So what does one do when a mine starts to cave in on them? Well, if you’re thirteen years old, apparently you crouch in a corner, cover your head, and cry. Not necessarily in that order.

We huddled together as the mountain rumbled and collapsed. I watched helplessly as a piece of beam came down on Rossi. Fortunately, she had managed to get her helmet on again—I guess it had been a good idea to bring it after all.

When the rumbling finally quieted, I coughed the dust out of my lungs. It was hard to breathe in the thick air, but I managed to choke out, “Are you okay?”

“Okay,” Jessie croaked next to me.

“Okay,” Matthew said.

Rossi pointed the little flashlight at her face. “Okay,” she said from under her helmet.

I took the flashlight from her and shined it around us—we were surrounded by rubble. I was reminded of Louis, the kid with the pet centipede and salivation disorder. Louis’s trailer was so filled with junk, you had to walk through tunnels to get from room to room. I always felt suffocated when I was in his trailer because no matter where I stood, I was closed in by stuff. The mine was like that right now, only there were no tunnels, just walls.

claustrophobia: extreme fear of confined places

I looked above me and saw what had saved our lives—a giant boulder jutted out overhead and had prevented the mine from caving in right over us.

The air was thick with dust—almost too thick to breathe—and we all coughed and gasped.

Jessie sniffled beside me. “What are we going to do? No one even knows we’re here.” I shined the light on him and Matthew and saw they were holding each other in what could almost be considered a romantic embrace.

Matthew pushed Jessie off of him in disgust. “We’re trapped,” Matthew said. “We’re trapped and we’re going to die. We’re going to die horrible agonizing deaths. We’ll suffocate. Or we’ll starve to death.”

“No.” Jessie sneezed. “We’ll die of thirst before we starve to death.”

“Stop it,” I told them.

Rossi looked at the rubble surrounding us, breathing heavily. “I think we can crawl over it.”

The thought of trying to squeeze between the rubble and the new ceiling of the mine wasn’t appealing. But neither was sitting here, waiting to die.

“Remember that wall?” Rossi said. “The one your chisel went through?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s another corridor. Maybe we can get back there—it’s only about ten feet away. Maybe we can break through the wall.”

“And maybe we’ll die in the rubble,” said Matthew.

“Maybe,” said Rossi.

“Or maybe it’s filled with menthol,” said Jessie.

“Methane,” I said.

Jessie threw up his arms. “Oh, like that’s any better.”

“Maybe to all those things,” said Rossi. “But sitting here doing nothing is not an option.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Jessie. “You have a helmet.”

Rossi lifted the helmet off her head and took a deep breath of dirty air. “Here.” She handed it to Jessie. “You can wear it.”

Jessie’s eyes were huge as he quickly pushed the helmet over his frazzled hair, which was more gray than dark brown right now.

Matthew shook his head. “Wimp.”

“I’ll go first,” I said.

Jessie nodded, the helmet flopping forward. “Great idea.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m the smallest. If I can’t fit, then none of you can, either.”

Rossi stared at me. She was breathing hard and her forehead was covered in sweat. “I lost my backpack. Our water was in it.”

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I have a jar of water.” One jar of water for four people.

I realized immediately I wasn’t going to be able to hold my flashlight and scale the rubble—a mix of rocks and earth and rotten planks—at the same time. I stuck it in my mouth and started to climb the unstable pile.

My hands slipped and I tumbled back down, along with a bunch of rocks that banged up my legs. “Okay,” I muttered. “Again.”

I grabbed at a different place in the debris and once more attempted to climb the rubble. It was a one step forward, one step backward sort of process as I fell back down. “I don’t know if I can get up there.”

“I’ll help you,” Rossi said. She moved the lantern closer to the pile.

“Good thing I grabbed the lantern,” said Jessie, clearly proud of his bravery.

“You were already holding it when the mine caved in,” Matthew said. “There was no grabbing involved.”

I groaned. Scaling the rubble was starting to seem like fun compared to sitting with these two. Rossi held out two hands linked together, and I stepped into them. Then she hoisted me up. I grabbed onto the rocks and planks with all my might, the sharp edges tearing at my thin T-shirt and the skin beneath. When I started to slide back down again, Rossi pushed at my butt to keep me up.

Seriously, here I was in a collapsed mine, trying to scale a mountain of rubble, hoping to break through a wall to who-knows-where, likely to die at any moment, and all I could think was Rossi Scott is touching my butt.

After what felt like an eternity, I made it to where the rubble wasn’t so loose and steep and was able to pull myself on top of the pile. I lay there for a moment, trying to catch my breath. The ceiling was barely above my head. I was sandwiched. I felt the panic rising in my chest and did my best to squash it back down.

I aimed the flashlight ahead of me—I could probably squeeze forward over the pile, but I couldn’t make out the far wall. All I saw in that direction was blackness. Nothing. I turned my head to call to Rossi, “I think we can make it.”

I inched forward over the painful rubble. The sharp rocks dug into every part of me. I was glad I had worn the AT LEAST IT’S A DRY HEAT T-shirt instead of one of my good ones from Dollar General in Casa Grande. I didn’t often go to Casa Grande, and a new pack of T-shirts was a luxury in my life.

I heard a lot of grunting behind me as the rest of them tried to push one another up the rubble. All three of them were larger and stronger than I was, so it didn’t take nearly as long.

I could barely breathe as rocks pushed into my diaphragm. The air was so thick with dust, I was amazed I hadn’t suffocated already. I came to a section that was too tight to squeeze through, so I worked on moving rocks and earth away while I waited for the others. “It’s really tight right here.”

Matthew crawled up beside me and helped to clear more inches. That’s all we were squeezing through—inches of space. “My life doesn’t seem so bad right now,” Matthew said as he moved a jagged rock to the side. “I don’t want it to be over already.”

I took a deep breath of gravy-thick air and swallowed the dirt in my throat. “It won’t be.”