A loud buzzing filled the indoor plaza as the crane’s hydraulics activated and jolted the platform, and the minivan parked on it, upward. Avery grabbed the steering wheel and white-knuckled it as if she were driving through a torrential downpour. She rolled up the window and the noise outside the vehicle—the producers yelling instructions, the engineers guiding the crane operator, the ring of the hydraulics, and the murmurs from three hundred spectators that filled the retractable bleachers and made up the studio audience—went silent. All she heard now was her own exaggerated breathing. Even the smell of chlorine disappeared.
Her ascent finally ended, and then the car jolted again as the back of the platform started to rise, pitching the nose of the minivan downward toward the water. A slew of engineers who consulted on the stunt had decided that thirty-eight degrees was the most accurate pitch angle to best represent a vehicle careening off the road and plunging into a body of water. To Avery it felt like she was hanging vertically off a cliff. The seat belt was tight across her chest as gravity pulled her forward. She straightened her legs on the floorboard to keep her position in the driver’s seat.
The whole of the eight-lane, NFHS-approved, competition-size swimming pool came into view through the windshield as the minivan tipped forward. The surface of the water reflected the stage lights that were erected around the indoor pool. Red lane markers swayed in wavy images made brighter by the underwater lighting. She saw the rescue divers hovering near the bottom, the bubbles from their SCUBA tanks rippling the surface as they waited for Avery’s arrival fourteen feet under the water. She had imagined during the planning phase that their presence would ease her nerves. That knowing help was just a few feet away would provide a sense of comfort as the minivan sunk to the bottom. That knowing all she needed to do was give the abort signal and the divers would immediately extract her from the vehicle would settle her nerves and give her confidence. But now, as she hovered above the pool with the weight of her body heavy against the seat belt, she felt no such comfort or confidence. Things could go wrong. What if she wasn’t able to successfully pull off the techniques the survival experts had taught her? What if her mind froze and she simply couldn’t remember what to do? What if the seat belt locked up because of the force of the impact? What if the window did not break like it was supposed to? What if the divers didn’t see her signal? What if— The sensation of falling abruptly interrupted her thoughts. The harness holding the minivan in place had been released. She was in free fall. It felt like a hell of a lot longer than the three seconds it was supposed to take to roll off the edge of the platform and drop fifteen feet before impacting the water. During those frozen seconds Avery noticed the television camera across the pool, one of eight that were positioned around the aquatics center. Another four GoPro cameras were mounted inside the vehicle, their red indicator lights suddenly bright and voyeuristic. Just before impact, Avery caught a glimpse of the movie-theater-sized screen that would display her progress to the captive studio audience who lined the poolside bleachers. And then, there was a crash.
The impact was jarring. The seat belt dug into her breastbone as her head snapped forward. The minivan speared through the water and then, as if a rubber band were attached to its back bumper, began a backward trek as the natural buoyancy of the air trapped inside the vehicle pulled it back to the surface. The van rocked and bobbed as Mother Nature found the center of gravity and then began to slowly pull it under the water, engine first. Water poured in through unseen breaches and began filling the interior. Avery worked hard to control the panic that was growing with each second. Panic, though, was good. It meant she was aware of what was happening and had not suffered “behavioral inaction,” a symptom described by the survival experts who had consulted on the episode. Also called “dislocation of expectation,” it was the mind’s response to a traumatic situation. The brain attempts to correlate the current situation with a known experience from the past. As the frontal lobe loops in repetitive circles, trying but failing to find a similar situation to work from, the body freezes and waits for directions from the brain. It’s the science behind the proverbial “deer-in-the-headlights” phenomenon.
Fortunately for Avery, she was suffering no such dislocation from her surroundings. The synapses of her brain fired back to a previous experience when she found herself fighting the relentless water that tried to drown her. She remembered the day her sailboat sank off the coast of Manhattan and she came within an inch of losing her life. It was impossible to remember that day and not think of her brother. And now, those thoughts of Christopher brought her back to her current situation. The minivan was sinking and water was quickly filling the interior of the vehicle. She considered waving her hand in front of her throat and putting an end to this madness. But then she remembered Kelly Rosenstein, the mother who didn’t have the option of calling it quits when her car, filled with her four children, sank to the bottom of Devil’s Gate Reservoir. It was a miracle that Kelly had stayed composed enough to save herself, let alone her children. It was even more amazing that she credited her survival to watching an episode of American Events. If what Avery had learned from the survival experts over the past week could be used now to show anyone else how to save their own life, it was at least worth her best effort.