Someone was banging on my door. I didn’t know who. I didn’t care. I was buried too deep in the well of self pity.

“Melga? Melga! At least reply,” my sister shouted from the other side.

I curled up into my bean bed. “Go away, Phimine.”

“You have to tell me what’s wrong, Melly,” she said.

Somehow hearing my childhood nickname, especially one that my mother used, reminded me that I was no longer a child. In fact, I had grown up to such an extent that a boy had admitted his love for me at 15. My heart sunk deeper into its pit, I no longer felt like a child again, someone innocent and immature.

“Just go,” I yelled as I ducked my head under the covers.

Usually I would open up to Phimine about whatever happened in school, whenever I had a bad day or the best time of my life. She was a friend, a sister and a mother all rolled into one, and she could easily blackmail me with my secrets since she held all of them. But I knew she never would.

I couldn’t tell Phimine about what had happened at school that day. I couldn’t even bring myself to face her. I felt like I had become a disgrace to my family, and was already dragging our noses in the mud even if they didn’t know. But how could they? They had never seen it happen before. I had definitely not expected it to happen. It had never occurred to me even in my wildest dreams. And why me? I wasn’t even close to being the most popular in school. Why had a boy decided to fall in love with bookish old me?

“Melga!” my father knocked on the door. I ignored him.

“Melga!” his knocking intensified, and I was afraid that he would break down the door if I didn’t respond.

“Yes dad?” I called out, trying the keep the quiver out of my voice.

“Urna is here to check on you. She says you ran way from school,” came my father’s voice.

“I didn’t,” I began, but I stopped myself. Urna had come to look for me, but I didn’t want to meet her. I just couldn’t talk to her not yet. But if I stayed in my room, dad would soon sed her in. I couldn’t bear to listen to her explanations and excuses about Roney’s actions. Maybe someday, but my wound was still raw.

“I’m coming,” I said, hoping that it would be enough to draw my father away while I tried to come up with an escape plan. There were two ways out of the building, one was the main door and one was the small hole in which the dairy man left for us the milk bottles every morning. Using the main door would lead to an inevitable encounter with Urna. I had to avoid that at all costs. The milk hole? Well, it was tiny. I remember wriggling in and out of it until a few years ago just for fun, going out to the small floor connecting our house and the neighbouring one, but I hadn’t used it since a long time. And I had definitely grown.

As I slowly pushed open the door and peeked out, I heard a clatter of dishes from the kitchen beside me. I crept past it, stealing a glance of Limia, our cook, trying to gather the ingredients for my favourite dish as Phimine stood next to her, wringing her hands.

I looked out the window to see a queue of people standing in front of the door with metal objects. My father had been having a busy day which he had given up to come and check on me. I felt a bit guilty. But that just determined that I would have to use the milk hole.

I climbed up the stairs tentatively, keeping my ears perked to any sounds that might come from above. Clangs reached my ears. Dad had continued his work, so that was one obstacle out of the way. I reached the landing for level one, beyond which were the doors of the workshop and the living room. The door was still closed, and there was a customer inside the workshop with my father. I opened the door. The workshop door was closed, but the living room door lay wide open. I could see Urna inside, sitting on a sofa and inspecting a statuette my mother had painted. As long as she didn’t glance up, I could be on my way. I tried to quickly slide beyond the door, but the top of my head hit the door frame and I stumbled over onto myself and instead of my stealthy slip, I ended up making a noisy banter as I passed the door of the living room. But I had been fast enough. Urna gazed up, but I was no longer in her field of vision.

I went past, rubbing my head and trying not to cry out in pain, to the back where there stood a table and a shelf, next to which was the milk hole. It couldn’t have been more than two by two feet, and as I looked down at my body I reckoned I could squeeze through. As I crouched down to look at the narrow pathway outside between two buildings, I saw something on the table. Something I hadn’t seen in a long time. A surface pass. It gave a dwarf official permission to visit the surface for as long as the pass had been granted. I guess I was already too distressed that day, no longer in my right mind, so I picked up the pass and slipped it into my pocket.

Squeezing out of the milk hole would have been an easy affair if the pathway outside had been more than a metre wide. But when my legs were all out and touched the opposite wall, my torso and head were still in the house. And I could hear Phimine coming up the stairs. I twisted around my legs to try to bend them in one particular direction against the wall. Finally I wriggled my feet a bit to the left as I pushed my torso in. I heard the door open just as I had fully squeezed out into the dark, narrow alley.

I couldn’t see anything expect two rectangular blocks of light far away on either side of me. The walls of the neighbouring houses connected to the ceilings and were connected on the floor of level one where I was standing. I followed the block of light until I finally emerged in a normal pathway in front of a building. I walked around, finally realising where I had emerged, and then I made my way to the east elevator. My father often used that to go to the surface.

For some reason, I believed that going out there into the open air might give me a sense of freedom. It might dispel the feeling of stifling and suffocation I had carried since morning, that it may drive away my hopelessness.

The elevator conductor raised his eyes at me when I requested to go to the surface, but he couldn’t refuse since I showed him the pass. He shrugged, trying to appear at ease but I could see him tugging constantly at his goatee. The elevator ride up to the surface of the earth took longer than anticipated, and I stood in the awkward silence twirling my back locks. Finally the elevator dinged. “We have arrived,” announced the conductor.

I stepped out from the lift, not knowing what to expect. I emerged at the base of a dark staircase leading up. Hesitant, I climbed the first few steps until I my head banged on something. I had reached the ceiling. Or rather, a trapdoor.

I groped around until I found a handle and pushed upwards with all my might. Sand fell down from the cracks as I finally heaved up the door. Sunlight poured in through the whole, baking my whole body in a golden glow. I climbed out into the desert and closed the trapdoor. Miles and miles of undulating sand dunes stretched out before me, and not a living being as far as the eye could see. The trapdoor was hard to spot, hidden by the hot, beige sand, and there was no moisture in the air. I tried looking up at the sun, but it was hard. Yet the warm, fuzzy feeling it spread through my entire body, how my lips spread into a smile at seeing the endless blue sky and how my heart decided to skip a beat, I knew I had come to the right place.