I think maybe the best part of last night was after we'd taken the doorknob apart and tried to pry the greasy hinges away from the frame, after we'd tried to open the window screen and the tabs had broken off, when we realized that the door from the outside basement entrance was sealed shut... and we were probably not getting out of the family room alive.
It was innocent. The tongue of the door wouldn't pull back, and so we couldn't get it open. We just unscrewed it to try to turn it back by hand... but my mistake, I left Cole and Randy to do it themselves, as I was in the midst of talking to Britt and Kenzie.
Ten minutes later, with screws and their respective drivers and splinters of plastic and wood casing around them, Randy looked up and smiled at me cherubically.
That's when I knew we were in trouble.
My mother is in Idaho for the week, and my father sleeps like a bear. With earplugs in. No amount of screaming and pounding woke him. We tried calling his cell phone down the hall-- it was turned off.
So we turned to the outside entrance. It's been sealed against drafts in the wintertime, because we never use it anyway (except in dire situations like this, of course). We couldn't begin to open it.
Window screen! Less of a good idea. After both the rubber tabs were broken off, we pretty much resigned ourselves to a life of watching "Phone Booth" over and over again and eating stale popcorn from one of those enormous Christmas tins hidden in a basket at the foot of our west wall. I didn't like the way Randy was eyeing my water bottle. I would have voted him off the island first.
My brother planted himself against the screen, screaming into the dead quiet of two AM.
"Somebody help! I have to pee! I don't want to die a virgin and the only people in here are my sister and Randy!"
I think maybe the vote would have been a tie.