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

“You’ve been nothing but nice to me,” I say slowly.

“Partially so you would help. So you’d trust me,” she says with a shrug. “I’m told sometimes I can be . . . careless with people. You might have noticed by now that I can’t always tell what we’ve talked about and what we haven’t. Sometimes I don’t have the patience for conversations. Where I’m concerned, we’ve already had them and moved on.”

“You don’t have to be nice,” I say. “You’d have every right to blame me for this.”

“That’s the good thing about looking ahead,” Cassie says. “I was done blaming you a long time ago, even before I knew for sure that it wasn’t your fault. And if blaming you fixed anything, you’d have that covered by yourself, wouldn’t you?”

I wince. “That’s fair.”

“It’s really okay.” She laughs. “The first time I saw tomorrow night—that was such a long time ago. I’ve seen it from every angle since then. And I’ve seen glimpses of your life. So many times now. So when I tell you that it’s not your fault, or even the Flood’s fault, that’s not to make you feel better. That’s because it’s true. Most bad things happen without malice, y’know? They just happen. Storms never wish anyone harm. They just come and go.”

Something about the way she says it sends a rush of goose bumps up my arms and legs. “What did you mean before, what you told Felix?”

There’s enough of a beat that I know she’s scripting an answer. “I don’t blame him for being scared. He has a big family. He wants them out of harm’s way. But that doesn’t mean he gets to forget that the rest of us are scared, too.”

I nod. I don’t buy for a second that that’s it, not when she still hasn’t told me how the prophecy ends. But she’s respected my silence countless times, without question, in the past day and a half. The least I can do is return the favor.

Cassie chews on her lip for a moment. “Rose. What happened with the Mockingbird . . . you don’t have to explain it if you don’t want to. But maybe you should think about telling someone.”

I laugh weakly. “I don’t think I’m ready to hear what they’d have to say.”

Cassie’s eyes narrow. Not the answer she was expecting, I think. “What do you mean?”

I concentrate on my feet, shifting my weight. “Not everything ‘just happens.’ Sometimes it happens because someone didn’t do all they could.”

She looks perplexed at first. She gets this look, like she’s doing math in her head. Then her eyes get wide.

“Oh no, Rose,” she says. And she looks—sympathetic? “You haven’t been—Oh no, no, no. It’s not like that.”

“What’s not?” I say slowly.

Suddenly, we’re not walking anymore. She’s facing me, holding my shoulders. “Listen to me,” she says. “What happened to that girl was an accident. Just an accident. It’s not like what he did with you.”

There’s a pause. A long, cold moment I can’t quite put my finger on. A burn of metal up my throat and across my tongue.

“What did you say?”

Cassie’s eyes get wide in her pale face. “I hadn’t told you yet,” she whispers, her voice hoarse. “Had I?”

I saw you, she’d told me, yesterday. Just you, standing in the middle of this empty road. But she saw more than that.

“You saw what happened to her.” My tongue feels thick. The metallic taste floods my stomach, dissolves into a rush of churning blood. “No . . . you saw all of it. What happened to me, too.”

“I’m so sorry, Rose.” She’s stammering, clasping her hands together. To her, we’ve had this conversation, already moved on, and yet she’s at a loss for words. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this, I—”

“Oh my God.” Laughter bubbles up, unstoppable. “I haven’t told anyone. I was never going to tell anyone, and you knew. You knew before it even happened.”

“Rose.” Her hands hover at the edge of my space. “Why don’t you sit down.”

We lock eyes. I wonder what she sees in mine to make her look at me like that. I wonder if she can see threads of cause and effect as easily as she can see futures. I don’t want to sit. I want her to explain.

Did you see what I agreed to, that night on the road?

Or I didn’t want him to lose his license, can you believe that?

Or Would she have gotten in his car if I said something? If I picked up the phone?

Or Did you see what happened to her?

Did it look like it hurt?

Did they mean it when they said it was quick?

What finally comes out is “I’ll meet you at the station.”

“Rose,” she says again, in a rush of air. “I don’t think you should be alone.”

It’s like there’s a break in the water, and I drag myself to the surface. I can convince her I’m okay. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s looking okay. But I can’t keep talking to her—not like this.

Because next time I open my mouth, everything might come tumbling out.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I am. But I need a minute.”

Cassie chews on her lower lip. “If anything happens, call me. I mean it.”

“I will,” I say. I think she hears just how perfunctory that sounds.

“Listen.” She drags a hand through her curls. “You don’t have to talk to me. Just . . . maybe it’ll be easier. That you don’t have to start from the beginning.”

She watches me for a long time as she walks away. The ghost of her stare lingers after I turn to the empty road.

—

EVEN THOUGH LOTUS Valley looks empty at first glance, there are surprisingly few places to be alone. Everywhere I try, there’s always someone staring, or trying to talk to me.

I end up wandering in circles at first. Walking used to help—especially at night, when the sounds of my neighborhood were sleepy and muted. That was never Mom’s favorite habit of mine. But there were no dangers out there that I hadn’t already