Chapter 7 #2
When I pushed back from the hole, I spotted what he was pointing toward: something poked out from beneath a nearby rock. Seb
tugged on it, and a length of thick, braided rope emerged, tied with several fat knots.
Seb whistled. “Wild, absolutely wild.”
The rope was anchored to a nearby stalagmite and looked reasonably stable, especially when Seb tossed it into the hole, and
we could all see that the frayed bottom of the last knot skimmed the waterline. Theoretically, if someone dropped down into
the hole, even if the water was deep, they could reach the rope and climb back up.
Everyone started to talk at once. Punkin barked.
Jazmine shouted over the din. “Everyone, hold up! Let’s think about this for a minute.
We don’t know what’s in the water down there, and we aren’t kids anymore.
It could be seriously fucking dangerous, all right?
God knows I can’t go down there with my sprained arm.
And what if whatever’s down there has already been found? ”
As much as I hated to think about it, she might be right. We all sat around the hole, taking peeks inside, considering the
logistics of dropping into it. None of this was sensible. Jazmine was right: we weren’t kids anymore. But somewhere in the
depths of my being, where all my pain and grief and loneliness hid, I realized suddenly that I needed this.
Needed to feel the rush of danger. To reconnect with my past. To feel . . .
Alive.
“I’m going down,” I told everyone. As soon as the words were out, excitement and fear spread through me. I’d already said
it aloud, though. No backing down now.
“Absolutely not,” Seb said. “You could drown or get hurt. If anyone’s going, it’s me.”
“What was that motto you were always spouting back in the day, when we were kids? Oh, that’s right. ‘Don’t think,’” I quoted,
teasing.
“That motto is only for dumb shits like me, not for the big brains.”
“Just be ready to pull me back up.”
“Paige—Paige!”
I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate, either. After tightening the strap on the headlamp, I put my feet in the hole, took a deep
breath, and jumped.
My stomach lurched as I plunged into darkness.
I immediately regretted my decision. I mean, what was I thinking? I was a walking billboard for a stereotypical pasty academic—not Lara Croft.
But then my feet hit the water, and I knifed beneath the surface. The water was shockingly cold and tasted dank. Even with
the headlamp, it was too chaotic to see anything, so I shut my eyes and descended. Down, down . . .
Until I hit the bottom.
My landing stirred up detritus in the water that obscured my vision, even with the headlamp. Yellow lights floated above—the
Wags’ flashlights. They were useless down here, just bobbing yellow circles. I hadn’t considered that I wouldn’t be able to
navigate well, but now I feared what I couldn’t see.
What’s down here?
As the sediment settled, I was able to get my bearings. The cavern wasn’t big—half the size of the small one above, maybe.
And it didn’t look like there was much of anything down here. I dared to swim, using a modified breaststroke while keeping
close to the floor, and all it did was churn up more dirt and small particles that muddied everything.
However, when I turned in the water, something glinted on the rocky floor in the light of my headlamp. My eyes stung from
keeping them open underwater, but I was able to swim toward the glint. What is that? I reached between a couple stalagmites
growing from the floor, stretching out my fingers until they touched something cold and smooth.
A key!
A skeleton key.
I grabbed it and started to turn around and swim back up, but I wasn’t moving.
Stuck. The rubber bottom of my sneaker had gotten wedged between the stalagmites. I jerked my leg, trying to free it, but it only seemed to make it worse.
Couldn’t get my shoe unstuck. Couldn’t get my foot out of my shoe.
Panic rushed through me. I was running out of breath, so I shoved the key into the little pocket of my cutoffs and tried to
work my shoe out of the rocks. But the more I tugged, the worse I became stuck.
My foot wasn’t budging. When I struggled harder, my headlamp slipped off and fell out of sight, and the sudden darkness made
everything so much worse.
My lungs tightened painfully.
This can’t be real. It only happens in movies. Why did I come down here?
I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, lungs nearly bursting. My vision darkened around the edges. I was going to die inside
this cave—that much was clear to me. Best to just give in and let it happen.
Hey, at least I wouldn’t have to face my estranged father.
And the financial aid office back at Harvard.
No regrets, right?
Well, maybe a few. The only one I could think of in the moment, though, was that I desperately regretted Seb hadn’t felt me
up on purpose.
Hey, at least I could admit that now that I was dying.
When the world began slipping away, I felt the water shift.
Something was moving. Fast. Somewhere in the back of my drowning brain, I vaguely wondered if I’d discovered a long-lost cave creature, Haven’s very own Loch Ness Monster.
But a second later, I felt human hands on my leg, jerking me painfully until my shoe popped, and I was free.
An arm made of steel wrapped around my waist, pulling me upward.
Through the dark water.
Until our heads broke the surface, and I gasped and coughed, and gasped some more while light danced and concerned voices
shouted. The knotted rope was being lowered.
“You’re all right,” a rough voice was saying in my ear as we bobbed in the water. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you . . .”
I coughed up water and turned my head to see Seb’s blue eyes blinking down at me as he held me against him.
Like I was a precious thing.
The most important thing in the world.