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

He didn’t do anything, I’d said, which wasn’t true. But it was a stupid, thoughtless thing. Nothing meant to hurt anyone. Nothing worth telling.

(A lie isn’t a lie if the truth gets things needlessly complicated. Gaby knew that’s how my brain worked, and she fought it. She wanted to hear everything I thought, even if it was complicated, even if it was ugly.)

I just don’t like him, I’d added. That was true. Except not liking him wasn’t the important part. Not liking him didn’t keep her out of his car.

“You see now,” the Mockingbird croons. “That regret. That’s your poison.”

There’s a click in my blood, valves of adrenaline shuttling open. Not now. I’ve had badly timed panic attacks before, but this’d take the fucking cake. I look down at my feet, to the dirt of the cavern floor—Ground yourself, remember where you are, you’re here, you’re not there, you’re here.

And then my vision clears. And a laugh punches out of me.

It’s pavement. It’s pavement. I’m standing on Sutton Avenue, the Flood’s version with its bare treeless grass and its starless sky.

The landscape shifts, half present and half past. I can see Cassie, Alex, and Felix, their faces white against the dark. But even here, in the present, that light, misting rain is falling. It floats through us, touching nothing.

The color in the room drains, shifting the cavern’s lamps to pale shades of gray. The air whirls, spinning us right into another memory. But I don’t recognize this. I don’t recognize the living room, or the two adults on the couch.

I recognize the girl opposite them, though. Younger than I know her now.

It’s Cassie.

You know we can’t, one of the adults—the woman—is saying. Her face is crumpling. You must have known when you—

Why are you saying this? Cassie must be twelve, thirteen here. Behind her wide blue eyes, something splinters. It’s not like I wanted this to—

But the scene changes again. A bedroom and a young boy, curled facedown into his pillow, his body shaking with quiet sobs. Around him, the outline of something massive, not quite visible. Something latched around his shoulders.

I don’t see his face. But I hear Alex breathe, “That’s me.”

It’s then that I look over at the three of them. And one look at their faces tells me they’re seeing this, too.

The scene flips again. Felix crouched in a darkened room, on the floor behind an overturned table. His arm is wrapped around a crying girl—Natalie Meyer, from earlier. It’ll be okay, he’s whispering soothingly, but there’s terror in his eyes. It’s here for me.

“My, my,” the Mockingbird says, her voice dancing with a dangerous lightness. “That’s not supposed to happen.”

“What is this?” Felix says. The Flood flickers from one scene to the other, almost too fast to register: me, Cassie, Alex, Felix, me again, me again.

But the Mockingbird’s attention is still on me. “Why don’t you tell us? My friend is following your lead.”

“I . . .” The words hitch. My lungs are already squeezed tight. “I don’t—”

“Take a breath and think, my dear,” she says. “Haven’t you noticed a pattern to what you’ve seen?”

Somewhere in the midst of the panic, what she’s saying clicks. There is a pattern. I noticed it that first night, when I saw a neighborhood that looked like Marin’s on TV, and the Flood showed me her party. I thought the Flood was recognizing my triggers before I did. I assumed it was deliberate. But what if they are following my lead?

“Do you understand now? What you see will always connect back, one way or the other, to what you’re feeling. And whatever you see, my friend is experiencing it with you,” the Mockingbird says. “There’s something each of us need to survive. But memories are more than sustenance for my friend: they’re comfort and sorrow, the truths they hold, the answers to their questions. You gave them an answer out there, whether you know it or not. Something about that answer changed things, for both of you. And you brought that answer here. Together.”

My fingers lock against my upper arms, into the fabric of my sleeves. But the chill is somewhere deeper. Somewhere that can’t be reached or warmed.

I thought we collided out there in the desert, two forces disconnected from gravity and spinning through empty space. I thought, I hoped, the Flood saw me in that car, saw someone who felt as alone as they did.

But they saw me leave Flora’s the other night, didn’t they? Long before the desert, they saw me in that kitchen. What almost happened. What I almost couldn’t stop myself from doing.

And if they feel what I feel now, did they feel what I felt in that moment, too?

“You didn’t create this storm, my dear,” the Mockingbird says soothingly. “It’s been building long before they met you. You’re not the first my friend has followed, and you won’t be the last. But all those memories, all that pain—they can’t carry it anymore. And like recognized like, when they found you out there. You have quite the storm within you, too.”

“Rose.” Alex doesn’t touch me, but I feel his hand hovering. “Rose, look at me.”

Startled, I jerk toward him, and I look at his eyes, dark and wide in his pale face. I follow the path of his stare around me, over my shoulder . . .

. . . and into the Summers’ kitchen. Not the one back in San Diego, the one that practically raised me on Flora’s brownies and Gaby’s sushi experiments. The kitchen of their new Vegas condo, long and narrow like a hallway. And I’m looking right down the barrel of Nick Lansbury’s lopsided grin.

My thoughts are miles apart and hard to grasp, but there’s one clear realization I can cling to: this doesn’t stop until I calm down.

It’s okay, I think wildly. I clutch at my hair until I remember to stop. Fingers uncurled. Arms by your sides, shoulders back. It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s okay, it’s okay,