The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (10 best books of all time TXT) 📗

storefront. I’m here to tell you: I believe in Lotus Valley. I believe in the values it was built on.

Her smile still hasn’t shifted. But lines form around her mouth, thinning her cheeks. What I do not believe in? Prioritizing the comfort of our neighbors over the safety of our citizens. Prioritizing ideals over human residents like you. It’s your turn to be prioritized, Lotus Valley. I don’t stand for some academic idea of our town. I stand for reality. I stand for you.

And next time someone tells you I’d like to change what we are, feel free to tell them: They’re right. Because when you love something, you change it for the better.

The woman disappears, and a message takes her place. REELECT MARGUERITE WILLIAMS: YOUR FRIEND, YOUR ADVOCATE, YOUR MAYOR!

The text fades, and at length, so does the music. And gradually, the screen transitions into what looks like the slow pan of a camera down a sunlit, empty Morningside Drive. next programming: eight a.m., reads a card at the bottom of the screen.

The camera curls down a side road into a neighborhood dotted with trim, vibrant green grass. It languidly loops into a cul-de-sac. And there’s a sudden, inexplicable jolt through me.

My heart’s still reeling even after I hit the power button. It’s not unusual for my overtired, overtaxed, hypervigilant brain to jump at something I haven’t consciously registered. But it’d be nice, once in a while, if it could tell me what it was so scared of.

The residual light and static fade from the screen, and only my own reflection, my blank, tired stare, is left for company.

And I sit up. I had left the master bedroom door wide open before. But in the reflection over my shoulder, it stands just slightly ajar.

Before I can turn around, the house starts to shake.

Whatever it is, it’s loud, loud enough that my hands immediately clamp down over my ears. For a long, earth-rocking moment, it’s hard to distinguish anything but a pulsing thump, thump, thump. I almost don’t recognize it as music.

Someone is playing music down the street. Blasting music, actually.

Someone else is here.

Like I said. There is a front door made of heavy wood. There is a back door made of sliding glass. There are windows I could probably fit through, closets I could duck inside. But very few places to hide.

And besides. I want to know what’s coming.

I take a breath, hold it. And I ease open the front door. Even over the music, every creak of the wood echoes.

I should be looking at the front steps. Except they aren’t there anymore. And neither is the Lethe Ridge housing development.

Before I can think better of it, I’m through the entryway and across the porch.

A chipped set of stone steps leads me down to a street that couldn’t look less like Lethe Ridge—an asymmetrical suburbia worn around the edges. There’s trees, and grass, and one lit house, and its windows rattle with the beat of the music. It doesn’t take me long to recognize it. I’ve been to enough parties at Marin Levinson’s house that I would have recognized it from the sound system alone.

Marin graduated last year. She went to Sarah Lawrence, and her parents still live in San Diego. I’m going to take a wild guess that they didn’t buy an identical house in Middle of Nowhere, Nevada.

My heart flutters. But I take a long, controlled breath, and I focus. Whatever this is, it isn’t new anymore. Panicking isn’t going to help. But getting a good look around might.

I turn in a slow circle as I walk. The houses around me, even the one I just came from, look darker and flatter than Marin’s. Like someone etched every loving detail into re-creating the Levinson house and didn’t save any effort for the rest. Still, I watch those dull, lifeless doors closely as I pass them.

By the time I make it to the bottom of Marin’s steps, my lungs feel tight and shallow. The lowest notes of the music rattle the pit of my stomach.

I should run. Never mind that there’s nowhere to go.

I start to climb the front steps instead. Except I don’t get the chance.

The door swings open hard enough that it hits the side of the house and bounces back to the girl halfway through it. Her head snaps to the sound, and she grabs it with a sharp punch of an exhale, pushing it off her as she stumbles through. She hits the railing and grabs on with both hands, breathing hard as she bends over double. Her blank stare, fixed on the steps, goes right through me.

“Oh,” I breathe. Because even with her hair covering her face, it’s not hard to recognize myself. Me, over seven months ago.

MAY 24, SEVEN MONTHS AGO

NOTE TO SELF: these things have no sense of timing.

This was never going to be easy. You thought it’d be, at least, straightforward. But this isn’t the five stages of grief people keep telling you about. This has no sequence. It resists scheduling. It will come when it will come, and it will come at Marin Levinson’s graduation party, surrounded by people you know, with the longest year of your life still ahead of you.

But first, some answers to questions you may have. Yes, this is happening. Yes, Marin Levinson’s earth-shaking sound system is to blame, although that’s not for you to know yet. Right now it’s just you and the slow-growing awareness that whatever this is, it isn’t stopping. It’s tight, tight in your chest and lungs all at once, and it burns like sprinting down a long, cold road.

You’re taking sips of water, like you can wash this down. But your heart starts clawing like an animal, too wild and too fast to be exertion. You weren’t doing anything. You were just standing here.

There’s a wet shock down your thigh, and it takes a good second to realize that you’ve spilled your