Page 130 of The Commons

Swallowing my spit, I tighten my lips and close my eyes, then jump into the muddy water.

The mud is warm. So warm that its heat is sprinting through my skin, making me feel lightheaded. Then suddenly, like a gust of wind, the heat wave disappears, and an ice storm begins surging through my insides. What is happening to me?

My brain is cold. So cold that it feels like ice crystals are jabbing against my head from the outside and crushed ice is flooding through my brain in an unstoppable fusion from the inside. What on earth is happening to me?

My legs are numb, freezing up from my toes to my thighs. The liquid around me is cold as ice. I can hear a deafening gust of wind flying all around me. My eyes close, shaking my head profusely in hopes of coming back to my senses. But. I don’t.

Suddenly, crashing like icebergs through glass, I feel the crystals in my brain shattering into a million pieces and disappearing into thin air. I exhale, but some mud still enters my mouth.

Oh my God. There’s no way to go. I can’t open my eyes or instant blindness is inevitable.

Think, Shantavia! Think⁠—

Before I can comprehend what is happening, I begin to sink into an underground hole, my skin smothered in mud and dirt, my face crushed by the pressure of the water surrounding every inch of me. The mud penetrates my nose and into my eyes.

Lips tightened, nose stiff, unable to breathe, my body jerks repeatedly. I am stuck.

Is this it?

Did I just suffocate myself?

This couldn’t be it.

I can’t die now.

I push myself down, trying to break through the mud into clear water or an underground pool or an opening of some sort, but I only feel myself getting more and more stuck. Regardless, I try and try and try, but I fail and fail and fail.

I am completely covered. Constricted by the clay. Compressed in the soil.

I am buried, unable to even rise up from the suffocation. The ground above me feels like concrete, and I feel my neck dry up—my throat tightening. I gasp for air, losing consciousness... There is nothing more I can do...

It’s dark. I can’t see anything, but my life darkening before my eyes. This is it.

My struggle isn’t working.

I can’t make it anymore.

I don’t have a last breath to give.

Have I failed?

I have failed.

I have failed Levon. I have failed Pesh.

I have failed The Commoners. I have failed myself…

CHAPTER 29

The Fall

Stuck underground in the muddy pool of suffocation, I think about the ones I love. I think about the students in The Seventh Zone who may never see the ones they love. I think about Pesh. I think about Londe choking Pesh’s mom. I think about living another day to challenge my mom. I think about my sister who will die if I do not get out of this devil’s mud. And it was then I knew, I could not just give up on life now. Even if I die, I will fight till my very last breath. I will fight even in my last breath.

But my fighting is not working.

It is almost like it is making it worse.

I try to think of another strategy.