase—or keyword—into its spinning rings.

  My shoulders give an involuntary shudder. For my sixteenth birthday, Tobias gave me a six-letter cryptex after I spent our entire winter break ranting about how much I loved The Da Vinci Code. I spent a full seventy-two hours puzzling out combinations before I landed on SWITCH, unlocking a digital download code for Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise. Here, we have just over six minutes to figure out what seven-letter word opens this cryptex.

  I twist the first spinnable ring just as a bang echoes through the meat locker. Guinevere’s eyes meet mine in fear—who the fuck is out there?—and a crystallized moment of immaculate suspense stretches between us.

  And then we shriek as the meat locker explodes.

  Shards rain everywhere. Glass slices into my skin, ricochets off my raised arms, and tumbles innocently to the blood-speckled synthetic-polymer-powdered floor. I don’t want to move, don’t want to hear the telltale crunch beneath my sneakers, don’t want to shake jagged slivers out of my curtain bangs. Not yet. Right now, I just want to stay crouched against the meat locker shelving, pretending there aren’t dozens of gashes burning my skin like so much hot grief, static in a bubble where I can believe my life isn’t marred by last year’s fire, or this year’s blackmail, or my ex-friends’ deaths. Right now, it’s still just me and the breath I’m holding. Just me and the girl I’m relying on to survive the night.

  I can’t look up. If I do, I know I’ll come face-to-face with a ghost.

  “Santo,” Guinevere rasps, and my stomach sinks at the confirmation. Fresh cuts blossom across her olive-skinned arms. She hoists herself up and winces, doubling over, her split lip swollen under her perfect Cupid’s bow. Burlap and metal and fluorescent lights. “You’re… alive.”

  “Huh,” his hoarse voice says. “I guess I am.”

  I imagine it: his curling smirk. The tilt of his jaw. The gleam in his expression. I picture staying crouched here forever, staring only at Gee’s blanching face, lingering successfully in the past. Meat lockers and escape rooms and second chances.

  But nothing can keep time from passing. And I’m done being a kind-of-pathetic person. As the past almost-hour inside BREAKOUT has proven, I’ve done it for far too long.

  I meet his gaze through the shattered glass of the one-way mirror. When I blink, the afterimage of his body flying through the air lights up against the UV darkness. “We thought…” I say, and my raw voice splits with the word. “I thought I lost you, too.”

  Santo grins. Hefts the ax in one ring-adorned hand. “You know it would take more than that to get rid of me, Steff.” His eyes aren’t smiling.

  Guinevere spits blood, and goose bumps erupt over my arms. “But we watched you die, Santo. You were electrocuted right in f-front of us.”

  “And yet, here I am,” he replies. “Saving you.” He rakes his burn-scarred fingers through his stringy yellow-blond hair. “If I were you, I’d be a little more… grateful.”

  My eyes gravitate to the bloodied cinder block lying in the middle of the industrial meat locker. “Grateful?” I repeat. “Your little maneuver almost killed us.”

  Santo blinks, and my throat bobs as I drop my gaze from his blank countenance to the ax he’s still holding. “Ah. Which is your goal, I’m guessing.” My voice cracks again. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, but you do,” he says. “Don’t think I haven’t seen you cutting glances at me for the past fifty-four minutes. Trying to figure out why I didn’t quite match up to the lingering version of Santo Cesari in your head.” He smirks. “So, Zamekova. You’ve had all night to ruminate on it. Why don’t you enlighten us?”

  His dark eyes flash, and here it is, finally, after 365 long and lonely days: my answer.

  “It’s you,” I whisper, breathless.

  Matteo Cesari tilts his head. “Hey, Steff,” he coos. “Did you miss me?”

  yelp.com | Recommended Reviews: BREAKOUT Escape Rooms Inc.

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  Write a review!

  An enjoyable (if pricey) experience

  Posted by Meredith Harrell at 7:09 PM

  Escape room was good for what it was. Some neat details, but $40 per person means I won’t go again unless it’s for a special occasion. Some parts of our game had vague puzzles or clues in hard-to-reach locations, which meant it took us longer than we would’ve liked to escape. Overall, it’s a good activity to pass the time… just too pricey for a Saturday afternoon.

  Response from BREAKOUT ESCAPE ROOMS Inc. at 9:37 PM

  We’re sorry to hear that, Meredith! Thank you for stopping by—we’re glad you enjoyed your game and we hope to see you again!

  —The James-Mays

  One Hour Before the Accident

  “So, again, why are you dragging me to BREAKOUT at 10:56 PM on a Tuesday night?”

  In the driver’s seat, I slow down as we approach a yellow light and a drunken bachelorette party decked out in novelty headwear and matching sashes emerges from Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and crosses the street in front of our car. “Deeper voice,” I tell my brother. “Probably drop the PM—it’s too specific.”

  “Accelerate into the yellow light,” he says in response, pretending to brood as he stares out the window at the glitzy collection of businesses on either side of the street. We’re in Cedar Creek tonight, and apparently so is everyone else. “Total embodiment means total embodiment, which includes my bad driving.”

  I roll my eyes as I signal into a parking garage with a twenty-five-dollar flat fee. “I still don’t know why you needed me to be behind the wheel for this. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I’m grateful to be driving, so that we’re not in danger of fucking dying in a car crash for once—but it’s not like they’re going to see us.”

  Santo shrugs. “Part of the effect,” he offers as I slide Momma’s card into the reader. She might ask us about the charge later, but managing that new Pizza Plus seems to be doing a number on her lately, so maybe not. Besides, it is our birthday.

  “Ta-da!” I say, doing the most pitiful jazz hands I can muster with one hand still on the steering wheel. “We’re doing an escape room!”

  This time, my brother scowls for real. “I don’t sound like that,” he says, except he totally does, and I’ve watched him pull this exact jazz-hand-driving maneuver on several occasions before. “Asshole.”

  A phone lights up in the cupholder, and I reach for it. “Malachi texted,” I inform Santo as I finish parking, using Face ID to unlock his phone. “Said something about wanting a refund through Cash App for wasting his time. Cute.”

  “Give me that,” Santo snaps, snatching the device back. The car jolts. “Don’t read my texts with Mal unless you’re prepared to be scarred for life.” He gives me a skeptical once-over. “Which I doubt you are.”

  I press my lips together. The longer we sit here, the more unsure I am about this.

  “Come on. It’s going to be fine,” my brother says, picking up on my vibes immediately. When I don’t respond, he sighs. “Look. Can we just focus on having fun tonight? Zamekova put this together, and she wants us to have a good time. She’s been super overwhelmed with Cedar Creek Confessions drafting that post about her blog, you know? But she wanted to do this for you. Or, I guess, for me.” He grins. “For us. A proper birthday party. And BREAKOUT isn’t so bad, right?”

  I glance down at the glinting rings on my fingers. I hate the weight they add to my hands, and I don’t like the polish on my nails, either. “Do you actually want to do this?” I ask Santo.

  He smiles. “It’s an escape room. How hard can it be?”

  But that’s not what I’m talking about. And he knows it, too.

  We get out of our car, the humid night air settling my nerves, and wind our way through the parking garage until we get to the neon-lit building: Cedar Creek’s BREAKOUT. It’s sandwiched between a million other glowing buildings, each promising their own form of unique entertainment… But none of those offerings matter, because this is the one we’re going to, and all our friends are already here.

  Tobias is furiously texting away, Guinevere is sucking down a cigarette, Charity is taking a swig from her water bottle, Malachi is fussing with the shoelaces of his ultra-bright sneakers, and Steff is already striding toward us with a wide smile.

  “Matt!” she exclaims, pulling my brother into a hug. “Were you surprised?”

  Santo grins in response. I step on the back of his shoe—too cheery—and he takes the note with ease, immediately relaxing into a soft smirk. “Yeah, definitely. You ready for this?”

  Steff nods, and I sling an arm around her shoulders before she can assess my brother’s face too closely in the harsh pink glare of BREAKOUT’s flashing COME IN, WE’RE OPEN sign. The escape room will be dark. However Steff is planning to humiliate me inside Wanderland tonight, Santo has my back. Because even if it took a bit of convincing to regain my brother’s trust after he confronted me about Cedar Creek Confessions, at the end of the day, our only constant in life is each other.

  And because no matter how many shitty fucking lives I ruin through my exposés, I only started the accounts in the first place because I wanted to protect Santo. Because his ex-boyfriend in Ocean City, New Jersey, told everyone on his private Snapchat Story that my brother gave him gonorrhea after they broke up, and the rumors got so bad that we had to move; because the student athletes in Franklin, North Carolina, used to shouldercheck him into lockers for trying to revive the high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance; because the bitchy cheerleaders in Hillwood, Louisiana, used to call him slurs in the hallways.

  Through all of it, I always wanted to help save my brother from himself. I knew he was too trusting, too well-meaning, and too starry-eyed, but my attempts to talk with him about it always came off as awkward, especially because I’m straight and he’s not. It wasn’t until we moved to Portland and Santo started up a fling with this hipster who ran his school’s most popular anonymous gossip account that all the pieces finally clicked into place. Because without any formal ties to an area, I hold no moral qualms about disrupting entire high school ecosystems through publicly revealing people’s deepest, darkest secrets.