Author’s note on content: The Valley and the Flood contains depictions of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, including several scenes of panic attacks and a brief description of violent intrusive thoughts.
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Razorbill,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Rebecca Mahoney
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library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Mahoney, Rebecca, author.
Title: The valley and the flood / Rebecca Mahoney.
Description: New York : Razorbill, 2020. | Audience: Ages 12+.
Summary: “When Rose Colter hears a voicemail from her own phone playing on her car radio, she follows the broadcast to the small town of Lotus Valley, where she discovers that she’s the prophesied bringer of a catastrophic flood”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020020594 | ISBN 9780593114353 (hardcover) ISBN 9780593114360 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Supernatural—Fiction. | Prophecies—Fiction.
Post-traumatic stress disorder—Fiction. | Grief—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M34675 Val 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020594
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0
To Grandma, the greatest lover of stories I will ever know:
here’s mine.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Author’s Note
Copyright
Dedication
December 27, Now
One: The Siren
Two: The Spoiler Alert
Three: The Road
Four: The Appointment
Five: The Finish and the Start
May 24, Seven Months Ago
Six: The Split Screen
Seven: The First Day
Eight: The Long Shadow
Nine: This Is a Public Service Announcement
May 30, Seven Months Ago
Ten: The Failure to Communicate
Eleven: The Language of Memory
January 5, Eleven Months Ago
Twelve: The Second Day
July 3, Five Months Ago
Thirteen: The Bringer of Calamity
Fourteen: The Preview of Coming Attractions
Fifteen: The Feature Presentation
Sixteen: The Intermission
Seventeen: The Mockingbird
Eighteen: The Question
August 14, Four Months Ago
Nineteen: The Home Away from Home
December 27, Three Nights Ago
Twenty: The Missed Connections
Twenty-One: The Foregone Conclusion
Twenty-Two: The Dangerous Girl
Twenty-Three: The Night in Question
December 14, Two Years Ago
Twenty-Four: The Objects in Motion
September 17, Three Months Ago
Twenty-Five: The Third Day
Twenty-Six: The Due to the Dead
Twenty-Seven: The Evacuation
December 27, Four Nights Ago
Twenty-Eight: The Answer
Twenty-Nine: The Flood
Thirty: The Return
January 1, Now
Resources
Acknowledgments
About the Author
DECEMBER 27, NOW
NOTE TO SELF: the local time is 11:46 p.m., and there are three hundred and thirty-two miles between Las Vegas, Nevada, and San Diego, California.
The drive is long and hot, snarling through hills and canyons and pockets of nothing. In the daytime, there is life, the smell of rubber and pavement and the sound of traffic. But it is dark now. It is quiet. And this late hour, in this empty place, does not belong to you.
The GPS is below you, a bright pop against the night. It calculates four hours and thirty-one minutes for your drive home.
But you are not going home yet.
One THE SIREN
MY TAILLIGHTS CUT a path down the desert road, flickering with every blink of my hazards. I slide sideways in the driver’s seat until my feet touch pavement, and I look past my trunk, past the steady rhythm of the lights, past where I can see anything at all. But it doesn’t look like anyone else is coming.
And of course they aren’t. It’s been two hours since I merged onto the 15. It’s been twenty minutes since I drove down an unfamiliar exit, following signs for a gas station—which, if it even exists, is still not close enough to see. The only sign of life out here is a radio tower, miles away, blinking its own rhythm back at me. And the people at my destination aren’t expecting me.
It’s all of the things that a driver, alone in the middle of the night, isn’t supposed to do. And most of it was on purpose.
I reach across the dashboard past the radio, blaring the only all-night station I can still get from Vegas, and I unlatch the glove compartment. My hand stays with the door as it descends, ready to close it again the moment I see headlights approaching. But I don’t have that kind of luck.
My laugh comes out as a breath as my fingers find what they’re looking for, just past the car manual and under a pile of napkins: the smooth, cold screen of my phone. It’s like the setup to a joke my stepfather would tell. I thought we were supposed to be the ones hiding your phone, Rosie. That’s what he’d probably say, if he knew about any of this.
It sits flat in my palm, screen blank. I haven’t heard it once since I left Las Vegas. It should be safe to check.
No bars. No signal. That would be why.
“Okay,” I whisper to the lit screen in my hand. “No sudden moves.”
It doesn’t have anything to say to that. Which is what I appreciate about inanimate objects: no back talk. But this time, I’d really like its word.
I leave the door open behind me as I follow the path of my hazards. The phone is an arm’s length away like a scout, and I watch the top corner of the screen for a signal. The way ahead flickers in and out, and I stop only at the very
