What are we gonna do now? Like, seriously guys, what are we supposed to do?”

The blonde girl—that stupid, stupid blonde girl—wouldn’t shut up. I wanted to rip that fake fur off her hood and gag her with it.

“Why aren’t you guys saying anything?” She wouldn’t stop with the questions. “Really guys, I’m really getting worried.” She started to bite her polished pink fingernails as if to prove to the rest of us just how worried she was. “I mean, am I the only one who cares? This wasn’t supposed to happen. I never would have gotten involved if I had known this was going to happen.”

“Shut up!” I screamed at her. It didn’t matter how loud I was anymore. We were fucked. “Just shut the fuck up, Lindsay. If I had known how fucking annoying you were, I never would have invited you in on this. You’re not helping, so just shut up.” All I could hear was myself breathing, in and out.

I looked around the tiny elevator, which seemed had darkened and become cell-like. The others were clumped together, speechless. Their silence hung dead in the air, weighing it down, suffocating me.

Benny finally spoke. “Dude, Lindsay has a point. What are we going to do?” He stared at me and it felt like the noose around my neck tightened. They were all staring at me as if that were supposed to miraculously enable me to know how to save the day.

Scott was sitting with his back to the door, reaching up behind him and pressing the same button over and over. He kept mouthing the word, “Open, open, open,” trying to will the door to slide. For all we knew we were in between floors, and if that were true, then what were we supposed to do? Navigate ourselves through the elevator shaft to freedom? Freedom was an abysmal thought at that point anyways.

“Ok, well, we managed not to set the alarm off, but is it possible, Mary, when you deactivated the alarm, did you somehow fuck up this elevator?” I knew it was unlikely that Mary did anything wrong, but we had to consider the possibility. We were packed in this elevator, surrounded by bags of a rich old woman’s precious money, silver, diamonds, and other items that we found in our hunt around the house. There was nowhere to stash them; there was hardly anywhere to move.

“I guess there’s always the possibility that I did something to stall out the elevator,” Mary said hesitantly but defensively. “It’s not like I major in the wiring systems of miniature mansions. All I told you was that I knew that this lady’s house has the same system as my step-mom’s house, and since my bitch of a step-mom would never tell me the code, I figured out how to deactivate it myself. But we don’t have an elevator in my house, so I don’t know what to tell you.”

Lindsay started ranting again. “I knew it was a bad idea to get involved with you losers. I’m already rich, and even if we get caught my daddy will buy me the best lawyer in the city. And if you, bonehead—yes I’m talking to you, Scott—if you hadn’t tripped, then we could have just walked right down the stairs and out of here. It’s your fault. You’re just a…”

“LINDSAY!” I yelled, cutting her off. “If we get caught now, I’m going to jail anyways. If I have to add a murder charge on top of it because you’re fucking annoying, it won’t really make a difference to me. Jail is jail, and at least killing you would make me temporarily happy. Everyone just be quiet, don’t speak. Mary and I are talking.”

“You’d go to prison if you murdered someone asshole. Not jail.” Lindsay had to throw in the last word. And to think that before this whole extravaganza, I had actually wanted to have sex with that moron.

“The alarm in the other room hasn’t gone off, so we did one thing right.” Mary’s calm and reasonable voice brought me back to reality. “And we tried all possible means of getting the door to open or the latch above us to budge?”

“If either were going to open, they would have,” I responded. “We need something else, a new idea.”

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Lindsay shrieked. Suddenly, the elevator began to move upward. Mary and Benny stood in silence and awe, unsure of what was going on. Scott took his hand away from the shiny silver buttons on the wall. I clenched my jaw while all my muscles got tense.

“Everyone be quiet,” I said. I didn’t know why this was happening or what it meant. We stopped, but the doors didn’t open. The elevator began to descend and a shrill, raspy, woman’s voice came out of nowhere.

“You young ones were very entertaining this evening. Smile for me now, because it’s awfully funny to think that you all thought you could get away with an old lady’s things without her even knowing. Rich old women like me have many tricks. There is a camera with a microphone hidden in one of the lights above you, and don’t try to break it with your silly little tools. I just won’t tolerate anything like that right now.”

I scanned the elevator with my eyes and I saw it above us. A little black spot; it was a tiny black dot in the center light. It was this old lady’s eye in the sky looking down on us. “A woman of my age tends to get a little paranoid now and then. Apparently in my case it wasn’t really paranoia that was getting at me. It was more like bratty teenagers who think they can just break into any old house and do as they wish. Well, you should know that I already called the proper authorities, who I’m sure are giving you that lovely ride.”

We reached the bottom floor and there was no more time to think of an escape plan. Lindsay was crying, Scott was sitting with his head resting on his knees, and Benny stood there with a blank expression plastered on his pale face. I’m sure Mary was racking her brain, like me, about how the night could have ended like this. How in the world did this happen?

The shrill voice came back again, “And I’m glad you didn’t kill that annoying blonde girl, she was the most entertaining of all, although I would have ditched the crippled kid. You might have made out like bandits if it weren’t for him.” She paused, “Then again, probably not.” She let out a harsh, hard laugh. It was then that the doors finally opened to uniformed men with their shiny, silver handcuffs.