Read Waterfall for Free Online Page B

twigs and larger wood chips. “If you need more fuel before we’re back,” he said to Cat.
    “You should stay with my dad,” she told Ander. “Your cordon could protect him—”
    He looked away. “My family can erect cordons bigger than football fields. I can’t even shelter someone standing right beside me.”
    “But back there, in your arms after the wave—” Eureka said.
    “That just happened without me trying, but when I try …” He shook his head. “I’m still learning my strength. They say it gets easier.” He glanced over her shoulder, as if reminded of his family. “We should hurry.”
    “You don’t even know where we are, where we’re going—”
    “I know two things,” Ander said, “the wind and you. The wind is the way I got us across this ocean and you are the reason why. But I can only help you if you’ll trust me.”
    Eureka remembered the day he’d found her running in the woods in the innocent rain. He’d dared her to get her thunderstone wet. She’d laughed because it sounded so absurd. You could get anything wet.
    If it turns out I’m right,
he’d said,
will you promise to trust me?
    Eureka liked trusting him. It gave her physical pleasure to trust him, to touch his fingertips and say the words aloud: “I trust you.”
    She looked behind her and saw lightning strike a distant wave. She wondered what happened at the point of impact. She turned and gazed at the mountains and wondered what lay on the other side.
    She tightened her grip on the purple tote bag under her arm. Wherever she was going,
The Book of Love
was going, too. She leaned down to kiss her father. His eyelids tensed but didn’t open. She hugged the twins.
    “Stay here with Cat. Look after Dad. We won’t be long.”
    Her eyes met Cat’s. She felt awful for leaving.
    “What?” Cat asked.
    “If I hadn’t been so angry and depressed,” Eureka said, “if I’d been one of those happy people in the hall, do you think my tears would have done this?”
    “If you’d been one of those happy people in the hall,” Cat said, “you wouldn’t be you. I need you to be you. Your dad needs you to be you. If Ander’s right, and you’re the only one who can stop this flood, the whole world needs you to be you.”
    Eureka swallowed. “Thanks.”
    Cat nodded toward the stony hills. “So go on with your bad self.”
    Ander’s hand found its way into Eureka’s. She squeezed and started walking inland, hoping Cat was right and wondering how much there was left of the world to save.



5
DEEP FREEZE
    E ureka and Ander followed a swollen stream through a shallow valley and into a world of soft white stone. They crossed a forest of rocky cones flanked by table mountains. They held hands as cacti bordering the stream reached out with needles inches long and sharp enough to tear away the skin.
    Eureka worried about the cacti weathering the salt in the rain. She imagined her favorite plants around the world—orchids in Hawaii, olive groves in Greece, orange trees in Key West, birds-of-paradise in California, and the comforting labyrinths of live oak branches back home on the bayou—their fibers parched and shriveled, disintegrating into salt. She squinted to make the cactus needles appear longer, thicker, sharper, and imagined them fighting back.
    Her mud-obscured running shoes reminded Eureka of the photos her teammates used to post after cross-country practice in stormy weather. Brown and gray points of pride. She wondered whether anyone would enjoy a rainy run ever again. Had she robbed the rain of its beauty?
    They came around a bend where the steel-blue bay was visible below. There was the rock where they’d made landfall and the tall triangular boulder behind which Cat and her family crouched in front of Ander’s fire, hanging on. The boulder looked tiny. They had traveled farther than she had thought. It made her nervous to be so far away.
    She looked beyond the boulder, at the ocean spreading around them in