Page 18 of Leveling

Chapter 13

The top floor was a mess. Puddles everywhere, dripping tarps, ropes hanging, stuff bedraggled. Beckett had uncovered the kitchen and placed a coffeepot on a burner and had cooked a couple of eggs, but the rest of the place was trashed.

Luna took a plate of food and a mug of coffee and sat in a chair right in the middle of the driest part of the rooftop. Beckett didn’t pretend to come with her. She was pretty sure that was the last of his dimply smile; he had relapsed to distracted and worried. The water had risen. He had said it was true and here it was.

He excused himself by saying, “I need to tell the mainland what’s going on,” and stood at the kitchen counter talking into a radio while he ate. Then he paced. And then he talked some more. After a while, Luna realized the discussion was over.

She met Beckett under the kitchen tarp, where he leaned, hands on the counter, head down. “They’re sending a chopper for me. I told them the water was rising and they’re sending a chopper.” This was what Beckett had wanted for a long time, yet here it was, and it felt like somehow he had failed.

Luna said, “That’s good.”

“It’s just...I’m not sure I should go. I still have a month to go here and months left of my tour and—this is all just so much harder than...”

“Yeah.” Luna smiled.

Beckett wanted to leave, but he didn’t want to quit. Luna could see how that would be difficult to reconcile.

“When is the helicopter coming?”

Beckett didn’t want to answer her. She would paddle the same expanse of deep ocean that he would fly across. He felt like a wimp. “I have twenty-four hours.”

Luna nodded.

He shook himself out of his self-pitying funk. “We should get you ready for your trip.”

Luna shook her head. “No, I’ll wait and go tomorrow morning. When you go.”

Beckett bit the side of his lip. “I really think you ought to go now—”

“I know, but a day won’t matter in the scheme of things. I can help you pack up.”

Beckett looked skeptical. This was his job. Should he ask for her help? She had more important things to do. “I don’t know Anna.”

“If more Nomads show up I can help you explain the edict. And my family—they haven’t returned yet, it looks like tomorrow before they come back. I should be here.”

Beckett screwed his eyes. “They won’t come back until tomorrow?”

“That was a big storm. They’ll meet up with me in the morning.”

“Okay, but promise me.”

Luna smiled, “Due haste, east, mainland pronto, yeah, yeah, did you see how fast I was this morning? I got this thing.”

“If something happened to you because you stayed…”

“What could happen? I’m literally an ocean god.” Luna cocked a bicep and kissed it.

Beckett smiled, dimples and all. “I could probably use the company, seeing the water over the floor like that kind of...”

“I know. Tell me what we should get done.”

Beckett and Luna spent the morning taking down tarps and storing them away in trunks. They wound straps and ropes and took down unnecessary shading. In between chores Luna walked along the garden rows eating strawberries and tiny cucumbers.

Beckett was on one side of a tarp with Luna on the other, giving it a snap before the fold, when she said, “I never met anyone who volunteered to do something so selfless. We Waterfolk are kind of all of us together-independent.”

Beckett stopped in mid-step-fold-together. “Waterfolk?”

“Yes, that’s what we call ourselves, and seriously, what did they teach you in that training?”

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