One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page A

with shock and contraband excitement. But she merely guided his hand all the way back to the edge of the carpet. His fingers came away wet. Water was seeping in from somewhere.
    “Oh God!” he said. “We’re going to drown.” He scrambled to his feet to warn the others, but her hand closed around his ankle.
    “Hush,” she said. “The water isn’t coming in that fast. I wasn’t even going to tell you, but it was too frightening, knowing it all by myself.”
    In angry panic, he kicked at her hand. Stupid girl. She was going to get them all killed.
    “Stop that!” she admonished him. “Let them rest. It’s not like we can do anything about it.”
    The truth in her words pulled him down like gravity. When his heartbeat slowed, he could hear the sounds of sleep around him, breath moving in and out like waves in a cove. He felt a curious satisfaction, as though he were watching over fellow knights exhausted by a quest. As though he were responsible for their brief, trustful peace.

5
    T hey awoke to dampness, the carpet smelling like a dog caught in rain. Everyone could see that the water was rising. And although it was happening very slowly, there was something about the slurping sound the carpet made as they stepped on it that caused panic to swirl in their stomachs. The phones were still dead. No one had tried to rescue them yet, which probably meant that the earthquake had done a huge amount of damage and the authorities were overwhelmed. The time had come to open the door. Cameron felt as though his lungs were filling with ice. He was not a praying man, but he closed his eyes and took a shallow breath (that’s all he could manage) and tried to feel his center, as the holy man had taught him. Then he told them.
    When he heard the African American’s announcement, which was an admission that he had been right all this time, Tariq’s heart leaped in vindication. But he conducted himself with admirable restraint, giving only a small, righteous sniff before he pushed past the others and laid a proprietary hand on the doorknob. He had scoured the entire area and found no other avenue of escape, but now they would get out, he was sure of it. He beckoned to Mr. Pritchett and Mangalam to hurry up and join him. They took turnspulling at the door, then tried it together. But the door was stuck fast. Tariq kicked at it—which, Mr. Pritchett pointed out, did not improve matters. The two men glowered at each other.
    Cameron walked to the back with Mangalam to see if he could unearth any tools. He knew he should hurry, but a strange lethargy had taken him over. The squelch of his shoes on the wet carpet reminded him of a summer he’d spent with cousins out on a farm in East Texas, where his aunt had sent him to get him away from bad influences. That part hadn’t worked. He’d found trouble there, too. He was a trouble magnet, as his aunt liked to say. Today, though, he didn’t recall the problems. What he remembered was the rain coming down in silver sheets on the barn roof, the oaks draped in gray-green moss, the red mud in which you could sink up to your ankles if you weren’t careful, the expanse of endless washed sky from the porch that made a strange hurt in your chest. He would stand on the porch for hours at a time. His cousins laughed at him, called him that daft city boy. He didn’t care. It was the first time in his life that he was aware of nature as a seductive force.
    But he couldn’t afford the luxury of reminiscing. He wrenched his mind back to the task at hand, rummaging around on the shelves while Mangalam held the flashlight. Mangalam reeked of mouthwash. It was as though the man hadn’t just swirled it around in his mouth but had splashed some on, like cologne. Oh well. People responded to stress in strange ways. More significant was the fact that they hadn’t found a single strong tool, only another butter knife and a cake server.
    What he wouldn’t give for a crowbar, Cameron thought as he