She’s not often allowed to stay home by herself, but the woman who runs the daycare evacuated before the storm and still hasn’t returned. Wanda hopes she won’t come back at all, and the truth is, she might not. That’s not unusual these days. The population thins with each passing year. Every time the schools close, a few more students are missing when they reopen. The inhabitants of Rudder are slowly catching on that the time to cut their losses has arrived. But Wanda doesn’t think of it in these terms. She has been watching the town empty, the water rise, the storms pummel, as far back as she can remember. This is the rhythm she was born to. Kirby is old enough to remember arguments about whether climate change was real. Lucas is old enough to remember when tourists still came. But to Wanda, these things are only stories, so distant they might as well be fiction.
She would have preferred to be on storm duty this week, playing in the cab of the bucket truck while Kirby and Lucas work on the downed lines, but Kirby got in trouble after a surprise visit from the city manager the last time he brought her along. So here she is, home alone, forced to be either bored or bad. She squints up at the sky, trying to determine the time. Lucas told her you can tell by the position of the sun. One o’clock? Two? She can’t remember which position is which. Clouds are piled high against the flat land, billowing layers of whipped cream that taste like warm, wet earth. She decides that today is the day after all.
The Edge is the place where the ocean meets the boardwalk. It’s four or five miles away, over the causeway that spans the Intracoastal and down through the sandy blocks filled with Beachside bungalows, but Wanda has been there only a few times. Kirby doesn’t like crossing the causeway, and she isn’t allowed to ride her bicycle on the street by herself. When she asks if he’ll take her, he always says, No joy in visiting the scene of nature’s crimes. She doesn’t know what this means, just that the Edge is one more thing Kirby doesn’t allow. There is so much he doesn’t allow.
Wanda doesn’t remember things like the serenity of pale sand separating the most expensive houses from the water; sun umbrellas planted in the dunes like jewels; gulls descending en masse on picnickers who should know better; the scattered glimmers of jellyfish abandoned by the tide. All this is gone now. All she’ll ever know is the encroaching Edge. The place where the ocean eats away at the streets.
She goes over the route one more time in her mind. It’s difficult to picture—she doesn’t know the roads very well. The Beachside neighborhood might as well be in another state. It’s out the driveway and to the left, that much is easy. And then it’s a long while on that road, and then another left, sort of near the house with the pink shutters, and…here it becomes fuzzy. But, she reasons, this destination is hard to miss. Her bicycle is ready. There’s nothing to bring. It’s just a matter of figuring it out as she goes. So she goes.
When her tires leave the mud of the driveway and hiss against the damp asphalt, there’s no point doubting her plan anymore. Leaning into the wind as it flies down the neck of her ratty, too-big T-shirt, she pedals faster. There is more excitement in this singular rush of speed than there was in all the days since Valerie hit. She pumps her legs, stands up on the pedals. She’d like to let out a whoop but reminds herself that this is a covert operation. Best not to draw attention. Crossing the causeway, she looks over the railing into the river, which froths against the bridge and reaches toward the ruined houses perched on either side of its banks. She’s heard Kirby say that the causeway won’t last much longer, and now, looking down at the hungry water, she understands why. The bridge feels tenuous and impermanent as she crosses it, like a swaying rope bridge across a yawning abyss.
The closer she gets to the waterfront, the more wreckage there is—much of it old, some of it fresh. Houses lie in deconstructed piles by the side of the road: slabs of Sheetrock, strips of wall-to-wall carpet, scattered shingles covered in moss and mold. Many of the structures still standing are abandoned. Ahead, a stranded buoy perches on the embankment, nestled among green waves of soggy grass, but that’s been there for years. In certain places, the road itself is just gone—eaten away in big, jagged bites by an invisible mouth. Here and there, the hum of a generator, but for the most part, quiet: After Valerie, the power is back only in the municipal buildings and the homes nearest to them. That means the emergency clinic, the post office, the fire station—and finally, as of a few days ago, the school and city hall. She dreads returning to her classroom tomorrow, although the promise of air-conditioning is a small consolation. Most of the residential streets, including hers, are still waiting for their electricity, for Kirby’s crew to do a job they barely have enough hands for. Sweltering and waiting.
A station wagon loaded down with an entire life passes Wanda, and a little boy in the back seat gives her the finger as she turns to look in the window. She wonders if they’re coming or going. Returning to see how their home has fared, or heading north for good? She tries to return the gesture, but she’s too slow and by the time she is able to free a hand from the handlebars, the car is gone. She’s in a part of town that she doesn’t recognize. Everything here is battered and salt-stained. The smell of the ocean is strong, rushing into her like a physical thing as she rides—a shove, an embrace. She’s close; that much she knows.
She begins to wonder whether she’s gotten turned around and becomes too busy peering down side streets to notice the ocean looming up out of the sky right in front of her. Her arrival is sudden: One moment there’s pavement, a sand-dusted street lined with rotting bungalows, and then, suddenly, the street ends and the murky water begins. The Edge of everything. In some places, the asphalt is jagged and broken; in others, it slopes right down into the sea. Wanda flips out the kickstand on her bike and approaches the water with caution. She has heard all kinds of stories about what the ocean can do to unsuspecting children, but it doesn’t look so scary here. A wave sweeps up the street a few feet and then slips back out. She finds a rock to sit on and fastens her eyes on the enormous expanse before her. There is a boat out there. A shrimper maybe, trawling out past a mostly sunk marina. To the left, a crumbling high-rise grows up out of the water, a strange sea creature rearing its head. Wanda has heard the stories: These ruins used to be where the rich people lived, but they’re all gone now. Their properties went from beachfront to waterfront to among-the-waves in just a decade. Twenty years ago, this would have been hard to imagine. Now, it just is.
Wanda is loosely aware of the Before. She knows that every year on her birthday the town mourns Hurricane Wanda and the havoc it wrought on their homes, and she knows that this is also the anniversary of her mother’s death. Flip’s, too. These are facts with which she is familiar. But none of it has depth for her. Like the surface of the ever-encroaching waves, it just is, and always has been. All that’s left are artifacts: the ruined high-rises, the milk crate in Kirby’s closet, the child-size bicycle stowed under the porch that she must never touch.
She understands that she isn’t liked at school; that much is obvious. There are smaller reasons for that—her clothes, men’s T-shirts full of holes, or her questions in class, one after another—but none of these things is the whole story. What she doesn’t quite understand is that the town of Rudder is dying, and its inhabitants need a reason. Here is Wanda: born at exactly the wrong time, under exactly the wrong circumstances, given exactly the wrong name. The blame settles on her shoulders easily, small as they are. It’s Rudder’s own mythology, passed from parent to child, gossip that became stories that became beliefs—as thoughtfully constructed as the crumbling homes they live in.