Cracks in the Pavement

For the third time in as many years, I found myself on the stage of the middle school auditorium. Braces snagged on my lip again, and I was sweating, and my glasses were falling down my nose. My hands trembled as I held the pencil. Just answer whatever Mrs. Crisafulli, the history teacher, would ask into the microphone. I'd already answered 26 questions, and I'd gotten 25 of them right. My old polo shirt was starting to constrict and choke me while I was sitting in my chair tapping my foot. The air was still on the outside, and I was only looking at the inside of my throat as I yanked at the collar. I thought I was going to die.

My tongue was shriveling in my mouth, and I could taste it. A pounding heartbeat sent blood coursing through my body, warming the sweat-streaked forehead but leaving the ghost-white fingers of my hands cold and blue. My heart was pounding. My vision was blurred. That was the first time I'd heard of it!

It was during these moments that a fact I'd learned from my parents' anatomy textbooks: a feeling of impending doom was one of the telltale signs of a pulmonary embolism. The two remaining fingers whipped to my right wrist and I tried to take my pulse almost instinctively with my ring and little fingers bent down. This was something that Mr. Mendoza had taught us in gym class the previous year. On the other hand, that third period, I wasn't in physical education. I was just waiting for Mrs. Crisafulli to turn the page in her packet to the appropriate page for the question as I sat on the metal folding chair.

Arabella had tested my knowledge of Latin American lakes in second period French. Nicaragua. Atitlán. Yojoa. When Shannon raised her fist to her lips, jabbed her index finger at us, and Raj, who sat in front of me, began to giggle, Shannon whipped her head around and raised one fist to her lips, jabbing her index finger. As with the cracks in the pavement I liked to trace with my shoe on my walk home, rivers supplied water to lakes. The San Juan River empties into the Caribbean Sea after winding its way around the port city of Granada. That was obvious to me.

There were only two things I could be certain of at the time: the location of the lake and my own impending demise. Mrs. Crisafulli uttered the awaited question into her microphone, but I was so preoccupied with counting my pulse and imagining my demise that I completely missed it.

"... Coldest... on Earth," was all I could hear. When time ran out, my pencil made shaggy marks as I scrawled something down in the last 20 seconds of my timer.

I scribbled, "Asia."

My bad: I got it wrong for the third time in three years. Fortunately, I didn't die! As I walked home that day, I noticed the cracks and breaks in the road and wondered what was wrong with me. When I got up in the morning the next day I fished out of the trash can from the ridges and rivers on my desk globe I was going to throw out.