Fire & Flood (Mythverse #1)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Mom and Mavis are incommunicado.

Dad is—I’m not ready to think about that yet.

Which leaves Grandma. Dad told me to stay away from windows, and there’s no way the water has gone down yet, but it must have. I can hear other people now, voices rising up from the beach. If people are outside, surely I can be near a window?

I look out. Tentatively. The water has receded. The beach is littered with all kinds of things that rolled from further inland when the water swept back out to sea. There’s a car on its side, basically everyone’s patio furniture, a lot of bicycles, and a bunch of huge umbrellas from all the outdoor restaurants. I spot a bright orange hat and let out a gasp. Grandma.

But first, I’ve got to at least try the roof. My legs tremble as I trudge up the stairs for the second time. It’s not just the exercise. I’m scared. If I was watching myself in a movie I’d be screaming, “Don’t go on the roof, you dummy!”

I hesitate at the door and then, giving the handle a twist, come bursting out.

“Auuughh!” I scream in full warrior mode. Or try to, but my lungs can’t muster more than a squeak.

It’s all for nothing. And no one.

The greenhouse is entirely gone, broken glass and torn plants scattered across the rooftop. There’s the wreck of the metal frame, twisted and gruesome, but that’s it. No Dad. No trace. Almost like the water just came and swept him off the roof, but that’s not possible.

I walk to the edge of the roof and look at the building across the street. The bricks are only wet about twenty feet up. The water didn’t get as high as the roof, no way.

I close my eyes and remember Dad’s expression on that FaceTime call. Intent. Focused. Scared. He knew that water face thing was out there. Hunting him.

But that can’t be possible. Dad is the stuffy vice-principal. An evil water monster is not gonna come after a guy who makes dad jokes and dreams of someday retiring to play the competitive Scrabble circuit. I mean, right?!?

I shift every torn leaf and chunk of metal I can, looking for some clue that he’s still alive. Looking for some hope.

I finally find it beneath a piece of glass that I carefully use the toe of my shoe to flip aside. Dad’s cell phone. The screen is cracked, but when I pick it up a picture of my own face smiles up at me. Dad is beside me in the pic, half cut off because he’s terrible at taking selfies. It’s from our last bus ride. Tears well up, blinding me. I scrub them away and type in Dad’s code. The phone doesn’t unlock. I try until it locks me out.

“s**t. s**t. Shit.”

I used his phone last night to order dinner. He never changes his code. It’s the month Mavis was born and the month I was born. 0309. When and why did he change it?

The sun is beating down and I know there’s nothing more up here. I take the stairs all the way down, hoping Dad will be at the bottom, wondering where I am. With Grandma at his side. I hold onto this hope as I navigate the stairs. They’re a wreck; fish and sand and seaweed make them slippery and I have to be careful not to fall.

It takes forever but I make my way down to the lobby. A few people are gathered there already, talking and crying and praying.

Passing them, I make my way out to the beach, broken glass and bits of torn up pavement shredding my sandals in seconds. By the time I’m past the worst I’m barefoot, the wet sand strangely cool on my aching feet.

I just walk for a little bit, searching faces. Everyone is looking for someone, people are calling names, people looking for their dogs, and dogs looking for their owners. I spot a cat sitting high in a windowsill, tail twitching in the sun, completely unconcerned.

“d**k,” I say, and I swear it looks right at me.

I see dads and moms and children all finding each other, a lot of joyful reunions. But not me. I haven’t found Grandma. What I do find is a line of yarn, drawn tight in the sand. It’s a bright orange, the same color Grandma had been using to make an afghan for the minister’s wife. The one I don’t like, she kept saying.

I follow the yarn, and it leads me right back to the condo, under the awning where I saw Grandma run for safety. I thought she’d made it, and Dad had said not to count her out, but I’ve been looking for Grandma for at least an hour, and something tells me I should have found her by now.

When I enter the building I see the yarn leading up to the elevator. The doors are closed, the yarn pinched tight. There are a bunch of men working around it, talking excitedly. They get quiet when they see me, and my chest gets even tighter.

“What happened?” I ask.

The men look at each other, one of them finally decides to take the plunge. “The elevator…it looks like she was trying to go up, to the sixth floor.”

“That’s where she lives,” I tell them. “My grandma.”

One of the guys take his hat off. My heart sinks.

“She didn’t make it,” I say, almost to myself.

“No,” another guy says. “She did, but…”

My heart leaps, hoping Grandma is fine. Except he said but.

“But what?” I ask, desperate.

He pauses, not wanting to tell me more. That’s when I spot the blood, just starting to seep from inside the closed doors, tinging the orange yarn a dark red.

“It fell.” I finish for him. “It fell six floors.” I sink to the ground and am comforted by strangers.

It’s been a few hours and everyone is being really nice to me. Mostly because it looks like I’m the only person that lost someone. Lost everything. I try to tell people about the second wave, the one that took Dad. I say “wave” instead of “water face” because people are already worried enough about my mental and emotional state. But nobody saw a second wave, and eventually I figure out the EMS people are not going to let me go back up to the room if I don’t start making sense.

So I try. I tell them no, I’m just confused. Dad was definitely swept away by that first wave, and Grandma died in the elevator. Her friends find me, tell me they had warned her away from the elevator, but that she couldn’t get up the steps fast enough with her hip, and she had to get to me, immediately.

She didn’t. They know that. I know that.

They all say what they think will help—EMS people, condo management, Grandma’s friends. That it will be okay. That it was an act of God. That it’s a good thing my mother and sister are away and are safe.

There’s some talk about me being a minor and not able to stay alone, but there’s a ton of confusion—lots of damage and minor injuries to take care of—so I just slip away and go back upstairs.

I shut the door, happy to put something solid between me and the rest of the world. I collapse on the couch, grabbing my phone again and hoping to see that Mavis called. Or Mom. Something. Neither has posted on social media in the last twenty four hours.

There’s no one. Nothing.

I sit on the couch as the sky grows dark. I play back the day, rewriting different parts. I tell Grandma not to go for her walk. We don’t go all the way up to the roof. When Dad tells me to run, I insist on staying with him. Instead of FaceTiming me, Dad gets away from the water monster. Why did Dad waste his time with that anyway? Or why didn’t he say the normal things? Stuff like I love you. Instead, I got ichor. Whatever that means.

Ichor. The word echoes in my head. I can hear Dad spelling it out.

My body stiff, I shift to pull my phone from my pocket. I do another Mom and Mavis check, which again comes up empty, before Googling ichor.

“What?” I stare at my screen.

It means blood of the gods.

I tense. One of the back spasms that’s plagued me my whole life, pulses through me. I cry out in pain. Dad always make me lie on the floor when this happens, so that’s what I do now.

I lie on my back, stare at the ceiling, and wait for this to pass.