“Exactly what kind of trouble?” Reesie’s voice didn’t sound teenage to her own ears. It sounded small and scared.
“Trouble with the levee, Boone,” Dré answered.
Reesie could only nod. She’d heard over and over in her junior-high Louisiana history classes that one of the things that made New Orleans special was the way most of the city was situated. The city’s bowl-shaped landscape was positioned between Lake Pontchartrain on the north end and the great Mississippi River on the south. The low land was protected by high banks of earth called levees. If the waters rose too high, or if the levees ever leaked, the city could be flooded.
“This water should be in the bathtub!” Eritrea was indignant.
“Yeah, well, bathtubs can overflow, can’t they?” Dré said.
The water was already swirling around their calves. The pale carpet underneath looked like sand at a beach. The heat and heavy humidity in the house was sucking the air away, and Reesie’s chest felt tight. What if she had to swim?
“Miss M, you got something like a crowbar or sledgehammer?” Dré asked.
“Look in that hall closet!” Miss Martine had made her way into the kitchen. Dishes clinked and cabinet doors slammed shut.
Reesie looked at Dré as if he had lost his mind. “Why do you need that?”
“In case we need to chop our way out of the attic, Reesie Boone. Now come on, you and Tree help me get the attic ladder down.”
“This is crazy,” Eritrea murmured, shaking her head. She kicked off her heels. “We just got married!” Her voice was shaking. “This is supposed to be a special time. A happy time, right?”
“Yeah,” Reesie said, strapping her backpack onto her shoulders. “Special.” As she started after Eritrea, something on the dining room table caught her eye—it was Miss Martine’s book of poems. Without thinking, she picked it up to put it into the backpack. Then her eyes traveled up the wall to Louis Armstrong, and she swiped down his picture.
“Who’s in that picture?” Eritrea asked curiously.
“It’s just something special to Miss M,” Reesie said. She knew she sounded rude, but she didn’t feel like trying to explain. Mr. Louis Armstrong and Woman Everlasting were absolutely the last items that would fit before her bag burst at the seams.
Dré pulled one of the heavy dining room chairs into the hall so it was underneath the trapdoor in the ceiling that led to the crawl space.
Reesie and Eritrea held the chair steady so Dré could climb up to reach the latch. He yanked it, and a folding ladder slowly lowered itself. Eritrea grabbed the ladder and pulled while Dré jumped onto it.
“We’d better hurry,” he said. “Miss M, come on!”
Miss Martine came into the hallway holding tightly to a small cooler and a plastic grocery bag.
“You go first,” Dré insisted, taking the cooler and passing it to Eritrea. She pushed her way to the ladder next, barely giving Miss Martine’s dripping slippers time to get halfway up.
“Hey, after you!” Reesie said, but Eritrea didn’t seem to hear—or care. Dré grinned, and a little of his goofiness showed again.
“I still love her, you know?” he said.
Reesie scrambled onto the ladder. She didn’t answer Dré and she didn’t look down. To her relief, when her head poked into the attic, it wasn’t completely dark. Slivers of light shone in through the vents in a small gable at one end. The space was already crowded with old suitcases, boxes, and empty picture frames.
“How come the roof isn’t broken up here?” Reesie asked, trying to squeeze between Eritrea and a beat-up leather trunk.
“That part of the house was added on,” Miss Martine said. “We should stay dry here.”
“Lucky for us!” Dré finally huffed up the ladder, carrying the crowbar. His wild hair brushed against the rafters. Reesie could imagine spiderwebs … and spiders. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Found this in the closet, too!” He held up a small transistor radio. “So far I only got static, but maybe I can switch batteries from one of the flashlights and get it to work.”
“Good thinking,” Miss Martine said. “Teresa? Eritrea? Can you get any calls out on those cell phones?”
“Mine’s dead,” Eritrea said, shaking her head.
Reesie twisted her body and managed to pull her phone out. She squinted at the ghostly screen, which read: NO SERVICE AVAILABLE.
“How long do we have to stay up here, anyway?” Eritrea poked Dré with her elbow.
“Till the water goes down,” he said.
Reesie crawled to the open trapdoor and blinked, looking down. The hallway had become almost too dim for her to make out anything, but the smell of wet furniture and curtains and clothes was already strong. Then she thought she saw a glimmer of water, and she jumped back onto her knees, scraping them on the rough floor.
“I—I think it’s higher!” she whispered.
“Now, let’s not panic,” Miss Martine said. “What would you all be doing if we weren’t stuck up in this musty old crawl space?” Her voice sounded a little too loud and a little too cheerful.
Dré cleared his throat and reached for Eritrea’s hand. “Tree and me would be enjoying our happy new home!” He aimed the beam of his flashlight right at Reesie. “And what about you, Boone?”
Reesie opened her mouth, ready to give him a sharp comeback. Instead tears stung her eyes, and a different answer forced itself into words.
“I’d be turning thirteen.”