Page 81 of Rich Little Liars

I pull. The timber doesn’t budge.

Above us, something gives way with a shriek of tearing metal. I look up and see a beam shifting, tilting, beginning its slow descent towards the floor that’s already crumbling beneath our feet. The whole structure is folding inward now, walls leaning at angles that defy physics, the skeleton of the house finally surrendering to gravity.

‘Harder!’ Harvey’s voice is ragged with panic. ‘Pull harder!’

I brace my feet against the rubble and heave with everything I have. The wood shifts – barely, centimetres at most – then catches on something I can’t see. My shoulder feels like it’s being torn from its socket. My hands are slipping on the charred surface, splinters driving deep into my palms.

‘It’s stuck,’ I say in a gasp. ‘There’s something underneath, I can’t⁠—’

The floor lurches. Not a gradual settling but a sudden, violent shift that throws me sideways. I lose my grip on the timber, land hard on debris that digs into my ribs. For a moment I can’t breathe, can’t see, can only feel the world tilting around me like a ship going down.

‘Kelly!’ Harvey’s voice, somewhere in the chaos.

I push myself up. Try to get back to him. Try to find the timber again, get my hands around it, and do what I came back to do.

But the house has other plans.

The walls above us make a sound I’ve never heard before. Not a groan or a creak but something organic – a shriek of metal and stone and timber all tearing apart simultaneously. I look up and see the hole still expanding, widening, as the entire upper structure begins to fold inward on itself.

This is it.

This is the end.

I lunge for the timber anyway. Get my hands around it one more time. Pull with everything left in my broken body, because I have to try, I have to try…

Something hits my back.

The impact drives me face-first into the rubble. I feel my head strike something hard – brick, maybe, or a chunk of foundation – and the world explodes into white light and then nothing. No pain. No sound. Just a spreading numbness that starts at the base of my skull and radiates outward.

I’m aware, distantly, of debris raining down around me. Of Harvey screaming something I can’t make out. Of the house finally, fully, giving way. That tremendous roar of destruction that drowns out everything else.

I try to move. Can’t.

Try to speak. Can’t.

The darkness is spreading from the edges inward, eating the world one piece at a time. Through it, I can just make out Harvey’s face – grey with dust, contorted with terror, still trapped beneath timber I couldn’t move.

I tried, I think as consciousness slips away. This time I tried.

I went back.

I couldn’t save him but I went back.

The last thing I see is dust. Billowing up around me like smoke. The last thing I feel is cold. Then there’s nothing but darkness, the distant sound of destruction, and the terrible uncertainty of whether anyone will be alive when the collapse finally ends.

30

NOW

The first thing I’m aware of is beeping.

Steady. Rhythmic. The heartbeat of machines that have decided I’m worth monitoring. It takes me a long moment to understand what I’m hearing, longer still to connect the sound to the antiseptic smell filling my nostrils, the scratchy sheets beneath my fingers, the dull ache that seems to radiate from everywhere at once.

Hospital.

I’m in hospital.

The realisation filters in slowly, like light through dirty glass. I try to open my eyes but they’re gummed shut, crusted with something – dust, maybe, or dried tears, or both. My throat feels like I’ve swallowed gravel. Maybe I have. When I finally manage to pry my lids apart, the fluorescent lights above me are so bright they make my head throb.