The Woman with the Blue Star, Pam Jenoff [highly recommended books txt] 📗

through.” I knelt, wondering if the pipe might have been compromised by the detonations the way the tunnels had been. But it was made of wrought iron, not rock, and remained intact. Peering into the dark, close space, I recoiled, my stomach twisting.

“What is it?” Sadie asked, noticing my reaction.

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “It’s just that I’m afraid of close spaces...terrified actually.” The words sounded foolish as I spoke them.

“I’ll help you.” Sadie reached for a rope that lay on the ground. “Put this around your waist. When I reach the other side, I will pull you through.” She made it sound so simple. The pipes were my worst nightmare, but to her they were second nature. “Trust me,” she pled. For so long Sadie had trusted me with her safety; now she was asking me to trust her with mine.

Before I could protest, she lay down and started shimmying through the tunnel, holding one end of the rope. A few minutes later, her voice came echoing down the pipe. “I’m through.” It was my turn. I stood motionless, unable to move. “Ella!” Sadie called. “Come on.” She tugged on the rope. There was no other way out; I had to try. I took a deep breath, then lay down and pushed myself into the tunnel. As the close piping enveloped my body, I could not breathe. The pipe was damp and smelled strangely metallic, like blood. I heard Ana Lucia’s voice taunting me, saying that I would fail here, too, like everything else in life. My spine stiffened. I was not going to let her win. I had to make it, for Sadie’s sake—and my own.

I inhaled, taking as deep of a breath as I could in the tight space. Then I pushed through with my feet, straining. I could not move. I was stuck and I would die right here. For a second, the walls closed in and I thought I was going to black out. I pushed again. At the same time, Sadie pulled harder on the rope and I slid forward a few inches. We repeated this pattern, my pushing, her tugging at the rope twenty, maybe thirty more times, my progress painstakingly slow. My skin burned, rubbed raw by the rough piping. My muscles ached and I wanted to give up. But Sadie coaxed me on, her voice like a beacon. “You can do this. I promise, we’re going to make it through.” In the dark space before me in the tunnel, I saw Krys, imagined him urging me on. Whatever happened, I wanted him to be proud of me and to know that I hadn’t given up.

Sadie’s voice became gradually louder and at last I could see where there was faint light. I was almost there. I gave a mighty shove and squeezed out of the tunnel and fell to the ground on my knees. Sadie stared at me as I stood up. “You’re filthy,” she said. “You look just like me now.” We both laughed.

There was no time for humor, though. “Come,” Sadie said, pulling me down the path on which we now stood. The tunnel was bigger here, and I had to hunch over only slightly to fit. Sadie moved a bit more slowly now, her breathing labored. I wanted to urge her to go more quickly. We had to reach the outside and be well away before daylight. I felt certain that Kara would have done as she promised and rescued Saul and his father by now, if they had made it out. But I did not know if she knew about the other sewer grate and whether she would anticipate and meet us there. I was worried she might leave without us.

The tunnel sloped upward. We were getting closer to the street, I thought, allowing my hopes to rise just a little. We rounded a corner and stepped into a chamber with a deep, water-filled basin, about four meters across, and a high ledge on the far side.

“You have to cross this to get to the grate by the river?” I asked with disbelief. She nodded. The wall on the far side was sheer rock and the ledge we had to reach at least two meters high. I marveled that she had managed it on her own so many times.

“But I’ve never had to do it like this.” She pointed into the basin below. “Usually it’s empty, not filled with water. The explosions must have destroyed one of the levees.” There was a loud rushing sound as water poured into the chamber we had to cross from an unseen source at great speed. In a few minutes, the whole thing would be filled.

“We’ll have to swim,” I said. “Come.” I sat on the edge of the basin and took off my shoes, preparing to get in. But Sadie did not join me and I could tell from the doubt in her eyes that something was wrong. “What is it?” I asked.

“I can’t swim,” she confessed. I recalled then how she had told me once how she and her mother had almost drowned when the sewer flooded, and also how the waters had taken her father’s life. I could see her reliving her fears and they paralyzed her. She was not just unable to swim, but terrified of the water, just as I had been of the close space in the pipe.

“Is there another route?” I asked, already knowing the answer. She shook her head. There was panic in her eyes. “Then we must get across somehow.”

But how? I looked around desperately. Then I remembered the rope she had used to pull me through the pipe. I ran back down the tunnel and grabbed it, then hurried back to Sadie. “Here, I’ll pull you.” The rope that had been my lifeline in the narrow crawl space was now hers. “I am going to swim and you just have to hold on.”

“But...” Sadie began.

“We have to get across,” I insisted.

“I can’t