POLICEWOMEN WERE GUARDING EVERY exit doors, in hallways — while others were corresponding by tightening the security search after the earlier escape incident of the two boys. The latest info was radioed by the snipers, that the runaways had reentered the building...

Unknown to them all below — Reeves and Joe were silently crawling on their fours, on the beams above the stifling ceiling. Their sweat trickled down their faces, and they cautiously inched away...

The duo came to an intersection, with three varied passages — one was straight, others were serpentine shafts leading to the left and right — Reeves stopped to ponder the memorized bearings in his head. He started using a finger to draw the floor-plan on the dusty board. Joe was edgy in the cramped constricted space, and also hearing the sound of squeaking rats — he whispered out...

"Hey, dude which way?"

"Shush, let me think..."

After Reeves drew more circles on the dust, he pointed...

"We go to the right."

The perplexed Joe followed the leader again and murmured...

"Hey Reeves, what's the plan — where we're going?"

Reeves turned over to look at Joe...

"We are going over to the wall."

Joe paused and confounded a second, before joining Reeves who then turned right...

'What are they going to do outside the wall? Living as two itinerant vagrants?'

He still could not comprehend his own impulsive decision a moment back, of jumping out of the broken French window — and he was now blindly following Reeves, in his lawbreaker quest to escape from Wesleyan. He was also worried about his daily meds, for his ADHD once they were out.

They crawled up further and Reeves halted and peeked into the gap of the false-board — cautiously, he opened it. He saw the rubber-floor mats below.

"Bingo!" he smiled back to the bigger boy...

He slowly lowered his head down, and had an upside-down view of the cafeteria's kitchen where no one was working there.

"You go down first, Joe."

Joe dropped down — he slipped and fell clunky on the floor rubber rug below. Reeves shut the gap in the ceiling while he hung with one hand, before he dropped on the floor, and landed in a squatting position beside Joe.

They both flashed their pearly whites — observed each other's dirty soiled uniform, faces and arms — that were thick with grime and sweat. Joe was about to get jokey, but he silenced himself when the two boys heard some voices and laughter from nearby. At one of the table in the dining area — six shiftless cooks were conversing and laughing with two female cops, they were all speaking in Spanish, over coffee.

Joe did not get his regular waft of food aroma, like each time he stepped in the cafeteria. He whispered...

"How come nobody is cooking?"

"It is field-trip day, remember?"

Reeves responded to the susurration. Joe respite down on his butts, he then uttered frivolously with a quiz...

"It is Friday — can you guess what is for lunch?"

Reeves heaved a sigh and ignored the vacuous glib, he started to crawl away on his fours.

"It's meatball spaghetti, dude."

Joe gave the answer as he smacked his lips. He followed Reeves while looking, over at the oblivious cops at the dining area nearby.

They both inched behind the service counter, where the cooks used to stand and serve the food to students — they heard the repartee clearly, across in Spanish.

The duo kept sneaking away to the dish-washing area where the exit-door was. A Hispanic woman came out, carrying a rack tray of washed glasses — she was startled by the grime-covered boys, crouching on the floor. Petrified, she dropped the glasses down and was screaming aloud, followed by exclaiming the names of saints...

The female cops and cooks responded instantly, and they scurried over...

Reeves regressed and bolted towards the fire-exit door. The boys both got out, slammed shut the door. Reeves barricaded it so that the cops could not follow. They both next loped to the unoccupied old wing of the University path — catching their breath but still peering around for the unexpected...

They have outfoxed their vanquishing captors so far — and, they both were now headed to the wall.