She jammed the plunger straight down into the water. A cold, dark geyser sprayed her shirt. She yelped. The water level didn’t budge.

On the twelfth pump, the toilet made a sound—a deep, gurgling whoosh —and the water level dropped like a curtain.

She lifted the plunger. Water dripped from it like tears. She looked at the bowl’s curved bottom, then at the flat rim of the plunger. Of course. This was a sink plunger, not a toilet plunger. A toilet needed a flange—that extra rubber lip that folds into the drain. Her plunger didn’t have one. But she also didn’t have a car to drive to the 24-hour hardware store.

She didn’t even look at it. She just flushed the toilet one more time, watched it drain perfectly, and whispered to the empty bathroom:

She remembered something her dad had said once, back when she was twelve and had clogged the other bathroom with a Hot Wheels car. “It’s not about force, kid. It’s about the seal.”

Right. The plunger.

YouTube, she thought. But her phone was at 3%. The Wi-Fi had blinked out ten minutes ago, because of course it had.

The water in the bowl trembled.