Roree had been in Husgado at least a dozen times, but on almost every occasion she'd come out crying. Ricky's right--I'm crazy. No one says I have to do this, no one. Biting her lip, she reached into her pocket and brought out a short candle stub. She lit the white bit of candle and placed it beside the one already burning at her feet; it sputtered in the finite oxygen of her small space and the added light revealed to Roree that her booted feet were also trembling under their layer of cave dirt. Between the candle and the opposite wall of the passage was just enough space for a slim body to squeeze through. Coward.

In an attempt to distract herself, she began to make a little wax ball from the candle drippings, a trick she'd used often before while guiding students through the more exotic wonders of Banahaw. Ricky was her spelunking partner on these weekend expeditions; she had met him at a track meet when he'd come up to her and offered his congratulations on her silver medal. He'd been wearing the gold around his neck then, but she gave him her number anyway. Ricky had taken her to the caves and taught her the routes, and to augment their small allowances they guided camping and Philippine History classes through Banahaw's caves, giving brief lectures on the caves' significance and the strange habits of the Rizalistas, the cultists that lived in the mountain's foothills.

Roree had been shaken to her core the first time she'd gone caving; though Ricky promised her he'd never take her down again, she protested through her tears that it was stupid of her to be so frightened. The dark was not to be feared, she told herself and him; after all, each time she closed her eyes she faced the dark. She would overcome this--it was healthy to face your fears. This particular bend of Husgado, her "breathing space," as she called it, had been witness to Roree's discomfiture many times, though with each descent, she trembled less and less. It was her job to lead the group of students down, to show them the easiest way to squeeze through the cave of judgement. Ricky brought up the rear of the team, making sure that no one got stuck in the narrower sections of the cave.

In the many months that she'd been guiding students in this manner, she and Ricky had begun to see each other more and more. Their friends said they were the perfect couple, above or below ground: both of them strong, infinitely capable, fearless. On this particular trip, however, Roree seemed to have lost some ground, the shaking coming back stronger than it had in a long while. She had never been fearless, but she was usually able to swallow the lump in her throat and get through. Just before she'd started down into Husgado today, she'd glanced at Ricky, who was reassuring some frightened young freshman in his low, sleepy voice. She envied him his calm, his stolid manner, kind of like a cow, she was surprised to catch herself thinking. That was what she'd first found intriguing about him: the startling difference between Ricky on the track, all speed and agility, and Ricky at rest.

She envied him his solidity, and at the same time it angered her that he could be so composed. She had never seen him show the least bit of apprehension about anything. Though he had gotten used to Roree's reaction to caving, he didn't understand what it was about the closed spaces that frightened her; he didn't understand that Roree herself was unable to explain it. He just plods along, and he never goes any faster or slower. And it was true; watching him race, she would see his face flat and calm while his arms and legs pumped, driving him to the finish line. I bet if Rizal himself popped up in that cave, Ricky'd just smile and keep on crawling.

Roree had just begun to layer the hot wax over a small, rough-edged pebble picked up from the cave floor, when she burned her finger. Sucking on the already-forming blister, tasting sweet earth, she heard a faint shuffling. There were voices, too, but she couldn't yet understand what they were saying, the cave's twists and turns distoring the sounds as they bounced off stone and clay.

Roree stared hard into the darkness and was soon rewarded: first the glow of a flashlight, a pair of wide eyes in a dirty face. Then came the rest of the boy: a formerly white shirt, now mud-smeared, dirty jeans encasing a pair of skinny legs scrabbling on the cave floor. Roree searched her memory and came up with a name. "Doods," she called. The boy's head shot up and rapped smartly on a low section of the cave ceiling. "Aray!" the boy exclaimed, rubbing his head where a bump would surely appear some minutes later. As he said it, his eyes got even wider, and they darted around the close passage and finally found Roree at the far side of it, sitting in her small pool of flickering light. Surprised to find herself still able to laugh, she reassured the boy: "Don't worry, Doods, the mountain won't fall on your head." He smiled and continued in the direction Roree pointed out. She was alone again.

Not a minute later the next boy came through; though the candlelight gave everything a wavery, sepia hue, she thought that his face was too pale. "Almost out," she said. "The others are already through. How many more behind you?"

"I think two...I'm not sure."

"Okay. Go on through here; about five more feet and you'll be in the sun again."

The boy nodded, biting his lip, and went on. Watching him go, Roree was reminded of her own fear; she went back to wax ball and burned her finger again.

Another student came through, and another, a girl this time. Mary? Shary? "This is fun," the black-kneed girl gushed. "You're so lucky, you get to do this all the time!" Lucky, lucky, Roree muttered as she hurried the girl through; I'm the luckiest person alive.

After the girl no one came through for about five minutes. If what the second boy had said was right, the next person to reach her space would be Ricky. When he did, they would both slip through the last few feet of the cave. She waited. The wax ball grew larger, and Roree's hands weren't trembling as much as they had the other times she'd been waiting down in the cave--the wax skin surrounding the stone nucleus was much smoother now. Every time, though, that she put the ball down her hands would creep up again, palms toward the unseen sky, as if to push the ceiling up and away. She would draw her hands back down quickly, before they touched the dirt above her head, and bring them back to the wax ball. Warm and smooth under her fingers, it reminded her of Ricky's cheek. It lacked only his light stubble, she thought, the coarse-looking black hairs making their scraggly way across his chin and over his weak mouth.

Rolling the ball around and around on her palm, she recalled how soft Ricky's stubble actually way, even though it looked as if you could cut your finger if you touched it. That's just like him, she thought, and dropped the ball on the cave floor. As it rolled away from her, she trapped it beneath her boot and slowly put her foot down. In the failing candlelight she saw the imprint of her bootsole on the flattened, dirty wax. Again her hands crept upwards; this time, they found the uneven ceiling and a thin shower of dirt sifted down onto Roree's hair.

"I need to go," she suddenly said. Her first candle had gone out; the second was sputtering in its own wax. "I need to go."

She moved towards the low passage on the right, and as she scrambled into the two-foot-high space she accidentally snuffed out the remaining candle with her toe, caught off-guard by the sudden, complete darkness. She paused, and in the dark she could suddenly feel the movement of cold air towards the cave exit, like fingers brushing her cheek, raising the hairs on the back of her neck.

Panicked, she lunged through the dark hole which led upward; this part of the cave would first narrow another five inches before it widened out into the cave's last hall and then into open air. Roree brought her right leg up against her stomach, seeking purchase on the gritty cave floor, but when she tried to push up and out, she found that she could not move at all. Trapped, foot on the cave floor, knee digging into her chest, back squeezed up against the dirt and stone ceiling, she tried to twist her way out. Her heart was now beating so hard that the blood thundered in her ears. If you get stuck in the cave, she heard Ricky's low voice in her head, relax your muscles. Breathe deeply, tense up again, try to make yourself as compact as possible. Move very slowly.

Roree tried to calm herself, and then attempted to dislodge her foot. Nothing. A breath that caught before reaching the bottom of her lungs, another tensing of muscles. She thought she might have moved her leg a little bit, but she couldn't be sure. She could feel everything now: a small, sharp rock jutting painfully into her right kneecap, the bumpy, knobbled impression of the cave ceiling in her back, the little grains of dirt all along her arms. Was it her imagination, or was it getting harder to breathe? In a burst of panic, her blood rising red in her vision, she propelled herself an inch forward, only to find that she had lodged herself in even more securely. Sobs, small and mewling--for the space was so tight that she could not draw a normal breath--tore themselves from her chest; in her open, gasping mouth she could taste the dirt of the cave Husgado, and it was bitter.