The attitude, “You can win if you want to badly enough,” means that the will to win is constant. No amount of punishment, no amount of effort, no condition is too tough to take in order to win.
—BRUCE LEE
Jenny and I were sitting on the edge of the rectangle we had opened up. The lights from the other rooms did not reach very far into the area we had just uncovered under the hall floor. I leaned down and squinted into the shadows. The space between the main floor and the bottom of the RV was about two feet tall. It seemed mostly empty, holding just a few scattered boxes as well as some wiring and pipes.
“I’m going to see if we can get out through there,” I told Jenny.
“Be careful! What if you open up a luggage door and Rex is on the other side?”
I got up and took a wooden spoon from the junk drawer. “Then I’ll poke him in the eye with this.” I tucked it into the back of my pants, stuck my legs over the side of the hole, and wriggled underneath the floor, which was now my ceiling. There wasn’t even enough room to get to my hands and knees. Ignoring the grating of my broken wrist and the ceiling scraping along my back, I started to army crawl on my forearms toward the side of the RV.
The air was stale and fusty. I suppressed a sneeze, wondering how it was possible for dust to accumulate in an enclosed space. A second later, all the familiar horrible feelings of claustrophobia began to cascade over me. My palms started to sweat. A zapping sensation ran down my spine. My chest was getting tighter and tighter.
Before I’d been locked in this RV, my claustrophobia had been caused by an irrational fear. Now I truly was trapped in a small space, possibly forever.
All the other times, something inside me had frozen as soon as I felt the panic begin. I had felt so desperate, mentally begging it to go away. But now instead of being paralyzed by fear, I was somehow able to realize that the sensations flooding my body were just that—sensations.
Instead of focusing on taking deep breaths or telling myself it was okay, I decided to stop trying to change the subject. To stop running away from my fears. Come on, I mentally taunted the fear. Is that all you’ve got? Because I know now that there are way worse things. A picture came into my head of my claustrophobia as a little yapping dog, ineffectually trying to sound the alarm. I don’t have all day, I told it. I mean, you’re trying and everything, but can’t you make my heart pound even faster? Can’t you make my chest feel even tighter?
And instead of it gripping me harder, the fear begin to ease off. I imagined the little dog falling silent, confused. My claustrophobia might be done with me, but I wasn’t done with it. Don’t stop now, I told it. Don’t waste my time like that. But instead I felt it retreat even further.
I realized that claustrophobia was like one of those woven Chinese finger traps. In order to get out, you had to push in.
Inch after inch, I pulled myself forward. Eventually, I located the side of the RV by painfully banging it with the top of my head. Had the sound alerted Rex? I held my breath but didn’t hear anything. Running my good hand along the panel, I eventually found a metal bar that moved when I pressed on it. I heard a snick and then felt the compartment door unlatch and begin to swing out as fresh air flowed in.
Thank God. We would be able to get out.
I exhaled in relief. I was sandwiched between levels, barely able to move, but the panic that should have gripped me had turned tail and run, no match for reality.
The space was too tight to turn around in, so I had to crawl backward to return to where Jenny was waiting for me, sitting on the edge of the hole.
“There’s a door to the outside, and it opens. Let’s get ready and go.”
I kept the wooden spoon. If Rex attacked us, I could poke his eye or maybe stick it between his jaws. I shrugged on my backpack that held my wallet and sash. Jenny had the boom box with Sir’s voice. She also tucked the spork into her back pocket.
And then we both ducked beneath the floor. When we reached the compartment door, I put my lips against Jenny’s ear. This close, I could smell the sharp scent of her sweat.
“Once we get out, we’ll make for that fence you saw. We’ll be as quiet as we can. If we hurry, Rex might not hear us until we’re on the other side.” I tried to remember if dogs were nocturnal. I hoped not. “If he does, then play the tape recorder and keep running. And if he attacks, we have to do everything to stay on our feet. Poke him with the spork. Even if it’s not that sharp, he’s not going to like it. Punch him in the nose. If there’s a tree you can climb, climb it. If we can get up over four or five feet, we’ll be out of his range.”
“But then we’ll be stuck there.” Jenny’s whisper trembled. “And Sir will hear and come out.”
“He smelled like he was pretty drunk. If he’s anything like my mom’s boyfriend, that means he’ll be hard to wake up.” I hoped Sir was totally wasted. “Things are not going to get any better tomorrow, so we have to get out of here tonight. And at least right now he’s probably asleep. Are you ready?”
“I guess.” She took a deep breath. “But, Savannah, if I don’t make it, you have to tell my family that I love them.”
My anger at Sir morphed into sadness for myself. “The same goes for me. If I don’t make it and you do, tell my mom that I love her.”