Chapter 20 Still Faye

It took nearly an hour, but once Faye had decided to free herself, her exit from the room was inevitable. She had a plan and decided it wasn't impossible, and in the end it wasn't. She didn't have the strength to break through the barricade, that was true, but she had the patience to move it a hair's breadth at a time. It was painful, but painful and impossible were different. She needed to be out of that oppressive room; she owed it to Davey and Umu—to Umu especially—to warn them they were in danger, and the only way to do so was to free herself.

For the first fifteen minutes, she gently rocked the door handle, pushing it open as far as it could go and then closing it and repeating the process until she had shifted the wooden barricade just enough, a millimeter at a time, to allow her to slide the scissors through the gap in the door. She needed only to cut one board, the piece of the skid directly under the door handle. If she cut that one piece, the door would give enough to get her hand through, enough for her to knock the barricade out of place. There was no way to do it but methodically, so for forty-five minutes, she slid the scissors through that tiny gap in the door and sawed at the wooden skid with them. Every splinter that hit the ground was a miracle, a flicker closer to her freedom.

When it was over, her hands were blistered and bleeding and the handles of the scissors were slick with her blood. She put them back in her pocket—it was important to have a tool—and she tiptoed through the open door and out into the dark in search of the others' voices.