It’s not a long kiss—we don’t have much time, after all. He draws back after a moment, smiling as Felix’s lips chase him a ways.
“Thank you,” Alex says. Then, sliding a flare out of Felix’s now-loose arm, he ducks into the passenger’s seat of Felix’s car.
I take my own flare as Felix stares slack-jawed after him. “Congratulations,” I say.
He tightens his grip on the last flare and turns, but not before I catch the rush of blood to his face.
I let them go ahead for a moment—just long enough to catch my breath, to hold the flare a little tighter in my hand. Behind me, the desert opens, long and vast and somehow as narrow as Flora’s doorway. Full of innumerable exits that I can’t—won’t—take.
I’m not sure I can do this.
But I have to. And this time, I want to.
So one more time, we climb into Felix’s car. And unnoticed by the crowd, we drive down the hill and toward the town. Back to Lotus Valley. And back to the Flood.
Twenty-Nine
THE FLOOD
WE SPLIT UP at the gates of Lethe Ridge, leaving the car parked on the shoulder. I kiss both of them on the cheek before I go. Felix doubles back into the housing development, and Alex veers west, in the direction of city hall. And I head the other way, straight down Morningside Drive.
I don’t need to guess where I’m going. I’ve been able to feel it since we crossed into town. A tug at my ankles, like an undertow.
The sick green tinge of the sky has turned dark gray and unsettled, and it’s only getting darker as I go. No longer the color of an oncoming storm—the look, instead, of a storm that’s already here.
And I’m heading right into the middle of it.
Once I’m sure Felix and Alex are far behind me, I stop holding my shoulders so tightly together, stop clenching my fists into the fabric of my shirt. There’s no one else around. And I don’t particularly care if the Flood sees me shaking.
I pass empty houses and their scattered signs of recently departed life: doors open, luggage forgotten on curbs and driveways. I pass Theresa Gibson’s garage, still lit in a sea of shuttered storefronts. She’s in there probably. Waiting.
And as I pass, head farther down Morningside Drive, I see another sign of life. A massive, tangled web of shadows, stretched so wide and so far, I don’t even see Christie. Rudy’s just waiting. Ready for the fight we’ve been holding him back from these past three days.
He’s not rushing at me this time. The Flood isn’t following me anymore, after all. But I can feel him watching as I approach. Like he’s . . . considering me.
I take a long, slow breath. We’ve been operating, all this time, on the assumption that if given the opportunity to fight the Flood, he wouldn’t be able to resist. That he only knows one way to protect Christie.
But I think of their long drive back to Lotus Valley, of how she came to want for him to be something good. She said she didn’t know if they wanted the same things. Maybe it’s time to ask.
“Hey, big guy.” I manage a queasy smile. “I think I can handle this on my own. But Cassie’s still in town somewhere. Can you help Christie find her?”
For a long moment, he’s still. My back is so rigid, it hurts. But at length, there’s a low, pensive growl. And he recedes back into the heart of the town.
I exhale hard. “Good boy.”
The beats of my heart feel like fists at a door. Weeks’ worth of lost sleep throbs at the backs of my eyelids. But it’s a little easier to think than it was before. At a time like this, I should be thinking of Mom, or Dan, or Sammy. Or Gaby. Always Gaby.
And I’m thinking of Maurice instead. Of a day months and months ago, reading an email from the Astronomy Club advisor. Of the tone I’d affected, reciting it out loud.
Read it again without the voice, he’d laughed.
Someone’s shouting in the distance. I can’t discern the distance in the whipping of the wind, but I can make out the voice. Christie Jones, calling out something to Rudy. Without any idea, I think, that the girl she considers a daughter might be close enough to hear her, too.
It’s impossible to tune her out. But that’s just what I have to do. There’s only one way to help now.
“Can you hear me?” I call.
At first, I think they’re beyond hearing me, until I see a flicker of movement by a dark, shuttered ice-cream shop. The Flood stands against the glass facade, wearing my face again.
I freeze, and in response, they’re nearly as still. Then they nod.
I let out a long, slow breath. “I didn’t understand,” I say, “what you were trying to tell me before. And I’m so sorry for that. I know you must be tired of holding this back. But if you really don’t want to do this, then let’s talk one more time. I want to be sure I give you the right answer.”
It’s quiet long enough that I don’t think they heard me. But, imperceptibly at first, the world begins to spin.
The first scenes I see, in flashbulb-quick bursts, aren’t mine. Some are as sweeping as war or famine or disaster, some as intimate as small, barely attended funerals, or the last devastating blow of an argument. They never linger long enough for me to see the details of anyone’s face beyond the despair written in their features, front and center, but the final image wavers for a long moment. Cassie, tucked into the corner of two buildings. I hear Christie’s voice again—whether that’s in the Flood’s projection or here in reality, it’s hard to tell, but Cassie’s fingers curl into her hair as they clamp over her ears, like she can hear it, too.
The Flood doesn’t think like I do. But I know racing thoughts when I see them.
“Focus.” The word’s punched out of me, shorter and harsher than I meant it. It gets the Flood’s attention. Cassie’s face fades back into mine, implacable and waiting. “If I’m going to understand you, we need to use my memories. Okay?”
The scene begins to waver again. But this time it darkens at the edges, narrows into a point, and solidifies into a single, white-and-glass front door.
All at once, the silence shatters into a low, vibrating beat, and the shadows shift into Marin Levinson’s neighborhood, Marin Levinson’s party. I’m standing on the porch, and toward the end of the cul-de-sac, I see movement. There’s a girl on her hands and knees, her breath coming in shuddering gasps as she rides out the end of her first panic attack.
That first night in Lotus Valley, May 24 Rose Colter looked normal to me, digging through her back seat and wrapping herself into her overshirt. But I’m no longer afraid to look into the car—I step to the driver’s side window, my face just inches from hers. I can see the fine tremor running through her, the blank, dazed stare. I can see shock that’s about to tip into fear.
But when I look for something perceptibly different— something wrong in the way she looks, the way she holds herself—I don’t see that.
“Show me another one,” I say, and the scene whirls.
There’s a quick glimpse of a familiar sight—a road, the long shadow of a tree—before we settle into my own darkened apartment. The windows are open, the sounds of our street drift in like the walls are no barrier at all. I can’t feel the temperature through the Flood’s projection, but I can imagine the lingering summer heat in the air.
I stand opposite another Rose, halfway down the hall, silhouetted in the low light from her room behind her. Visibly, she’s more pulled-together than her May 24 counterpart. But as she lifts a hand to her mouth, I see the same fear at the back of her gaze.
“Oh,” she whispers. “Oh, shit.”
In the next moment, there’s grass under my feet, and in front of me, the bright corona of light through the edges of a door. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the shadow of branches. I turn my head away as I reach for the door. I’m not there yet. That can wait.
I cross the threshold, and step right into the thrift sho
p that July afternoon, wedged in that narrow aisle between a baby carriage and a group of women. I look at myself closely this time. But that clawing, desperate panic I felt—that’s not there, not visibly. I look pale, instead. Sick.
“Honey? You okay?” the woman with the carriage asks.
Here in the present, I flinch. I—don’t remember that. I didn’t notice, or I didn’t hear.
Next: Me again, on the floor of the Summers’ master bedroom, holding Flora Summer in my arms. “Shhh, shh, shh,” she breathes, not loud enough to be a whisper, as Flora buries her wail in Rose’s neck. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Something in my chest clenches, tight enough to make me dizzy. She—I—I talk to Flora, to us both, like my fingers are locked at the end of a ledge, like my words might keep us from falling.
I don’t know why I expected to sound insincere. Like I was faking that empathy, or that I wasn’t capable of it anymore. Even after everything that’s happened with Flora, I still feel it now.
The Flood doesn’t wait for my prompt this time—we move to the next scene on their own, from one Summer bedroom to the next. To a moment just four nights ago.
Except this time, the scene flips. I’m not watching myself do it. I’m sitting here, on the bed with Flora, right here in the memory.
At first, I freeze. She watches me, curious and intent. And I realize I need to say my lines.
“I, um,” I say. I don’t have to think back to the words. They’re right there waiting for me. “We. My therapist and I, I guess. We think it’s something like . . . post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Flora’s face freezes. That, at least, is like I remember. What I don’t remember is hedging so much, circling those four letters, trying to soften the blow. In my memory, I just said it.
“What?” Flora’s breathless, like I’ve punched her.
“It’s really not that bad,” I say, quickly. I’m not sure if it’s me feeling this or me from four nights ago feeling this, or if we’re both on the same page here, just desperate to make her hear us. “It sounds more dramatic than it actually is.”
I said it to make her feel better. But it wasn’t completely untrue. That’s what Maurice kept trying to say. That I could go through hell and it didn’t mean I was broken.
“Why did I tell you?” I whisper to the image of Flora. The memory doesn’t react. “When Maurice told me to tell someone, why did I decide it had to be you?”
My little brother, Sammy, is the one who texts me composition practice every day, trying to turn the sound of my phone into something good again. My stepfather, Dan, is the one who tries to make sure I drive alone as little as possible, who rests his hand on my shoulder on tight curves. Mom is the one who smoothed her hand over my cheek just two weeks ago and asked, Rosie, you know if there’s ever anything . . .
“All this,” I say, ending my thought out loud, “and I told you? You were always going to react like this. You always did with Gaby. Did I think you’d understand because you lost her, too? Or did I—”
I choke on the next words. But I know what I was going to say. Did I hope you’d set aside your own feelings and just comfort me? Just like I did for you, that morning we buried her? Probably that. Probably both.
“You’re grieving, sweetheart,” Flora says, the memory uninterrupted. “Of course you should talk to someone if you need it. But what you’re talking about—that’s a serious condition. That’s . . .”
This time, I don’t just finish her sentence in my head. I say it out loud, faintly. “Dangerous.”
And then the memory goes off script.
“Oh—” Flora’s face freezes. The way it would have, I think, had we done this in reality. “No—no, sweetheart, that’s not what I meant.”
She smiles, anxiously, down at me. Looking at her, I’m reasonably sure of two things. That it was exactly what she meant. And that the way she’s looking at me isn’t fear. More like how she looked at me later that evening, standing side by side with Nick. Please just be okay with this.
And I think I’m finally sure of the answer I gave the Flood that night. That the two of us had this danger, this damage that needed to be contained. For me, that answer meant that the PTSD had changed me in ways that I couldn’t take back. For the Flood, it meant that all the fear and pain they’d taken in had changed them, too. That they needed to hold it all in, or it would overtake everything, just like the ocean they once were overtook this desert. That they were destruction once, and they might be destruction again. And if we couldn’t control the things that brought us here, or how we felt about them, then maybe we couldn’t control ourselves.
It might have been the wrong answer.
“Keep going.” I breathe. There’s only one memory that’ll tell us, one way or the other.
And when the world twists into that familiar shape, I don’t look at the road, or the tree—I look across the ditch, across the battered car, and lock eyes with Nick Lansbury. “Not here,” I say. “I’ve spent enough time here.”
Nick’s gaze is so blank, so measured, that I know it has to be the Flood looking at me through his eyes. Nick’s head tilts, politely curious.
“Go on. It’s okay,” I say. “You know where I want to go.”
I hold the Flood’s stare as Sutton Avenue brightens and fades. The yellow light of the Summers’ kitchen pops against the evening dark through the line of windows on our right side. It’s like the world beyond has ceased to exist.
The only way I can make myself reach toward the counter is if I don’t look at it. I don’t close my fingers until the handle fits against my flat palm. I don’t lift the knife until I gently map out the blade with the pad of my index finger, my touch too light to break skin.
Nick’s eyes get a little brighter as, for the first time, I see the Flood’s gaze light up with interest.
My arm shakes, almost too hard to keep my grip as I lift the knife.
This isn’t the Summers’ kitchen, and the figure opposite me isn’t Nick Lansbury. What I do here changes nothing. But those facts fall away, bit by bit, the longer I look at him. The reason Gaby no longer exists. The reason for everything.
I could do whatever I want, couldn’t I? I could do whatever I want, and I’d be the only one to know.
And even here, where it doesn’t count? I put the knife down.
Then I start to laugh. I press one hand over my face, wrap one arm around my stomach, and I laugh so hard my face hurts. “I wouldn’t have done it,” I gasp. “I never would have done it.”
I turn, addressing the walls this time. “I never would have done it!”
The trappings of the memory fall away like a curtain, and I can see where we really are: back in Lotus Valley, standing in the pitch-black of Morningside Drive.
That’s when I see little white crests forming in the edges of the shadows, and I realize: that distant roar is here now. Dark, gathering water, the full force of the Flood, blocking my view on every side.
I smile. And slowly, I unfold my arm and extend my hand.
“I want to change my answer,” I say, breathless. “Will you listen?”
There’s a low rumble from deep within the earth, and a damp chill against the tips of my fingers, which flinch back against the feeling. I hold them where they are. I can’t pull away. No matter what.
“You’ve seen so much,” I say softly. “And then to meet me like you did, in that kitchen? Poor thing. You must have been so scared.”
There’s a stillness, at first. I keep my hand where it is.
“I don’t know if this will help, but . . .” I take a slow, deep breath. The air tastes like sharp points. “God, I never thought I’d be the kind of person quoting my therapist, but he told me that we don’t just talk about terrible things to purge them from ourselves. We talk about them so that the people who love us can tell us when we�
�re wrong. That we’re being unkind to ourselves, or unfair, or that the things that have happened to us are not our fault. Because fear turns the world a different color, and we don’t always see clearly through it.
“It wasn’t like I thought he was wrong. But I’ve always known myself so well. And then it was like there was this new person where I used to be, and I wasn’t sure I knew what she was capable of.” I take a long, slow breath. “But I hate Nick Lansbury as much as someone can hate anyone, and I was still never going to pick up that knife. The worst thing that was ever going to happen was that they were going to know I wasn’t okay with it. Or, you know, okay in general. That they were going to know what I’d become, but I . . .”
My fingers quiver against the bristling of the wind. “But I haven’t become anything. I am exactly as dangerous as I’ve always been, because I am exactly the person I’ve always been.”
The Flood’s gone still. The chop of the water, the silent white peaks of the waves have smoothed out. It’s like a breath being held.
“Do you think that maybe it’s the same for you?” I ask. “Because I don’t think this is who you’ve been for a long time. Are you really dangerous? Or did you start to believe that witnessing terrible things makes you capable of them, too?”
The water towers high above my head. I take a step toward it. “I know you’ve been fighting this for a long time,” I say. “I know you can always hear that water coming, because I’ve been hearing it, too. But I don’t think that’s real. I think that’s a memory. And I think you can let that memory come.”
The waters actually recede from my feet, just a few inches. Still trying to protect me.
“Hey. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” I lower the pitch of my voice. The hard edges of the words drop to a soft, gentle swish. I don’t know how much they understand. But knowing what to say, even now, is easy. Think of what you want to hear most in this world, and tell them.
The Valley and the Flood Page 28