10. Indy #3
Another crack of thunder makes the lights flicker. A hysterical laugh bubbles up inside me. A blackout is just what’s missing here.
“Blue,” Nick says loudly, as if he’s already said my name a few times. “We don’t have time.”
He starts to tug me along. I dig my heels into the floor uselessly and yank my hand away.
“I said no!”
He doesn’t get it. We have to run. We can’t stay in this flimsy building.
Nick steps closer. “It’s the safest place right now.”
“I don’t care.” My voice is thin.
“Are you serious?” he demands.
“I’m not getting in there.”
“You’d rather take your chances with the tornado?”
“I’d rather not get trapped in a box.”
I know it doesn’t make sense. It wouldn’t make sense to anybody, not even me, but I don’t have a good feeling about this. As of right now, the car seems like the better option. We can drive away. Somewhere. That makes sense.
Another impact shakes the building. Harder this time. Something that sounds suspiciously like glass crashes. The lights flicker again, for longer this time.
“I can’t.” It’s a helpless plea for him to understand.
“Yes, you can.”
He doesn’t wait. He shoves me inside and pulls the heavy door shut behind him. The noise of the storm quiets immediately like we’ve been dunked underwater.
It’s cold. My breath fogs in front of me. The shelves are way too close.
No. No, thanks.
I whirl around and slam into Nick.
“Blue,” he says.
Another thud reverberates through the walls. The metal shelves rattle.
My gaze fixes on the door, but I can’t move.
“I—” Nothing else comes out. My throat is too tight.
“Don’t,” Nick says. His voice is steady. His shoulders are tight.
“I need out.” My voice is pathetically small. My hand hovers, pressing down on an invisible handle. “I can’t do this.”
The walls are already closer than they were before.
“You can,” he says. “It’s just a few minutes.”
“I can’t.” Panic is pushing into my voice with force now.
Then my face is in his hands and he’s right in front of me, holding me steady, and I’m so startled that for a moment his face is the only thing I can see.
“You can,” he says. “You’re Blue. My Blue, and you can do anything you set your mind to. And right now, you’re going to concentrate on me, and fuck that tornado.”
My heart jumps, but I can’t quite understand what about the words he said caused it. I look into his eyes and try to block out the shelves and the walls. “I won’t fuck a tornado. I have standards.”
His lips twitch. “Of course you do.”
The roar outside gets louder again, and also closer.
Nick’s head whips around, his gaze on the door.
“Shit.”
Everything crackles and rattles and groans around us.
My heart is beating so fast and so loud that it makes my limbs shake.
“Down,” he says, already grabbing my arm and pulling me to the floor.
“What—”
“Blue!”
I drop to the floor and instinctively cover my head with my arms. The roar becomes deafening, even through the thick walls of the fridge. The floor vibrates. The walls vibrate. Containers and boxes start to fall all around us, and Nick pushes me under one of the metal shelves.
Something slams into the fridge. The walls buckle inward for a split second, and then all the lights go off.
I choke on a breath. I’m screaming inside, but nothing comes out.
The darkness is complete. Everything around us seems to crash, and all I can think about is me and Nick in this metal box being crushed from all sides until there’s no room left anywhere.
The sounds are deafening and wrong. Wood splintering. Metal tearing. Bricks raining down.
I can’t breathe.
The roar of destruction fades almost as quickly as it started. It leaves behind a ringing silence.
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until my lungs start to burn so viciously that it hurts.
I suck in air, and it’s too fast and too shallow. Because there is no air. There’s nothing to breathe. We’ve run out, and we’re going to suffocate, and it’s been a while since I’ve had that feeling, and I’d forgotten just how horrible it is.
I try to stretch my arm out, but my elbow slams into something hard. Walls are everywhere, and the little air there is is cold and thick and wrong.
I suck in another shallow breath. My hand finds the floor and the wall, and it’s too close.
Another short inhale. I try to sit up, but my head slams into something above me.
I turn my head and blink, trying to see, but there’s only darkness.
“Nick?” My voice breaks. I try again. “Nick.”
My breathing stutters.
Why isn’t he answering? Did he—where is he?
“Nick!”
A warm hand on my wrist.
Hot breath against the shell of my ear.
“I’m here.”
My fingers dig into his arm.
“I can’t—” I try to breathe again, but there’s no air. “I can’t breathe.”
“Hey.” His voice is steady. Rough. But steady. “You’re fine. We’re both fine.”
I shake my head. He doesn’t get it. I can’t breathe.
“No.”
“You are.”
I shake my head again. I’m breathing in darkness instead of oxygen. It’s everywhere, stacked on top of me in layers that press down on my chest, compressing my lungs.
“We’re stuck,” I manage to say.
“We’re okay,” he says. “I promise. The fridge held. It’s just those fucking shelves. We’re okay.”
My lungs very much disagree. We’re trapped in here.
His body presses against my side. His hand goes to the side of my neck.
“Is this panic or is this your asthma?” he asks, all calm and businesslike.
I shake my head again. Can’t even speak anymore, but something in his voice gets to me. I pat down my pockets and pull out my inhaler.
“Easy,” he says.
I try to breathe out. It comes out shaky. It’s not enough.
“Out?” he says.
I concentrate as hard as I can and exhale.
I take a hit of medicine and hold my breath, which is about ten times as difficult as it usually is.
Darkness is still stacked on top of me, but his grip on my arm doesn’t loosen, and his warm palm is still against my neck.
“You’re doing good,” he says. “Just be with me.”
And since there’s nothing else to do, I try my damnedest to be good.
I cough and suck in air. It’s easier this time around.
“There you go,” he says softly once my breathing has become less shallow and more even.
I take another pump from the inhaler. I manage to breathe out more slowly now.
I don’t know how long we just lie there, me trying to breathe and him holding on to my arm. A long time or short; it’s difficult to say when everything is just quiet and dark.
“What… what now?” My voice is a rasp, and my throat is painfully dry after all the hyperventilating I’ve done.
It takes a second for him to answer, and I can barely hold myself together while I wait, even though, faintly, I realize it’s not fair to put this on him. To ask him to fix this situation for me. But I don’t care.
Fix it. Get us out of here. Undo this whole day somehow.
“Wait a sec,” he says.
He lets go of my arm, and it takes everything in me not to succumb to another wave of panic.
He moves, and his shoulder keeps bumping into mine.
His whole side keeps brushing against me.
I concentrate on that. The darkness helps in a way.
I don’t have to see just how narrow the space is. I can pretend I’m somewhere else.
A light comes on a second later, so bright I have to squint and shield my eyes with my hand.
“Sorry.” Nick turns the phone away from my face. He sweeps the light over the space around us. “Can you hold this?” he asks and gives me the phone. “I’ll see if I can get to the door.”
I maneuver myself out from beneath the shelf and into a sitting position. My hand shakes a bit while I hold the phone, aiming the beam of the flashlight toward the door.
Nick slowly and carefully clears a path through the debris, and I do my best to concentrate on holding the phone. Look at me with my important, big boy job. No time to panic, I have to hold the light.
He nudges boxes out of his way and grabs the handle. He pushes the door, but it doesn’t open. He pushes again. Shoves it. Kicks it. Rams his shoulder into it.
Finally, he lets out a frustrated growl and drags his hands through his hair before he turns around.
“It’s jammed. Something must be blocking it from the outside.” His voice is light, but he doesn’t look at me when he says that.
I look up at the ceiling, which seems ominously dented. I swallow and avert my gaze. If I don’t see it, it’s not there. The walls start closing in again, so I turn off the flashlight.
“Don’t—” Nick starts, then stops.
Everything goes very quiet again.
That’s fine.
I’m outside. The darkness is just because it’s night.
I’m okay.
“Saving the battery?” Nick asks, and somehow he doesn’t sound dry or sarcastic. Instead, he makes it sound like I’m doing it for a good reason.
I squeeze my eyes shut and nod even though he can’t see me.
“That’s good thinking,” he says. “We don’t need it right now.”
My hands shake so hard that it takes every ounce of concentration I can muster not to drop the phone.
I hear him move and shuffle around, followed by a clang and a sharp inhale.
“Who the fuck put that shelf here?” he asks.
I turn the flashlight on again. He squints and still doesn’t say anything sarcastic.
“Hey,” he says. “Try calling 911.”
I latch on to the task like my life depends on it. Technically, it does. But it’s also nice to have something to do. It leaves me less time to think.
“No signal?” Nick asks like he already expected that.
I swallow past the dryness in my throat. “No.”
“Figures. Can’t even get reception when it matters.”
He considers our surroundings for a bit.
“Come here,” he says. “Help me clear this up a bit.” One shelf has toppled over and some of the containers have been thrown off the shelves.
We spend the next several minutes clearing what we can.
We work in short bursts. His shoulder keeps bumping into mine.
It’s a narrow space, barely wide enough for one person.
Even so, every time our bodies come into contact, it feels like he’s doing it on purpose.
“Hold this.” Nick presses a bottle of water into my hand. He keeps moving around, keeping me busy, giving me pointless tasks to keep me occupied.