CHAPTER 2
Los Angeles, CA Friday, May 14, 2021
THE HONDA MINIVAN WAS PARKED ON A HYDRAULIC LIFT ON THE SIDE of the Los Angeles high school swimming pool. Avery chose the make and model because of their connection to the middle class. The minivan was among the most commonly driven vehicles in the United States. Sinking a sixty-thousand-dollar BMW in a high school swimming pool might be exciting to watch, but demonstrating to stay-at-home mothers how to escape their sunken vehicle was much better accomplished using an average, run-of-the-mill automobile.
Avery checked the seat belt buckle for the third time in less than a minute. Christine Swanson, her executive producer, leaned through the open driver’s side window.
“Good?” she asked.
Avery nodded.
“Show me the abort sign again,” Christine said.
Avery took the four fingers on her right hand and waved them back and forth in front of her throat.
“If you ever get panicked, or just can’t remember what to do, give the abort signal and the divers will have you out in ten seconds. Got it?”
Avery nodded.
“Words, Avery! I need to hear your voice.”
“Yes, Christine! I’ve got it, for Christ’s sake. Let’s go.”
“We’re about to sink you, and the car you’re sitting in, to the bottom of a swimming pool,” Christine said in a calm voice, trying to control the panicked moment. “I want to make sure your head is in the right place.”
“Of course my head is not in the right place, Chris. If it were, I wouldn’t be doing this. And if we don’t do it soon, I’ll lose my nerve. So let’s get this show on the road.”
Christine nodded. “Okay. You’ve got this.”
Christine backed away from the minivan, stuck her fingers between her lips, and whistled. It was an ear-splitting screech that echoed off the walls of the cavernous aquatics center.
“Let’s roll!”
A loud buzzing filled the indoor plaza as the crane’s hydraulics activated and jolted the platform, and the minivan parked on it, upward. Avery grabbed the steering wheel and white-knuckled it as if she were driving through a torrential downpour. She rolled up the window and the noise outside the vehicle—the producers yelling instructions, the engineers guiding the crane operator, the ring of the hydraulics, and the murmurs from three hundred spectators that filled the retractable bleachers and made up the studio audience—went silent. All she heard now was her own exaggerated breathing. Even the smell of chlorine disappeared.
Her ascent finally ended, and then the car jolted again as the back of the platform started to rise, pitching the nose of the minivan downward toward the water. A slew of engineers who consulted on the stunt had decided that thirty-eight degrees was the most accurate pitch angle to best represent a vehicle careening off the road and plunging into a body of water. To Avery it felt like she was hanging vertically off a cliff. The seat belt was tight across her chest as gravity pulled her forward. She straightened her legs on the floorboard to keep her position in the driver’s seat.
The whole of the eight-lane, NFHS-approved, competition-size swimming pool came into view through the windshield as the minivan tipped forward. The surface of the water reflected the stage lights that were erected around the indoor pool. Red lane markers swayed in wavy images made brighter by the underwater lighting. She saw the rescue divers hovering near the bottom, the bubbles from their SCUBA tanks rippling the surface as they waited for Avery’s arrival fourteen feet under the water. She had imagined during the planning phase that their presence would ease her nerves. That knowing help was just a few feet away would provide a sense of comfort as the minivan sunk to the bottom. That knowing all she needed to do was give the abort signal and the divers would immediately extract her from the vehicle would settle her nerves and give her confidence. But now, as she hovered above the pool with the weight of her body heavy against the seat belt, she felt no such comfort or confidence. Things could go wrong. What if she wasn’t able to successfully pull off the techniques the survival experts had taught her? What if her mind froze and she simply couldn’t remember what to do? What if the seat belt locked up because of the force of the impact? What if the window did not break like it was supposed to? What if the divers didn’t see her signal? What if—
The sensation of falling abruptly interrupted her thoughts. The harness holding the minivan in place had been released. She was in free fall. It felt like a hell of a lot longer than the three seconds it was supposed to take to roll off the edge of the platform and drop fifteen feet before impacting the water. During those frozen seconds Avery noticed the television camera across the pool, one of eight that were positioned around the aquatics center. Another four GoPro cameras were mounted inside the vehicle, their red indicator lights suddenly bright and voyeuristic. Just before impact, Avery caught a glimpse of the movie-theater-sized screen that would display her progress to the captive studio audience who lined the poolside bleachers. And then, there was a crash.
The impact was jarring. The seat belt dug into her breastbone as her head snapped forward. The minivan speared through the water and then, as if a rubber band were attached to its back bumper, began a backward trek as the natural buoyancy of the air trapped inside the vehicle pulled it back to the surface. The van rocked and bobbed as Mother Nature found the center of gravity and then began to slowly pull it under the water, engine first. Water poured in through unseen breaches and began filling the interior. Avery worked hard to control the panic that was growing with each second. Panic, though, was good. It meant she was aware of what was happening and had not suffered “behavioral inaction,” a symptom described by the survival experts who had consulted on the episode. Also called “dislocation of expectation,” it was the mind’s response to a traumatic situation. The brain attempts to correlate the current situation with a known experience from the past. As the frontal lobe loops in repetitive circles, trying but failing to find a similar situation to work from, the body freezes and waits for directions from the brain. It’s the science behind the proverbial “deer-in-the-headlights” phenomenon.
Fortunately for Avery, she was suffering no such dislocation from her surroundings. The synapses of her brain fired back to a previous experience when she found herself fighting the relentless water that tried to drown her. She remembered the day her sailboat sank off the coast of Manhattan and she came within an inch of losing her life. It was impossible to remember that day and not think of her brother. And now, those thoughts of Christopher brought her back to her current situation. The minivan was sinking and water was quickly filling the interior of the vehicle. She considered waving her hand in front of her throat and putting an end to this madness. But then she remembered Kelly Rosenstein, the mother who didn’t have the option of calling it quits when her car, filled with her four children, sank to the bottom of Devil’s Gate Reservoir. It was a miracle that Kelly had stayed composed enough to save herself, let alone her children. It was even more amazing that she credited her survival to watching an episode of American Events. If what Avery had learned from the survival experts over the past week could be used now to show anyone else how to save their own life, it was at least worth her best effort.
As the van filled with water, Avery unsnapped her seat belt. She turned sideways in the driver’s seat, lifting her legs out of the collection of water that filled the driver’s side leg well so that her feet were facing the door. She braced herself on the middle console and aimed her heel at the corner of the driver’s side window. The bottom right bend of the window was key, the survival experts had told her. The junction where the tempered glass met the frame represented the weakest part of the window. Struck properly, the window could be dislodged from the door frame in one piece. Striking the center of the window, on the other hand, would put a hole in the tempered glass and slice her foot to pieces. Opening the door would be impossible, as already the water had crawled halfway up the window and the external pressure would be too great.
Avery bent her leg, bringing her knee toward her face, grabbed the steering wheel with her right hand and the driver’s side headrest with her left, and kicked the corner of the window. She closed her eyes on impact and waited for water to pour through the opening. When nothing happened she opened her eyes. The kick had done nothing. The van sunk lower in the pool, with the waterline now bouncing above the driver’s side window. She closed her eyes and kicked again. This time a spiderweb fracture twisted from the corner of the window. Sensing the lenses all around her—from the GoPro cameras mounted inside the van to the underwater cameras positioned in the pool and focused on her—she pulled her leg back one more time and kicked with all her strength. Immediately she felt the rush of water. It was colder than she imagined and the force of it was so great that it was over her head in an instant.
More panic followed when she realized she’d forgotten the survival expert’s instructions to take a deep breath first, before kicking the window, as the intrusive water would come fast and furious, preventing her from taking a good lungful of air before it was over her head. They were correct. Not only had she forgotten to fill her lungs with air before the water had found her, but the three kicks it took to blow out the window had exhausted her. She desperately needed a breath. A frantic moment followed before she looked around. It was peacefully quiet under the water, and her vision was less blurred than she imagined. She forced herself to calm down. When faced with a life-or-death situation, being calm was the number one rule of survival.
As the van completed its fourteen-foot descent to the bottom of the pool, Avery shut her eyes and allowed her ears to adjust to the pressure. When the van kissed the bottom, a much softer impact than a few seconds earlier when it crashed through the surface, she opened her eyes and saw the cameraman pointing his lens through the missing window. She saw the rescue divers watching closely for Avery to give the abort signal. Instead, she stuck her feet through the window frame, wrapped the fingers of her right hand around the grab handle, and launched herself through the opening in a smooth glide that took her into open water. Then she brought herself upright, gave the cameraman the thumbs-up, and kicked to the surface.
The underwater footage was spectacular. Christine produced the hell out of the episode, and the network leaked teasers across social media leading up to the run date, which would be during May sweeps week. When “The Minivan” aired, as the episode was titled, Avery Mason and American Events earned the highest ratings in the show’s history.