by Sagine Jean
I must be the only one who was an all-star on the JV girls basketball team in middle school.
I try not to get too cocky as I press toward the door, my fingers latching onto the handle, and I’m suddenly jerked back by a hand on my raincoat.
I don’t think. My body is a roll of nerves and energy that can’t possibly be contained, even by some disgruntled cop.
So I don’t hesitate; I don’t think about future consequences or anything as practical as that. I just do.
All at once my limbs explode and I kick him hard in the stomach. My arms follow suit, and I push at his shoulders until he loses his balance.
With a grunt, he stumbles back into the water on the tracks and I keep moving, thoughts of Sammy, alone and shivering somewhere, clouding my mind.
I’m coming, Sams. Don’t worry I’m coming.
I yank open the door and find a long, twisting staircase. I pull up the flashlight app on my iPhone and begin my descent. The farther down I go, the more my thoughts spiral. The cop lying in the water, the storm raging around us, Sammy lost to me forever.
He’d once told me that I was like a rock in the middle of an ocean. It was a rare moment of self-reflection that had made me hug him hard until he yelped and pushed me away from him. He didn’t have to explain what he meant—I already knew. The world for Sammy was like a shifting current. Things moved too fast for him and too slow all at once. He could never find the right momentum or ever catch a break, but I was his rock. I stayed solid for him and immobile even when things got tough.
But I’d been too busy thinking of Ezra and our breakup to notice how agitated he’d been. I’d failed as his big sister, as his rock in the middle of a torrential sea.
And that blooming thought of failure pulses through me as I reach the bottom of the staircase and see nothing there. A storage room, just an empty storage room with metal shelves filled with nothing.
Still, I ransack the room until the metal shelves dig into my skin and leave scratches. I call his name and the only voice that echoes in my ears is my own. I run up the stairs, through the darkness and out the door, running my shaking hands through my hair. My thoughts shift to the cop. Maybe he can help. Maybe if he sees how shaken, how close to breaking apart I am. Or maybe if I beg, beg until my voice goes hoarse and I run out of words.
But the cop isn’t there. I pushed him—kicked him—into the water and he hasn’t gotten up. He hasn’t chased after me. Suddenly, a different panic takes hold of me.
I just hit a cop. And possibly knocked him unconscious. What is that . . . like thirty years in prison? I’m screwed. I’m so unbelievably screwed.
And what if he’s injured, what if he’s dead— drowned in the dark water? What if he has a wife and kids? People who depend on him, love him, and need him? What if I’ve just ruined all their lives just to find Sammy?
I search through the water, which has gotten much deeper since I ran through that door. My eyes strain in the white light of my phone, searching for movement. I almost frantically jump in myself when a hand claps me hard on the shoulder.
I freeze before turning to look at the angry police officer.
WATER. STINGING MY EYES, POURING IN MY throat, holding me in place. It almost feels tranquil, not at all like the panicky frantic feeling you get when you think that you’re drowning. The darkness is like a comforter and the water is strangely warm, and I’m reminded of weekend mornings when I’d run into my parents’ bed and hide under their covers. Back before my dad’s injury, back when my family was a family.
That listless open feeling only lasts for a moment before I feel the static-y crackle of my radio going dead at my shoulder, until I feel my gun digging into my hip, my cap drifting off into the water. I swim forward and break the surface, my eyes scanning the tracks for any sign of the girl that pushed me in. For someone so small, she was much, much stronger than she looked. My stomach still aches from where she kicked me.
I know I should feel angry—I should be livid. I should be looking for her and locking her up in handcuffs so I can bring her back to the surface. After all, she did refuse an order from a police officer and she did kick me. Everything I’ve learned from the academy tells me that I should be trying to lock her up. But somehow, I don’t want to. Somehow, I’m not angry.
She’d looked so desperate and afraid. As if her entire world had crumbled apart. Still, I have to find her. Not because I want to lock her up, but because what kind of person would I be if I left her here, in this dark, wet tunnel under the ground?
I hoist myself out of the water and onto the thin platform, obviously not meant for anyone to stand on. Suddenly, I see her. I must have floated a little ways up the track because she’s behind me now, leaning so far toward the water it looks like she might fall in. She’s looking for me, I realize—or at least I think she is.
I walk toward her, careful not to make any noise, then place my hand on her shoulder. She freezes, then whips around so fast we almost both lose our balance and go tumbling into the water.
“Don’t touch me!” she yells and I move away, but I keep a hard stare fixed on her. Better for her to think I’m angry, better for her to not forget who’s in charge of this situation. Though I’m having trouble remembering it myself.
“I’m not, but you can’t run away from me again,” I say evenly. She nods, her long, dark hair falling in her eyes, her stubborn jaw fixed in place.
“My name’s Officer Will Tatum and I’m not here to hurt you, but we’ve got to get back. This place is like a powder keg about to explode. With the amount of rain falling, I’m surprised it’s not completely submerged.”
“My brother . . . ” Her voice breaks.
“We’ll send a rescue team down here as soon as we can. You can’t sacrifice yourself trying to save him.” Her gaze becomes defiant once again and I make my features just as hard. She’s got to listen. We can’t stay down here for much longer.
“You’re a cop. Isn’t that your job? To sacrifice yourself to save people?” Her questions make me uneasy. They make me want to fidget and find something to do with my hands, but I stand even straighter.
“It’s also my job to follow orders and keep as many people safe as possible. I won’t risk someone dying on some futile mission to find someone when we have no idea where they’re hiding.”
She shoves against my chest, anger clouding her features. “What kind of cop are you?” she says with disgust. I match her tone exactly.
“The kind that’s gonna choose to look the other way on both counts of you assaulting a police officer.” And the kind that’s going to save your life, I think to myself.
“I don’t care!” she yells, and her voice echoes around us. “Get me in trouble! I dare you! But I will find my brother and you will not stop me.”
“Miss—” Before I can reason with her anymore, the ground beneath us begins to shake. Just slightly. Just the smallest of tremors. You wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t paying attention. But I am. A part of being a cop means knowing your surroundings. Understanding where you are and what may happen at all times.
I feel it before I hear it. That whooshing sound is almost soothing and gentle, like the sound you hear in a seashell. A poor, barely there imitation of a beach.
Suddenly, I know. The world seems to freeze, and there’s barely enough time to grab the girl next to me when the largest body of water I’ve ever seen begins making its way down the tunnel. The girl isn’t looking. She’s still livid and trying to argue with me, her eyes lighting in sudden surprise as I grab her. Then she turns and sees what I see—the ten-foot-high surge of water coming toward us.
It’s what I’ve feared since I first followed her here—that something would break at some higher level and submerge us in thousands of gallons of dirty water. That we would drown here and no one would ever know where to look for us. Her hand trembles in mine, just slightly, as though even here, at this split second, as our lives are on the line, she’s trying hard not to
show how afraid she is.
I don’t think. I just act. With the water only yards away, I run toward the door that she just went through only moments before and shove us both inside. I put up my hands to seal the rust-covered door and push with all my might. The girl joins in too, just as the surge of water comes our way and nearly knocks me off my feet. But the door holds and I release a breath.
We stand there, on the staircase leading to God knows where, behind a door blocking water, and God knows what else. We look at each other and breathe deeply, and I feel like this impossibly short moment has lasted longer than anything I’ve ever known.
“Are you okay, Miss?” I finally ask, my voice still shaky, my throat more than hoarse.
“Sydney,” she says.
“What?”
“My name is not Miss; it’s Sydney.”
Of all the right moments for her to tell me her name, this is not one of them.
I look around us, taking out my mercifully intact high-beam flashlight and scanning the area around me. A steep, rickety staircase goes down deep into an unknown and I begin walking, Sydney following close behind.
“I already checked, there’s nothing down here,” she says, annoyed, as though we have any other option.
We get to the bottom and she’s right. There’s just space here—empty shelves, a rug, and an emergency light that seems as though it’s been on since the sixties.
“Are you sure?” I say, rifling behind the metal shelves, pressing my palms to the cemented walls. Because if there’s no way out of here, then that means we’re stuck here, underground with no way to get out.
My eyes flit toward the crumpled, dusty rug on the floor and I push it out of the way, dust motes flying everywhere. There on the floor is a handle, brown with rust.
Sydney gasps and pushes past me to pull on it. She pulls open the hidden door and a staircase appears, even older and more dilapidated than the one we’d just come down, leading to a place even darker and dingier than where we are now.
“We have to go, please. We have to find my brother.”
She’s right. We do have to go. But where can we possibly find her brother in this maze of a system, with rooms within rooms within tunnels? We’ll be lucky if we make it out of here at all.
“WHAT? ARE YOU SERIOUSLY SCARED right now?” I say when Officer Tatum hesitates. I roll my eyes. I shouldn’t be talking to a cop like this, but when you’re trapped under a completely flooded subway system those kinds of social norms tend to slip.
“We have to find a way out,” he says, looking at me intently. Suddenly, what he’s saying make sense. He doesn’t want to find Sammy, he just wants to find a way out and let some rescue team handle it.
“I told you, I’m not leaving Sammy. And isn’t that, like, what you’re supposed to do? Protect and serve?” I ask.
He nods, more to himself than me, and slowly seems to resign himself. It doesn’t matter whether he comes or not, I tell myself. I’ll find Sammy regardless. I’ve been doing things for Sammy on my own for most of my life—so I prepare myself for the inevitable, but he surprises me.
“You’re right,” he says, and I notice that, here in the dimness, his eyes are a shocking hazel, fixed on me with a strange sort of bravery. “I’ll help you find your brother.”
I can’t stop the shock from showing on my face. I hadn’t expected him to say he’d help me. I expected him to choose himself and just try to find a way out, leaving me alone and in the dark to find Sammy. But it isn’t just his kindness that surprises me. It’s this other emotion that blooms inside me, one I can barely name. One that feels a lot like relief.
We get lucky—incredibly lucky—and the staircase leads to another platform and track, lit by dingy yellow emergency lights. But it’s abandoned and I can’t figure out what trains ever used it. We walk for what feels like hours, miles, and my mind is consumed by nervous thoughts of Sammy that make me feel absolutely crazy. So of course it’s me that breaks the silence.
“Do you have any food?” I ask, because just as much as my joints ache, so does my stomach.
He swivels to look at me, his eyes narrowing in annoyance. “Food? Why would I have any food on me? I was on duty—” he says, then stops mid-sentence and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a Clif Bar and I practically salivate at the sight. “This is all I have. Christ! I thought being trapped here was bad enough, but now we have no food. Sydney, we can’t stay here and look for Sammy without food. You have to see that—” he starts, but then I remember something.
“Sammy Snacks!” I blurt out and Officer Tatum looks at me like I’m crazy. To be honest, I feel kind of crazy. I start speaking while rifling through my messy, unorganized purse. “Sammy hates food, like he won’t sit and eat a regular meal. Eating scheduled meals freaks him out for whatever reason. Too much pressure to perform or something like that. So throughout the day, I pack him lots and lots of snacks, big, small, fruit, granola bars, M&M’s, juice boxes. He doesn’t eat most of it, but he’ll nibble at some throughout the day. He’s got some with him in his backpack.” He eats so little that it is definitely enough to last him a few days.
“Okay . . . Well I’m glad Sammy will have something to eat while he’s stuck here.”
I roll my eyes at him—again, another thing you probably shouldn’t do to a cop. “I pack two, one in his backpack and one in my purse, in case I’m taking him to, like, swimming or something and he can’t get to his backpack easily. Trust me, it’s necessary. The kid eats like a bird. I feed him whenever I can.” And finally I pull out the Ziplock bag I’ve been searching for. I hand it over to the officer with a satisfied grin. “Things just kind of accumulate in there.” I shrug as he takes a look and marvels at the thirty-odd granola bars and smashed-up grapes.
He wrinkles his nose. “You carry around a bag of rotting fruit and granola bars?”
“Oh come on, it’s mostly granola bars. You can barely smell the grapes.” And the cherries, the banana, and melted Hershey’s kisses.
He reaches in tentatively and grabs a granola bar, then breaks it in half. He hands me the other half and we eat in silence, our feet trudging a path along grey concrete.
But after a while, it’s him that breaks the silence. “You care a lot about your brother, don’t you? The snacks, the risking your life to find him . . . that’s good of you.”
I shrug. “If I don’t, who will?”
“Your parents? Aunts or uncles if you don’t have that.”
“And let me guess, social services if I don’t even have that.”
“I’m not trying to be some nosy cop, I just don’t get why you’re the one who’s doing all this. It just doesn’t seem easy.”
“And it’s not,” I snap, turning back to look at him. “But I’m not gonna complain about it—I’m his big sister. If there’s one person who should stay tough for him, it’s me.”
We grow silent and the heat of the underground presses through me. I feel like I might fall, like I might slip away into my thoughts and worries. Because I’m all Sammy has and he’s all I have and if I lose him because of some idiot mistake, I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again.
“Sydney,” the cop starts. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m—” Before he can finish, I hear the sound of electricity crackling and static moving through the air. I turn to find the direction it’s coming from when Officer Tatum shouts, “Look out!” I barely have time to register, barely find time to move as I look up at one of the light fixtures and find it humming and crackling, electric sparks flying out of it. I don’t even have time to scream as it tumbles toward me. Just as I expect it to hit, strong arms wrap around my torso and pull me out of the way.
Officer Tatum looks down at me, his eyes searching my face for any damage or distress, his arms still around me. I’m hardly breathing—I hear the sizzling light fixture roll on the concrete by our feet. The officer lets go and looks toward the ceiling as water begins to pour around us and more and more light fixtures begi
n to fall from the ceiling. It feels like the world is ending and I’m trapped in the one place where there’s no chance for survival.
“The storm,” I say at last, as water drips onto my face and shoulders, coating me like slick rain. “It’s just as bad as they said it would be.” When it let up this afternoon, we’d all assumed it was a joke. That the rain wouldn’t come, that the lightning wouldn’t strike, that the wind would bend to the will of us resilient New Yorkers. Officer Tatum seems to be thinking what I’m thinking, that this is more than we imagined, that finding Sammy, getting out of here, surviving this storm, won’t be easy.
“No,” he says after a moment. “It’s worse.”
I DON’T REALIZE HOW AFRAID I AM UNTIL THE last remaining lights begin to flicker. I feel like we’re on borrowed time, as though any minute they could all go out and we’d be left here. I mean, how long can we survive under here? A day—maybe two? With just granola bars and this thin, humid air. Where will we sleep? What will we do for more food? We won’t find Sammy. I’ve known that since the moment I chased her down these tracks. I knew that even as I told her that I would help find him. I lied to her. I looked her right in the eye and lied. Because what we needed was to find an exit, and lying was the only way to save her.
“A right turn!” she exclaims. “Sammy always makes right turns.”
We turn right, just as the tunnel splits. Sydney’s ability to know where her brother has headed is either uncanny or complete nonsense. Still, I can’t help but feel sad for her. I don’t have a brother or sister, so the only person I can imagine being in this much of a panic for is my mom, and it’s not like she’d ever get lost in a subway system. Still, what’s up with this kid? Why is he running off and hiding in dark, underground tunnels? When I was his age, I didn’t even let go of my mom’s hand at the grocery store. More than that, what did Sydney mean when she said that she was all he had? Why does it seem like he’s all she has, too? Why is she the only one responsible for this little boy who seems to be more trouble than most adults could even handle?
