Desperate, I study the ladder once more, then slam it to one side with such force that it bounces and returns, seeming to laugh at me. I examine the one step on the ladder that had seemed a little loose, but that was just my imagination. I give it another tug, and it doesn’t shift at all.

I rock back on my heels and glare at the beast of a ladder.

It won’t help. But there has to be something, one little flaw. I just have to find it.

Once more, I start opening drawers and cupboard doors, searching the insides and . . . then . . . Oh!

Like a bolt of lightning, an idea strikes.

The drawer pulls! Why haven’t I thought of it before? If I could loosen the screws . . . but that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Still . . .

Heart pounding, I check every one.

All fitted tight.

Nothing loose, but if there was anything to wedge in the inside of the drawers . . . My fingernails are broken, and there is nothing, not one damned thing . . . or is there? Adrenaline sliding through my veins, my pulse pounding, I rifle through the trash, something my captor takes away after each visit. Nothing . . . except . . .

The meals that had been provided are prepackaged, the kind from the freezer section of a grocery store—the food frozen in tiny plastic containers.

I find one in the garbage pail, pull it out, and without rinsing it, test it. My heart is beating wildly as I attempt to force the lip of the dish into a screw head behind a kitchen drawer.

No good.

The plastic is too thick. I swear furiously. But I don’t give up.

The bottom of the dish is thinner than the sides, I think.

Biting my lip while attempting to tamp down the hope starting to soar, I try to tear the plastic.

No go.

Again.

But it proves impossible.

My grip slips.

I wash the tiny tray and my hands, drying both, then tackle it again.

“Come on,” I grit out as I begin to work the small dish between my hands, making a valiant stab at tearing the black plastic.

There’s a reason plastic doesn’t decompose for upward of a thousand years, something I think I’ve heard. Tearing it seems impossible, and I sure don’t have a millennium to do it. But if I can just get an edge started . . .

Twisting the little tray back and forth furiously, I see the black plastic turning gray and start to whiten. “Good. Good.” More pressure. More twisting. Faster and faster, until I’m actually sweating. “Come on, come on,” I mutter, moving the hard material back and forth, back and forth, trying to break through, create a seam. I just need a slim edge to insert in the screw so I can remove it.

The damned plastic holds fast.

“Shit.”

I wipe my brow.

Set my jaw.

Go at it again.

Faster and faster.

Twisting, turning.