Joel propped himself on one elbow to give her a thumbs-up. He stopped.

Clark saw it too.

The floorboards. Did her eyes deceive her or did those bright new boards wobble when Joel leaned his elbow on them?

“Crowbar!” she shouted through the window, her voice cracking, her bruised throat tightening and tightening. A moment later Jamal slid the tool through the bars of the window and pulled back from the flames with a curse. Clark fished it away from the burning wall with her foot, ignored the heat of the metal in her palm and dug the crowbar’s wedged end through a gap between two boards.

They were loose.

The first board was the hardest. It bumped and squealed against the crowbar but refused to budge. Finally Clark stood tall, closed her eyes against the smoke—don’t breathe it in yet, Star—and pushed down against the bar with all her strength.

The board snapped loose. Clark kicked it free and hooked the curved end of the bar on to the next. Joel dragged himself through a thin skein of dried vomit to get out of the way. He tugged at the loosened board with what little strength remained in his good hand.

When they got the third board up he said faintly, “There must have been so much blood.”

Clark bent down to examine the space they’d created. No wonder the floor had come up so easily: the crossbeams that undergirded the trailer were blackened with rot. Whoever had laid these cheap new synthetic boards—and the fact they were cheap and fire-retardant, Clark thought, was no doubt the only reason she and Joel weren’t dead already—had nailed them into gummy wood that should have been ripped out years ago.

Clark drove the sharp end of the crowbar down into the beam that crossed the hole they’d made. Again.

The beam broke at the same moment the roof finally collapsed into the kitchen. Clark shielded her eyes from the scalding dust that billowed up with it. She kicked out the crossbeam. She shouted for Jamal to be ready. She prayed he heard her.

“It’s just a few feet to the wall,” Clark said, gripping Joel by the armpits and lowering him into the hole. “Just drag with your legs—”

She couldn’t say more. Her throat had finally closed. She watched Joel disappear down into the hole and she turned her head to give the roof above her a dubious look. It would fall at any moment.

Clark looked back down. Joel was already gone.

No time like the present.

She braced her arms on either side of the hole and lowered herself into the dirt. She slipped at the last moment and landed hard on her ass. She stretched herself backward and crabwalked toward the front wall on her elbows and heard the roof collapse onto the hole she’d made. A dizzying wave of heat struck her face.

A pair of strong hands grabbed her ankles. A moment later Clark was sliding forward, forward until she saw the stars.