No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

linoleum under her feet, slippery with moisture. She arched
her back, dug into a runner’s crouch, and closed her hands into
fists.
She took a full breath — the bitter smell of ammonia. She
let it half-out.
Go.
She ran.
Mirrors, urinals, stall doors, all racing past her. Air
whooshed in her ears. No time to overthink. No time to be
afraid. She flattened her hands into blades, pumping her legs,
and took a hurtling kamikaze leap at the tiny opening—
Mid-air, she thought: This is going to hurt—
It did. She crashed into the tile wall knees-first, bruising
her chin, punching the air from her lungs, but (yes!) she’d
caught the window frame with two desperate fingertips.
Fingernails in the soggy old wood. She braced her wet
Converse against the wall. Then she re-arched her back,
locked her elbows, and tugged her body upward, gasping
through clenched teeth, like the world’s most hellish chin-up
bar, and pulled and pulled and pulled—
She heard mouth-breathing. Outside.
No.
No, no, no, please don’t be real—
But yes, there it was. Directly outside, on the other side of
the wall. That gentle wheeze she knew all too well, that juicy
little huff. Lars, Rodent Face, had circled around the building
and now waited for her outside. Watching that window, pistol
in hand, ready to put a bullet in her brain the instant she
clambered up and exposed her face.
Now what?
She hung there on aching fingertips, her shoes dangling
three feet off the floor, desperately wishing she’d just
misheard the growl of the wind outside. But she knew she