Say It Right.

Mum is standing in the kitchen with the phone pressed so hard against her ear the screen has left a white mark on her cheek. "You mean everything to her, Mum. You know that." 

 In the next room, Rita's asleep, fists curled by her ears. 

You sit on the windowsill. 

The sea has reached the road. 

Yesterday you could still see the tops of the street signs. Now there's only water, flat and dark and moving in a way that water in a street shouldn't move, and somewhere underneath it is the Khaliqis' letterbox, and the little park where Dad taught you to ride a bike without training wheels, one hand on the seat, promising he wouldn't let go, and letting go anyway. 

Your duffel bag is sitting by the door. 

You packed your clothes first. Then charger, your toothbrush, the photo of Dad from the lake, the paperback Grandma gave you when you were eight with her handwriting inside the cover- for my brave girl. You stood in the middle of your room for ten minutes deciding what else deserved to survive you leaving it behind. In the end, almost nothing did. 

Fifteen years, and it fits in one bag 

The stuffed star is still on the bed. You've had it since before you have real memories, which means every memory you have of it is really just a memory of being told about it. 

Your name is carved into the door. Dad did it the weekend before it happened, kneeling with a pencil between his teeth and a Dremel while Mum yelled up the stairs that he was ruining good wood. 

You run your thumb over the janky letters once. 

"Layla!" 

You sling the bag over your shoulder and don't let yourself look back a second time. 

Rita's awake now, crying against Mum's shoulder, her whole small body working at it. 

"Shh. Shh, baby, I know." 

Mum reaches into the cupboard for the formula tin. Shakes it. Nothing rattles. She pries the lid off anyway and tips it over her palm, like the tin might be lying, like there might be one more scoop hiding in the seam. 

Nothing. 

"There's none left?" 

"I know, Layla." 

"Then what's she going to eat?" 

"The camp has supplies." Mum says it way you say something you're hoping is true harder than something you know is true. 

"You don't actually know that." 

"Mai told me." A beat. "Last night. On the radio." 

Rita wails again, and Mum closes her eyes for exactly one second- you count it- before she reaches for the flask and pours what's left of the warm water into the bottle. It barely covers the bottom. 

That's it. That's what's left. 

Mum picks up her phone. 

Ringing. Then the click into voicemail- Grandma's voice, chirpy, recorded years ago: You've reached Anisah, leave me a message and I'll ring you back, unless it's a scam, in which case, shame on you. 

Mum hangs up. Tries again. 

Voicemail. 

Again. 

Something cold moves through your stomach and settles there. 

"She was supposed to meet us at the corner." 

"I know." 

"She said she'd come." 

"I know, Layla." Mum's voice cracks on the second one, just slightly, just enough that you know she's been holding this same fear since before you noticed. 

She sets the phone facedown on the counter, like she can't look at it anymore. 

"We have to go." 

"What?" 

"Now. We're leaving now." 

"You said we'd wait till eight." 

"It's eight-seventeen." 

"Then wait till nine. What's another forty minutes?" 

"Forty minutes is the difference between the causeway and no causeway." Mum's hands are already moving, already zipping the bag, already becoming a person who has decided. "I need you to get your shoes on." 

"We go get her first." 

"We can't." 

"You haven't even tried." 

"I have been calling that woman for an hour." It comes out sharper than she means it to- that woman, not my mother, not Grandma- and you watch her hear herself say it. 

"So drive there." 

"Layla." 

"You have a car. Drive there." 

"And do what? Carry Rita through a stairwell that's already taking on water, to convince a woman who's been telling me for a decade she'd rather die in that flat than leave it?" 

The word die just sits there in the kitchen with you. 

Mum puts the bottle to Rita's mouth and Rita takes it like she's been drowning, too, in her own small way. 

"Look at her," Mum says, quieter now. "She hasn't eaten right since yesterday." 

"I know." 

"She needs formula, and water that isn't rationed out of a flask, and she needs it today, not eventually." 

"And Grandma needs someone to come get her. Today. Not eventually." 

Mum looks at you like you've hit her. 

"I am not risking your sister to save your grandmother." 

"Then don't. Leave her with me." 

She actually laughs- one short, ugly sound, more shock than humor. 

"You're fifteen." 

"So?" 

"So you don't get a vote in this." 

"I get a vote in whether I let you leave her there to die." 

"Stop." 

"You know that's what's happening." 

"Layla, I need you to stop." 

"You promised her." Your voice is doing something you don't recognize. "You told her, in this kitchen, that you would not leave without her." 

Mum goes very still. 

"I promised her I'd get you and Rita somewhere safe. That's the promise I have to keep today." 

"You're choosing." 

"Yes." It comes out before she can stop it, flat and terrible, and you watch it land on her the same way it lands on you. "I'm choosing." 

Neither of you says anything for a second. Rita's still nursing the bottle, oblivious, the only person in the room who doesn't understand what's just been said out loud for the first time. 

"I didn't mean it like..." 

"You did." 

"Layla-" 

"I hate you." 

Mum doesn't flinch. That's the worst part. She just looks at you the way you'd look at weather. Something you can't argue with, only survive. 

"Get in the car." 

You don't move. 

"Layla!" 

You pick up your bag. 

You get in the car. 

The drive to the evacuation point happens in a silence that has weight to it, that presses against the windows along with the rain. Rita sleeps, worn out from crying, her small chest rising and falling in the rearview mirror. You watch the streets instead of watching Mum. Abandoned cars, doors hanging open. People walking with garbage bags slung over their shoulders like Santa Claus doing the worst delivery run of his life. A dog, alone, standing on a porch roof, barking at nothing, at everything. 

Sirens. Not one. A chorus of them, layered, coming from different directions disorienting your sense of sound. 

The car stops being able to go forward about four blocks out. A police cruiser's parked sideways across the road, an officer waving people toward a footpath that disappears into the crowd. 

"Come on." Mum's already out, Rita against her chest, one hand reaching back for you automatically, the way she has since you were small enough to lose in a supermarket. "Stay close." 

You don't answer. 

"Layla." 

"I heard you." 

You walk. The camp is inland- that's the only direction that matters now, the only word anyone's saying. Inland. inland, keep moving inland. The crowd moves like a single slow animal, and you let yourself be carried by it for exactly as long as it takes to write four sentences on the back of a Woolies receipt with a pen you find in your pocket. 

I'm sorry. I couldn't leave her there. I'll bring her to you, I promise. Don't wait for me, get Rita somewhere safe first- I’ll come back... 

You fold it twice. Mum's shifting Rita's blanket, distracted, and you slide the paper into the side pocket of her bag the way you'd slide a hand into a stranger's without them noticing, and then you take one step back. 

Another. 

She doesn't look up. 

You turn, and you run. 

You hear the crowd before you hear anything else- the wrongness of moving against it, shoulders catching yours, a woman's voice sharp in your ear: "Wrong way, they're evacuating that way-" and then you're past her, past all of them, into a street that's emptying out behind you like a held breath. 

The first car you check is locked. The second, locked. The third, locked, and you punch the window hard enough to hurt your fist. Fourth. Fifth. Your breath is coming in short, useless bursts now, more panic than air, and the water is climbing past your ankles every time you stop to try a door.

The sixth is locked too.

The seventh isn't. The door gives under your hand and you almost fall into the seat, and there - you can't believe it, you actually laugh, one crooked, wrong sound. There's a key already in the ignition.

You turn it.

The engine cranks, catches, stutters, dies.

"No. No, no, come on-"

You turn it again. It cranks longer this time, almost gets there, and then dies exactly the same way, like it's mocking you.

Your hands are shaking too hard to hold the key steady. You try a third time. A fourth. The battery's starting to sound tired, weaker each time, and some part of you knows you're about to flood it.

"Please."

Nothing.

You slam your palm against the wheel and get out, back into colder water, crying without noticing when it started, still running, past an eighth car with no key visible through the glass, when a man bursts out of a building across the street.

"Hey! Get away from the water's edge, that current will-" 

"My grandmother's still inside!” You intersect “South side, near Tivendale road" 

"That whole block's underwater already-" 

"She isn't.” You cut him off again. 

He looks at you for one second too long, the way adults do when they're deciding whether a kid in front of them is lying or just terrified, and then he reaches into his jacket and throws you a set of keys. 

"Blue Holden SVR, half up on the curb. Go- and don't stop for anything that isn't her." 

You don't ask why he has a spare car key on him in the middle of a flood evacuation, or why he's giving it to a stranger's kid. You catch the keys and you run. 

The engine turns over on the third try. You pull out into water that's already lapping at the door sills, past a bus stranded diagonal across both lanes, around a car sliding sideways with nobody visibly steering it, and somewhere in the part of your brain that's still capable of noticing things, you register that your hands are shaking too hard to be steering as well as you need to be. 

You don't stop registering it. You just keep driving. 

You arrive. The stairwell is nearly black. Your phone flashlight throws a cone of light that shakes with your hand. 

First flight, clear. Second flight, a suitcase someone's abandoned, and you climb over it without breaking stride. Something soft brushes your ankle in the dark water pooling on the landing- a child's shoe, you realize, only after it's already floated past- and you don't let yourself think about whose foot it came off of. 

There's a body on the third landing. 

Face down. One arm bent underneath at an angle arms don't bend. Clothes gone dark and heavy with water. You make yourself look at it for one full second- because some part of you thinks looking away is its own kind of lie- and then you step around it and keep going, because you have seen too much today to stop for anything between here and Grandma's door. 

You reach the fourth floor. 

You knock. 

Nothing. 

"Grandma!" 

The door opens. 

She looks at you for a long moment before she says anything, and something in her face does a complicated thing- relief and grief arriving at exactly the same time, like they're two sides of the same coin. 

"You came...” 

You can't answer yet. You're still catching your breath. 

"Where's your mother?" 

"At the evac point." 

"And Rita?" 

"With her. They're fine. They're safe." 

Grandma closes her eyes. 

"What did you do, Layla." 

"I came for you." 

"You shouldn't have." 

"I know." 

"You promised your mother you'd go." 

"I know." 

She looks at you for a long moment and then steps back from the door. 

"Come in." 

"Grandma, we don't have time, the water's coming up the stairwell-" 

"I know." 

"Then come." 

She looks around the flat instead- at the photographs on the wall, the sofa Dad used to fall asleep on during Sunday visits, the Kmart clock on the mantel that's kept perfect time since before you were born- and then back at you, and you understand, half a second before she says it, exactly what she's going to say. 

"I can't." 

"You don't get to do this." 

"I know." 

"You don't get to just- decide you're finished." 

"I know." 

"You're coming with me." Your voice is climbing the same way it did with mum. "I didn't come all this way for you to just sit here and-" 

"Layla." 

"No." 

"You have to go back." 

"I'm not leaving you." 

"You have to." 

"I left Mum," you say, and it comes out cracked open, more than you meant to give her. "I left Mum because I thought if I could just get to you, I could fix it. I could fix the thing she couldn't do. I could be the one who didn't leave anybody behind." 

Grandma's eyes go bright and wet. 

"Oh, sweetheart." She crosses the room and takes your face in both hands, her palms warm and soft against your cheeks, exactly the way they've felt every single time she's done this since you were old enough to remember. "You already did the thing you came to do." 

"I didn't do anything. You're still here." 

"You came," she says. "That's the whole thing. That's all of it." 

"It's not enough." 

"It's everything." Her thumb catches a tear on your cheekbone before it falls. "I love you too much to let you carry me down four flights of water so we can both drown together instead of just me." 

"Don't say that." 

"It's true whether I say it or not." 

She lets go of your face and crosses to the dresser. 

She takes a jewelry box and two photo albums from the dresser and presses them into your arms before you can refuse them. 

"No. I'm not taking these like this is- like this is goodbye-" 

"You are." 

She opens the box. The wedding ring- her ring, the one that's never once left her hand in the forty years you've been alive to notice- sits inside on faded velvet. 

"No. Grandma, no." 

"Take it." 

"It's yours." 

"It won't be, in about an hour." She says it simply, without cruelty, the way you'd state a fact about the tide. She closes your fingers around it. "You carry it. You'll know what to do with it eventually. I don't need to know what." 

Outside, further now than it was five minutes ago, a siren changes pitch- the sound sirens make right before they stop.

"Go," Grandma says. 

You hug her instead. She holds on harder than you expect, hard enough that you can feel her heart against your chest, steady, unhurried, like it hasn't gotten the news yet about anything. 

"I love you," you say into her shoulder. 

"I love you too. Go find your mother and your sister. Tell them-" she stops, decides against whatever she was going to say and stays silent. 

You pull back. She touches your cheek once more. 

"Go." 

You go. You don't let yourself look back from the doorway- you already know you'll lose whatever nerve you have left if you do- but you hold onto the picture of her, sitting very straight on the green sofa, hands folded in her lap like she's waiting for a bus in the part of your mind that isn't currently occupied with staying alive. 

The stairwell is silent in a way it wasn't two minutes ago. No voices below. No footsteps. Just the uneven slap of your own shoes. 

As you hurry down the stairs, the thought keeps coming back, louder each time.

Go back to mum.

Go back to Rita.

Tell mum you're sorry.

Hug her and tell her you didn't mean it.

Tell her you understand why she did it

Go back.

Go back..

Go back...

Say it right this time-

Your foot catches on something soft and heavy in the dark; the body. And the floor is gone before you understand why.

The albums leave your arms first. The jewelry box hits the wall and springs open, and the ring skips once across the concrete, flashing under your flashlight.

You reach for it,

Your head hits the concrete corner of the step.

You don't get to go back and say it right. You don't get to say it at all.