Lights Out, part 2

The hopelessness threatened to engulf her. She felt like John Bunyan’s Christian, beaten to a pulp by the giant Despair and left alone in a slimy dungeon. She didn’t know how the story ended. Christian got out, somehow. Of course he did. It was just a story. 

But Liz was in no dungeon. The sun shone warm on the back of her neck. The tears eventually ran out, and the dry heaves stopped a while afterward. She felt weak. The bar of the empty bicycle rack bore into her back. Her stomach growled. 

She checked her pockets. Two loonies, seven quarters, three dimes, and a nickel. She had forgotten her wallet at home, if her bare little room could be called that. It didn’t really matter. There wasn’t much more money in there. She didn’t know how she was supposed to pay rent in four days, much less buy food to last that long. She had finally come to the end. 

Her parents would take her back, but she didn’t want to do that. She had wanted so much when she moved out with one book published and more to follow. She didn’t want to accept defeat. Not yet. 

Liz stood up. Her legs were cramped from sitting on the ground but she made them move anyways. She would make that publisher take time for her. 

The library offered printing services, she knew. It was two blocks away. 

The blonde librarian, Colleen, looked up when she entered and smile. “Hi, Liz. How are you?” 

Liz smiled back. “I’m doing alright. I was wondering: how much do you guys charge for printing?”

“It’s twenty-five cents a page.”

The coins in her pocket would pay for sixteen pages. “And I guess double-sided would cost extra, right?”

“Well, it depends on what you’re printing. I assume it’s black and white; is it like a poster, or just typeface, like an essay?”

“Just typeface.”

“I think I could make an exception for you. Twenty-five cents a page, double-sided. Are you copying something?”

“Well, I was hoping I could print it from my phone.”

Then came several minutes of trying to connect to the printer wirelessly, then with Colleen’s charging cable, and finally, Liz had to log in to one of the community computers and send the file to it. From there it printed. Sixteen double-sided pages of her own words edited and scrutinized and filled to the brim with her soul. She thanked Colleen and left. 

She’d have to be fast. 

On her way back to Light Way Publishers, she passed a yard sale. Just her luck, too. She bought a black hoodie with the one remaining dime. It would cover up the peach shirt she had worn for her failed interview. She pulled the ponytail out of her hair and tousled it, then clamped her lips together to give them a bit of colour other than pale terror. Mr Gerhart could not recognize her, or this would not work. 

She walked around the block just as the town clock chimed five. Mr. Gerhart walked out the door, and while Mrs. McKeen was locking it behind him, Liz picked up her pace into a jog. She kept her head down and plowed into Mr Gerhart. 

He grunted and stumbled back as Liz fell to the ground with the bag she had managed to knock off his shoulder. A laptop and clipboard slid halfway out on the sidewalk. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir!” She slipped the folded papers from her baggy sleeve and tucked them underneath the laptop, then slid it back into the bag. “I am so sorry, I did not see you there. I usually go running at dawn, but I felt sick this morning, and now I’m totally off my routine and it’s messing me up.” She replaced the clipboard as well, then stood and handed him the bag. “There you go.” She took off running again before he could respond.

The end of the block seemed so far away. Liz was definitely not used to running. She glanced behind her and seen that Mr. Gerhart was walking her direction. She couldn’t stop. She kept panting, kept going, till the sidewalk curved around the block. There was a nice town flowerbed there, with several rhododendron plants in full bloom. She ducked behind them and tried to quiet her breathing. 

In a minute, Mr. Gerhart passed. He walked with a maintainable pace, and Liz could hardly believe her luck— again! She could follow him home easily. 

After he went inside, Liz darted around the back. She kept close up against the house so as not to be visible from the main floor. The first two basement windows were locked, but the third was not. She eased it open carefully, flinching at every noise and doing her best to ignore the spiders who had taken up residence in the corners. 

Once the window was open, she stuck her feet in, wormed her hips through, and bruised her ribs while trying to get the rest of herself inside. She landed in a heap on the floor. It hurt to breathe, but she had to do this. 

Did she? Wasn’t this a crime? Technically she had broken in. Sure, she wasn’t going to hurt anybody, or anything, but that was irrelevant. But she had done it. Now was not the time for thinking. 

Liz stood up. This room housed a heater, water pump, and there, in the corner: the breaker panel. She opened the thin metal door and read all the little handwritten inscriptions. There was one labeled “L. R. Outlets”. She flicked it. Anything that said “Office” she also flicked. To be safe, she turned off the bedroom outlets too. 

It would take while for them to notice, but when they tried to turn on the television after supper, it wouldn’t work. The wifi router had no power now either, so no internet, unless they had lots of data. He would have nothing to do but sift through his work bag. He’d find her papers, wonder how they got there, and read the first paragraph, then sit down on the sofa to keep reading. When he got to the end, he would want to know what was going to happen to Zinnia and Marcus.

How would she reveal herself? Walk upstairs and introduce herself as a trespasser? Knock on his door and admit to stuffing the papers in his bag? Claim that she had brought the papers to the interview and left them on his desk, he must have mistaken them for something else and tucked them into his bag? Really, the possibilities were many, but none of them were very good. 

She was tired. How was she supposed to get back out that window? The longer she looked, the higher it got, the more her bones ached. The corner filled with boxes began to look very inviting, and before she knew what she was doing, she was squeezing herself behind them and lying down on the floor. If she was still around by tomorrow, she would worry about her problems then.

Yes, I know this ended on a bit of a cliff hanger...

I'm so sorry, I ran out of time = I procrastinated. I'm planning on finishing the series on Wattpad though, my username is KeriMiss if you want to know how it ends!