The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) 📕

to catch myself on the counter. Felix rocks back on his heels, sheepishly holding out a plastic, grimacing waiter figurine.

“It’s a pepper grinder,” he says, giving the head another half twist.

Alex crosses the store, stony-faced, and places it back on the shelf.

Through the window, Cassie winds one of her curls around her index finger, catching my attention. Back to Alex and Felix, I ask, “Is she okay?”

“I . . . um. Couldn’t say,” Alex mumbles. “We don’t really . . .”

“Know her that well,” Felix finishes.

“She doesn’t work with you?” I say.

Alex blinks. “They didn’t tell you?”

“Are you surprised?” Felix says. To me, he adds, “Cassie’s, um. The boss’s foster kid, sort of.”

“Ms. Jones took Cassie in when she was thirteen,” Alex says. “We don’t know the circumstances, but . . .”

“It’s complicated,” Felix says.

“Sounds about right,” I mumble. Asking your intern to chaperone the harbinger of destruction is one thing, but asking your sort-of kid?

“But who knows.” Felix shrugs. “Ms. Jones is the queen of need-to-know.”

“Because most of the time we don’t need to know,” Alex says mildly.

Felix throws his head back and groans. “Don’t start.”

“I just don’t think we should criticize her for—”

“I’m not criticizing her!” Felix says. “I’m allowed to ask questions.”

“So ask her,” Alex says.

“Really.” Felix snorts. “Here’s just a few questions I’m still waiting for answers on. Can Rudy really stage-manage an evacuation? What do I tell my family? When do I tell my family? Why three days?”

“Believe me,” Alex mutters, “that last one makes sense up close.”

I glance at Alex. And I remember how he looked at me when I met him yesterday. Or more precisely, how he looked past me.

“Can you see all of them?” I say. “The neighbors.”

“Depends. Some don’t try to hide,” he says. “Or care if you see them. Others do. And some of them are just too big or too strange for comprehension. And for things like that, I see more than most people can. I still don’t know whether it’s just something I can do, or if they’re just . . . more inclined to show themselves to me.”

“Oh.” My voice wavers a little. “And, um, you can see this one right now?”

“I have to try. And right now I’m not exactly trying,” Alex admits. “But even the biggest one I’ve seen before, it was still recognizable as a thing. What’s behind you is just . . . total darkness. Like the world ends right where you’re standing. And if what I’m seeing is just the tip of the storm, then I can believe it’d take three days to get here.”

We go quiet for a second, and I remember what Christie Jones said: If you were to ask Alex, he might have a less rosy view than I do.

“What did yours look like?” I ask softly.

Alex’s eyes widen a little. He doesn’t ask whether or not the sheriff told me. But he looks a bit surprised that she did.

“Seeing them . . . it’s not something I was born with,” he says slowly. “And I never saw that one, either. I thought I was sick, just like everyone else did. I mean, I’d been sick since I was little, so everyone always assumed it’d get worse someday. At least, that’s what they said when they thought I wasn’t listening.”

He paused. “My dad heard about Lotus Valley from someone in my pulmonologist’s waiting room. Said the dry air would be good for my lungs and that we’d be happy here. I still have no idea why he took life advice from a stranger. Maybe he was just relieved to hear someone say it would get better, instead of talking to him like my life was already over.”

His shoulders jerk upward, like he’s suppressing a shiver. “Ms. Jones came to our house that first night. She wasn’t sheriff yet, and she’d only recently come back to town herself. She just kind of saw us and knew. I don’t know what she said to my father. But she came down the hall, into my room, and she shut the door. And then she looked up about eight feet, smiled, and said ‘Let’s get this off you, shall we?’

“And . . . I don’t remember anything after that. I know Rudy must have killed it, in the end, Ms. Jones has never told me the details. But I didn’t start seeing them until months after that. I think being so close to one for so long kind of—opened something.”

His pale lips twitch. “I wasn’t the only person attacked that year. Or even that month. But I think it’s different when it’s a kid. And this wasn’t just an attack. It clung to me, fed off me, for months. But on the other hand, Rudy saved me. It wasn’t the first time a neighbor had intervened for a human. But it was the first time a lot of people realized that neighbors can be killed.

“It brought a lot of things to the surface,” Alex says. “Things that had been simmering a long time. And the town was of two minds. They were scared of what the neighbors were capable of, but they couldn’t reject them completely, knowing that one of them had the power to protect us. That’s how you end up with a town where Maggie Williams is mayor and Ms. Jones is sheriff. They can’t decide, even now.”

He smiles. But it’s bitter. “Ms. Jones kept reaching out to me after that. Maggie Williams thinks that’s when she ‘got in my head.’ But she never told me how to feel. She just knew, even before I told her what I’d started to see, that my world was going to be different now. And she knew I’d need to hear that different doesn’t mean dangerous.”

“Oh.” It’s a full second before I realize that’s inadequate. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head quickly. “I’m telling you this so you know where I’m coming from. You didn’t invite this in. No one ever does.”

“Except me,” Felix says.

“Felix’s time with the sheriff isn’t so much an internship as a Scared Straight program,” Alex says dryly.

“But in my defense,” Felix says,