THE THING THAT made her cry wasn’t the flood, or the gross smelly water she had to walk through, or the trouble she knew she was in for not staying where Mom had told her to stay. And trouble meant Mom would take her phone away, and she wouldn’t be able to post new videos and her KlipSwatch rating would go down, and she wouldn’t know when Dad called and he would be upset and she would lose points. And it was all Mom’s fault for not listening when she said she didn’t want to ride the stupid Ferris wheel.
But that wasn’t what made her cry.
The thing that made her cry happened right before she got back to the beach house. Sea La Vista. And it wouldn’t have happened if she had burned sage to ward off evil spirits. But she couldn’t find any matches, so she had to put the bottle of sage in the microwave instead. Clearly, it didn’t work.
None of it happened how it was supposed to happen.
She was supposed to stay where Mom said. Don’t. Go. Anywhere, Mom said. But then she heard someone scream tsunami! And then people started running. People ran past her, and all of them looked afraid. Evie was afraid. She heard the wave crash. She looked up but she didn’t see Mom or Mason or Timmy. Just feet, dangling from Ferris wheel cars. Hands waving. People shouting. More people ran past. The wave sloshed over the boardwalk. Evie screamed, and then she was running, running, running, caught in the wave of beachgoers, running past the Tilt-A-Whirl, the giant slide, the surf shops and the souvenir shops and the fudge and ice-cream shops, the parking lots, out into the street. And when she reached the other side, the wave caught her. It lapped at her calves and washed over her feet. It wasn’t very scary, actually. But it had a sour smell, like the squirrel that crawled into their chimney at home and died there, but weirder and worse. A Not Normal smell.
The wave was a Not Normal wave. It rolled up over the street and stayed there. The crosswalk lights went out. The Ferris wheel stopped turning. Evie stopped running. She climbed up onto the hood of a parked car. She sat there on the car, in the hot sun, uncertain what to do. She wished she had her phone so she could film what was going on. She wished Mom had listened when she said she didn’t want to ride the Ferris wheel, because then they’d all still be together.
Evie was about to walk back to the spot where Mom told her to wait, but then she saw the dog. It was a small dog, grayish-brown, with rounded ears and a long tail. It stood on the curb, partially submerged in the putrid water, all alone.
Evie climbed down from the car. She walked toward the dog. But when she got close, the dog took off.
Evie ran after it. She couldn’t just leave it lost and alone. It had probably gotten separated from its family during the flood. It wouldn’t be able to find their scent when everything reeked of weird dead squirrel. She had to help it.
The dog skittered down the flooded sidewalk. Evie ran after it. One block, two blocks, three-four-five. She lost count. She imagined its family—two kids, girl and boy, mom and dad, all together—calling out for their poor lost pup. She imagined the kids’ relief when she returned their pet, the happy tears in their eyes, the reward money their parents would give. Twenty dollars at least, but maybe fifty or a hundred. She wondered what type of dog it might be. Maybe a Chihuahua or a terrier. Part pug. A mutt. She knew dogs, but she’d never seen one that looked quite like this.
At last the dog ran up a stairway onto an enclosed porch, and from there it leapt onto a patio table, and for a moment Evie thought she had it cornered. She reached out to grab it.
“It’s okay, puppy,” she cooed. “We’ll find your family. We’ll get you home.”
Then the dog swished its whiskers and wagged its thin, hairless tail, and Evie realized it wasn’t a dog. It was a rat.
She screamed. “Ahh! Ahhhhhhhhhh! Gross!”
She turned and ran, before it could pounce. Gross, gross, gross. She had almost touched it. With her hands. The thought of hands-on-rat made her stomach sick. The street was still flooded with foul water. The spot she was supposed to stay put in was now very far away. She should go back, she knew. She could see the Ferris wheel in the distance, its spokes glinting silver in the sunlight. But she couldn’t go back that way, because the rat had come from that direction. The rat had contaminated all the water between her and the Ferris wheel. The rat had likely originated from a whole disgusting colony of water rats. If she waded back toward the carnival, she might get swarmed. She shivered at the thought of all this grossness.
She had only one logical option: Proceed in the opposite direction, away from rats. Back to the beach house.
She followed the road, her back to the Ferris wheel, the sun on her face. The shin-deep water kept her feet cool, at least, but it slowed her pace. She recognized landmarks along the way: the turquoise motel with the neon palm tree sign, the Burger Hut’s red-and-white awning, the lake where you could ride paddleboats shaped like giant geese. Her fear and revulsion faded, and in its wake, she felt independent and resourceful. She could walk all the way home. By herself. She remembered the door code. She could let herself in. She could call Mom on her phone. Mom might be mad, but she would also be proud. Evie was quick-witted, kind to animals, capable of escaping a tidal wave and escorting herself home through foreign flooded streets.
A blue truck pulled up in the street behind her. Its window rolled down.
“Evie?”
Evie looked up at the man inside the truck. He looked maybe kind of familiar, but he also looked like every other grown-up man.
“Evie, it’s Dax. The contractor. Your mom asked me to look for you. You okay?”
Evie nodded.
“Do you want a ride?”
“I don’t know you. I’m not supposed to accept rides from strange men.”
“Fair enough. I’m going to tell your mom that you’re walking home, okay? That’s where you’re headed, right?”
“Yeah,” Evie answered, before she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to tell strange men where she was going either. But the truck didn’t follow her. It made a U-turn and drove off toward the rat-infested water.
Evie kept walking. She saw the beach house ahead. SEA LA VISTA. She was almost there. She had made it. She felt relieved, verging on gleeful. She walked faster. She whistled to herself, a marching song she had heard Timmy sing.
“Do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do—”
She stopped.
Something moved in the water, right in front of her.
Her heart thudded. Her legs felt stuck. Her vision narrowed, darkening around the edges, as if she’d slipped into a tunnel. The beach house now seemed impossibly far away. The water churned around her feet. She saw, on the street, in her path, covered with murky water, a drain. And there was something coming out of it, something spindly and black. Like a tentacle.
It coiled out of the drain. It vined toward her, and she couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. She felt cold and powerless, and the world receded around her.
Then a car sped past. Its wheels drenched her with dirty water. But the spray snapped her back. And when her eyes could see clear again, the thing, whatever it was, was gone.