Authors: Carrie Grant
He knows them?
Beside me Hannah nods, sniffling for a moment. “I got a pass through the Colorado Librarians Network to get into the convention – a bunch of the candidates for President were giving away copies of their books, you see, so I picked up a few for my library. There were candidates from all over the Midwest.” Her eyes drift guiltily at either side of the tunnel. “Many of them were taking this same tunnel home, you see.”
I nod solemnly, my eyes drifting past her to stare at the workmen, all of whom are conversing now with Chris. The ponytailed man,
Henry, pulls out an extra chair from the back of the truck, and Chris sits down in their circle.
“I didn’
t get the Governor’s book, you know,” Hannah continues, though I can barely focus on her words. “Governor Rosings is kind of extreme for his political party, and I’d hoped to get a more mainstream selection for my library. I wish I had gotten his book, though. It would have helped to pass the time down here.”
The plumbers deal Chris into their game, as casual as if they’d known him for much more
than a day. Noting the pause in Hannah’s monologue, I nod at her, and she seems encouraged enough to keep talking.
“It was interesting being around so many important people, at least. Of course I didn’t talk to any of them. I did network with some of the other librarians, though. It was more social than I’m used to being.” Her voice hitches, and I turn my attention back to her, worried that the hysterics might return. “In high school I was very quiet, you see – I was in essay contests, of course, but I hated presenting. I just wanted a quiet job and a quiet life...just wanted to do what I needed to do, to take care of my responsibilities. All of that seems so far away, now.”
“Yeah...I know.”
She sniffles audibly. “You’re still in high school, right? Aren’t you terrified you’ll never get back?”
“It’s...it’s going to be okay. We’ll be out of here in a week, right?”
“But Emily...we can’t live that long without water,” her voice is a near whisper.
“We’ll f-find a way.” I try to say the words firmly, but my voice catches.
Hannah’s eyes fill again with tears, and I feel my own prick at the corners. My hands
shift nervously to adjust my braid, and Hannah seems to do the same thing, reflexively smoothing her hair back into her tight bun. The similar movements break our tension, and we laugh as we see each other. I suppose there are a couple of similarities between the two of us... high school nerds, very introverted, responsible, hating to stand in front of other people. Wanting nothing more than a quiet, orderly life.
But we’d both tried something new – Hannah, by attending a political convention.
Me, by trying to win my team the Math League title. I guess it hadn’t ended up that well for either of us.
“No more adventures after this,” I say, and she laughs
.
“Never again.”
I take a deep breath to say something else, but a shadow falls over us, blocking out the light.
“Hey Emily,” Chris says, his lips in a small smile. His eyes are tight, though, and
my paranoia about him returns.
“I was wondering if we could talk for a second?”
I hesitate, turning my eyes away from him. Of all the adventures I should be avoiding in this tunnel, Chris seems like priority
numero uno
. If his subtle words from last night and his actions with the plumbers today weren’t enough to signal me to stay away from him, then his flirtatious comments yesterday about my looks should make me firmly rooted to the spot.
I don’t answer, determinedly digging in my roots. He notes my resistance, though, and widens his grin, including Hannah now in his gaze. “Come on, Emily, just for a second.”
Hannah plays into his hands. “Go ahead, Emily – I...I need to go back to my car anyway.”
Roots are flimsy things, it turns out. Hannah smiles briefly at me before leaving me alone with him. Standing nervously, I follow as Chris leads us down to the eastern side of the tunnel.
Away from everyone else.
Our feet crunch quietly on pieces of rocks, and he doesn’t say anything else until we reach the furthest corner, where his car lays buried.
“So the plumbers told me we have a week to wait.” His voice is soft as he looks at me. I nod silently, following his eyes back to the group still gathered in the middle of the tunnel.
“You seem to be on pretty friendly terms with them,” I say.
“Yes...they’re letting me into their circle pretty quickly. The advantages of knowing how to play poker, I guess.”
His blue eyes are studying me again. He’s always studying everything.
“Still.” I bite my lip, wondering how far I should go. “It’s almost like you knew them beforehand. Just from how you’re interacting.”
“I didn’t.”
“It just seems—“
“I didn’t, Emily.” His tone is harsh, the words quiet. He stares at me again before looking away.
“You get any sleep last night?” he asks after a while.
“Enough,” I say.
“Have you eaten since the cave-in?”
I shrug. “Enough.”
“You worry a lot about your sisters.”
“Of course I do.”
“But it’s only going to get worse, Emily, especially now that we know we have at least a week to wait down here.” He turns to me, his voice low. “Everyone will be hoarding whatever food or water they can get their hands on. I’m worried...well, thirst and hunger will make people act a little crazy. Maybe violent, if we’re down here long enough.”
I swallow hard.
“What I'm trying to say is...well, I’m on your team, here. You pulled me from that car, after all. So here.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a bottle of water, unscrewing the top for me. I lick my dry lips, staring at the bottle for a moment before taking a careful swig.
“Thank you for that,” I say,
handing the bottle back to him.
“Keep it. You'll need
it, and your sisters will too.”
“I...I can't take it back to my car. It, umm, probably won’t last long there.”
He nods, understanding. “Then leave it here. Bring your sisters down when they need it, and I'll see if I can turn up some food, too.”
“How are you getting this? Your car is buried.”
His jaw clenches slightly, his eyes intent as he stares at a point back down the tunnel. “Don’t worry about that.”
The plumbers.
Of course. They came prepared, and they’re sharing their food with him.
But why would they share with Chris? Could he be telling me the truth? Could he really not have known the plumbers before the cave-in? I’ve already heard one lie from that group –
that the plumbers were all riding together before the collapse. Chris could simply be adding in his part of the lie, that he didn’t know them before either.
But then why would Chris share with me? Is he trying to butter me up? Trying to gain my trust?
Why would that be worth anything to him?
“I need to get back,” I say quickly, starting to edge away. He grabs my hand, though, stopping me.
“Emily...” his voice is soft as he interlaces his fingers with mine. “Please stop being so suspicious of me.”
I try to pull my hand back, but he holds on. “I’m not sure what you know, or what you saw, or what you think.
Or even if you think anything. I just—“
His voice cuts off as he gazes past me, further down the tunnel. I start to turn, but he catches my eye again.
“We’ll talk later,” he says, letting go of me at last.
I turn and hurry back to my sisters, walking quickly down the tunnel. I try not to think about it when I pass Phil and the workmen. They seem to be studying me now, too.
“Emily, come play kick ball with us!”
I look dully over at Suzanne. Since speaking with Chris earlier I’ve joined in on at least a dozen rounds of patty-cake and at least twice as many rounds of hot potato. Kick ball with a rock just does not seem like my cup of tea.
“I think I’m actually going to go back to the car for a while,” I tell her gently.
“But there’s nothing to do in the car!”
I sigh. That’s true. I can’t even play or read anything on my iPhone, since the battery is almost dead from going two days without a charger. But forty-eight rounds of rock kickball seem like a much worse alternative than boredom right now.
“You girls keep playing,” I say, hurrying off toward our car.
My mom is dozing in the front seat, empty poptart wrapper crumpled on the dashboard. I open the passenger door quietly and join her, shutting my eyes for a few minutes before giving up in frustration. There’s nothing to do for me to avoid boredom, and far too much to think about for me to manage any sleep. This is going to be a long week, I fear.
It’s easy to count up the major concerns fogging up my mind. Point A: the plumbers, their lie about where they all were when the tunnel collapsed, and what it might mean. Point B: Chris, his relationship with the plumbers, his odd flirting-trusting relationship with me, and what it might mean. Point C: food and water, or the
lack thereof, and how long we can go without. Point D: extreme boredom on only our second day down here, and my utter fear of any more games of patty cake, kickball, etc. Point E: the distinct possibility that the tunnel may still collapse and that, if it does, all these points would be utterly pointless.
I quietly pull out my sheet of paper from between the seats, turning over my rough sketch of the tunnel to scribble on the back. There has to be some equation that would make A, B, C, D, and E all go away. I begin tossing in logarithms and playing with exponents, even using some of the calculus Tim taught me to manipulate the variables. Sadly, no matter how much I play around with the math, it’s clear that there is only one possible solution to my problems. “RESCUE,” I write the word across the top of the page in slanting, dramatic letters, putting the paper away again with a sigh.
Well, at least that took up a good fifteen minutes. Now what to do with the rest of our week down here?
I hear a loud crack and look back toward the middle of the tunnel. The children are laughing hysterically at their newly broken ‘kickball.’ A few of them run off in search of a
decently-sized replacement, and Michelle climbs under the cargo area of the plumbing truck to continue her search. The poker game is still going strong, and I think for a moment that I should go get Michelle, tell her to keep her distance from that group. But she reappears almost immediately, crawling back out from under the truck to wave a fist-sized rock above her head.
“Not going back out there,” I mumble to myself. I lean back again and try to get comfortable. My white Fresco High blouse is wrinkled and itchy, but I resist the urge to take it off. My black tank top underneath is far from conservative, and I know I’d be more uncomfortable without the protective covering.
Still, when we get out of here, this blouse is going in the trash. It’s wrinkled beyond repair, for one thing. And for another, I’m just not going to need it again. I doubt Tim, Becca, Will or Heather would even let me back on the team, even if I felt like I could keep doing Math League. Which I can’t, after yesterday. I just...I can’t.
We had all been at our very best during the debates yesterday, sailing through the first three rounds without a single error. We’d racked up points quickly, and our opponents could barely keep up. Between rounds I sat with either Tim or
Becca as we waited for the long, anxious minutes to pass. Becca would shake her head at my nervousness, and then go back to playing games on her cellphone. But Tim understood. He felt a similar pressure to do well – as our team captain, probably even more. When we’d been sitting there alone before the finals, he’d even taken my hand, squeezing it tightly. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either. I just squeezed back.
The finals had been a different story from the rest of the competition. The questions were harder, our opponents smarter.
We
had been struggling to keep up. Question after question we debated behind our table, putting our heads together, scratching out equations on the thin white notepads Math League provided. Tim would look around our small team for consensus, meeting my eyes last before nodding and announcing our answer. And we’d managed to make it through all ten questions of the final round, getting everything right and earning the maximum points possible. But then, so had the other team.
Tied scores are broken in only
one way: by a sudden-death bonus round. Each team would select one member to go up to the podium and solve a single equation. Selections were made based on the topic for the bonus round: it could be calculus, geometry, finite mathematics, or more rarely...
“
Number theory,” the announcer had said.
My stomach sank as I turned wide eyes to my teammates, already shaking my head.
“I can’t,” I whispered in our huddle behind the table.
Will and Heather raised their eyebrows, and
Becca held up her hand to stop me. “You can, Emily,” she said. “You can do this. And you can do this better than the rest of us, better than anyone on the other team, even.”
I kept shaking my head, panic pulsing through me. “I c-can’t, I’m sorry.”
My face was pale, my brown eyes wide. Tim studied me for a long moment before his face hardened, determined.
“You have to do this, Emily,” he told me, squeezing my hand. “For us.
For all of us. It has to be you
.”
I was barely able to nod. Just seconds later the announcer called for the Fresco High competitor, and on wobbly knees I’d taken center stage. I shook hands with my opponent, a brunette with sharp eyes and her hair in a low bun. My hands had reached nervously for my own braid, smoothing it over my shoulder as I stood behind the podium. The lights on the stage had beamed down so brightly that I almost couldn’t see the audience. But I was finally able to make out my mom, her eyes sparkling with something I hadn’t seen in them for a long time – happiness, I think. She had an arm around
each of my sisters as they waited for me to steal the show.
I could see my team, too, sitting behind me at our table.
Becca had her hands folded anxiously under her chin as she leaned forward in her seat. Heather was hurriedly biting her nails, and Will was sitting so far on the edge of his seat I was sure he’d fall off.
But Tim just reclined back, completely
assured of my abilities. The stage lights had glinted off of his glasses as he’d smiled a little, giving me a confident nod.
I turned back to the wooden podium when t
he school official announced the beginning of the bonus round. I picked up my pencil, scratching out the problem as he read it. My hand was shaking, the pencil lines more squiggly than straight on the paper as I wrote:
If a > b, then 3
2
+ 4
2
+ 5
2
+ 12
2
= a
2
+ b
2
is
only satisfied by which pair of positive integers?
Pure number crunching, just what I’m good at. I could practically hear my teammates sigh in relief. This was an equation I could solve, no problem. I’d spit out the answer in five seconds. We’d get the scholarship money. We’d go on to compete in the state competition, maybe even nationals after that.
I feel a bead of sweat slide down my forehead. We need this win. My team needs it. My school needs it. My mom needs it...she’s even smiling for once.
Out of the corner of my eye, my opponent’s frantically scribbling on her paper, and I move my hand to do so as well. Only nothing comes out. It’s like my mind’s a complete blank, frozen by the bright lights above me. I look up, brown eyes wide in fright. I can’t see anyone except Tim as he leans forward, eyes wide in shock behind his thick glasses. His mouth drops open as he stares at me for a long moment. He knows I’m lost.
My eyes stinging, I turn back to my paper, forcing my hand to move. It’s simple
arithmetic. Three squared is nine, four squared is sixteen, five squared is twenty five, twelve squared is one hundred and forty-four. I force my fingers into action, getting the numbers down on paper. Add them up, Emily, add them up. I feel my brain processing the numbers slowly, and I have to add up the numbers mechanically rather than in my head. This has never happened to me before. I could always handle this type of thing in my head.
My teammates have it solved already, I know. Probably half the audience has figured it out. I’m surprised the girl beside me hasn’t buzzed in the answer yet.
194. That’s what it adds up to.
Now which two squares add up to that? Come on, Emily. Think! I try to write something,
then drop my pencil. Bend down, pick it up. It should have come in a flash. I know that. That’s how my brain works with addition, with squares, with square roots. I should’ve had the answer by now. I study the paper – okay, twelve squared is 144, thirteen squared is 169, fourteen squared is 196. 13, then. Probably. Right? Thirteen and what? What’s the pair?
“The pair is 13 and 5,” a voice announces over the
stage.
I write down the number as my oppo
nent calls it out. She’s right.
“She’s right!” the official says, and loud applaus
e breaks out over the audience.
Her team joins her on the front of the stage as the official announces them the winners.
We were so close – it should have been us. It would have been us, if any of my other teammates had handled the problem.
They were there to greet me as I walked off the steps backstage.
Becca, with a small amount of pity in her eyes, gave me a hug. But the other three didn’t spare me. Will and Heather wouldn’t even meet my eyes, while Tim had grabbed my upper arm tightly. “If it weren’t for you, we would’ve had it,” Tim said to me, shaking his head. “You choked. You lost it for all of us.”
The words had settled hard in my stomach. I felt the guilt and disappointment like a tangible weight, and I struggled to keep the tears at bay as I left my team to go into the auditorium
. One look at my mom’s face, though, and the weight grew twice as heavy. She didn’t have to say anything. Her frustrated sneer said it all.
She turned and started walking to the car immediately, tugging my sisters with her. I struggled to follow behind, her mumbled words just barely reaching my ears.
She was venting her disappointment in me, in the opportunity I just threw away. And in herself, for bothering to come all the way to Denver.
She’d dragged my sisters to the car and I’d climbed in quickly,
and then she pulled out of the parking lot and reached the highway in record speed. I guess none of us could have known how much worse the day would get yesterday.
Feeling renewed
anxiety, I lift my eyes to look past my mom’s sleeping form and out her window, toward the parts of the tunnel that didn’t make it. The tunnel itself is no more than two miles long, and thanks to my mom, we had gotten a much earlier start heading home than my teammates. Maybe none of them were in here when it collapsed.
I can only hope.
My mind is too restless to sleep. To do anything but turn over these thoughts again and again. Out of frustration I seek out Hannah Avery, who is sitting quietly in her car reading. Though her glasses are cracked and her clothes are rumpled, her hair is as tidy as ever. Her car is neat and clean as well, on the inside at least. The outside, however, is covered with a thin layer of gray dust and a smattering of dents and rocks, while the back bumper is completely bent in from where the hikers had hit her.
“Hi Emily,” she smiles up at me.
“Hi…I was wondering, do you have an extra book I could borrow? I’m kind of out of things to do…”
“Of course! I’d be happy to loan out any of the ones I have.” She bends over to the passenger seat, pulling up a heavy canvas bag.
“Take a look in there. Unfortunately, all I have with me are the political books I received at the convention. I typically prefer fiction to non-fiction, but some of these are pretty interesting.”
I scan over the titles, selecting one at random.
Party Politics and Pervasive Persuasion.
Fantastic.
“Alright, well, thank you for this.”
“Not a problem. It’s what I do, you know...the first ever Eisenhower Tunnel librarian.” She laughs awkwardly for a moment. “So, did you, umm, have a nice conversation with Chris?”
I hesitate. “Umm, yes, very nice.”
“He’s rather handsome,” she says.
“Yes, but, umm...”
“A little too handsome?”
“Exactly,” I say, relieved. I know exactly what Hannah means. Guys like that, with broad shoulders and hair dipping low over their eyes – they’re just not meant for girls like me. And like Hannah, too, I suppose. We do better with short, skinny boys with thick glasses. When they’re not mad at us, maybe.