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too high? Maybe they had a safe place they were heading to, a different route. She would probably never know. Tim sat down beside Rachel at the top of the stairs and adjusted his hat. His clothes were mostly dry, the lucky bastard. He cleared his throat.
                  “So, I hate to ask, but do you have any food?”
                  Rachel unzipped her backpack and drew out the large bag of trail mix she had been saving. She handed it to Tim.
                  “Help yourself.”
                  “Sweet! Thanks. I have some water, if you want some.”
                  He opened his backpack and they traded necessities. Tim crunched on a handful and stared down the stairs at the water flooding the first floor. He sighed.
                  “I should have listened to my mom. She told me to not take a job on the coast.”
                  “Yeah. I should have just gone camping for my vacation.”
                  “I guess I just started tuning everything out. Like about climate change and how any storm could become this big thing. Where I lived, there were just droughts. I thought a little rain would be nice, actually. Stupid.”
                  Rachel nodded. She took a drink from the water bottle and carefully screwed the cap back on tightly. In her head, she counted out the three juice cans still in her bag.
                  “Remember those prepping lessons in middle school? Did you have those? Where you had to do a posterboard of the most important canned foods or whatever?”
                  Tim laughed. He brushed trail mix crumbs from his hands.
                  “Totally! I don’t remember much though. If it was homework, I didn’t really bother to pay much attention. I wish I did. My mom always did the shopping for stuff like that.”
    “Same here,” Rachel said. 
    Tim absentmindedly adjusted Rachel’s blanket as it slipped from her shoulder. His eyes looked distant, like he was thinking of something far away. Rachel suddenly missed her brother.
    I hope he’s ok. All the crazy stuff going on.
    “Even when storms and disasters happen all the time, it still doesn’t seem real until it happens to you,”  Tim said, his eyes clearing. “I guess that’s ‘cause people are really selfish. Assholes. All of us. We don’t take stuff seriously until it affects us.”
    Tim and Rachel didn’t say anything else for a few minutes, both just looking at the water below them and listening to the rain. It had been four hours since the earthquake when Tim asked Rachel if it looked like the water was rising. It was.
    “We should go on the roof,” Tim suggested. “If there are rescue choppers around, they’ll see us.”
    The two of them shoved the kayak out the biggest window they could find and followed it to the roof. Luckily it wasn’t too slanted, so they could sit comfortably with the kayak between them. It was still raining hard - of course - and Rachel wondered how long it would be until they both got sick. Which was worse: sitting out in the rain or waiting till the water rose to their knees to go and sit out in the rain?
    “I bet the levees broke,” Tim said darkly. “The water just keeps rising. I know it’s raining, but seriously. It’s rising so fast.”
    Rachel got out her phone to check for the time and reception. Her battery was already running low, and she didn’t have any bars. The towers might have been taken down. Tim looked over at her, his hood pulled low over his eyes.
    “Nothing?”
    Rachel shook her head.
    “We’re cut off,” Tim stated. “All alone.”
    His tone was almost mocking, as if he was laughing bitterly at their situation. He still held Rachel’s trail mix and he looked very bedraggled and sad sitting there on the roof, dripping wet, with a plastic bag of crackers and M&M’s clutched in his hands. Below them, cars and pieces of