Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You) by Rachel Carter

while back we found a small stream and crossed it several times, my sandaled feet sinking into the cold water. The fragile satin of my shoes is still not dry, but it was enough to fool the dogs, to put a few miles between us and them.
    “Up ahead,” Wes says. “Through the trees.”
    I look where he’s pointing and see a barn, one side caved partway in, the roof slanted down, the red color faded and worn. A house once stood nearby, but there is only the foundation left, a slab of concrete already crumbling at the corners.
    “We can rest,” I whisper.
    “No.” Twenty-two sounds almost angry, so different from her usual blankness. “We’ll be too exposed. We need to keep moving.”
    “We can’t keep going on like this. You and I are in gowns. Someone needs to bandage Ti—Thirty-one’s wound. And we need food.”
    “Someone owns this.” She puts her hands on her hips. Her skin is flecked with dried blood, and I see tiny cuts where the glass bit into her. “What if they come back?”
    “Anyone who used to live here is long gone.” Tim is still pale, but his voice is clear and strong. “The house was probably lost in a flood years ago. This area is all floodplains now. But it’s summer, and the waters are low. The barn should be dry.”
    These woods stretch all the way to the dunes, and the newly formed beaches where the waters rose. After the string of natural disasters, people learned from past mistakes and stopped trying to rebuild near the oceans or on old floodplains. Now the waters rise naturally in the spring, spilling over from the rivers and the oceans and onto land like the woods we’ve been hiking through all night.
    The nearest town or city isn’t for miles, the old ones swept away years ago, the highways and roads rebuilt farther inland. We are in the middle of nowhere out here, lost in a wilderness where there used to be none.
    “We’ll stay long enough to get cleaned up,” Wes says. “We could all use new clothes, if we can find them.”
    Twenty-two opens her mouth, but shuts it when Wes gives her a look. She scowls and keeps her hands firmly on her hips, though she follows us through the last few feet of the pine forest. At the edge of the old lawn there is a tangle of weeds and brambles to cross, and they pull at the ruined silk of my dress, scratch the swollen skin of my ankles. After the protection of the woods, it feels overly exposed in this small clearing, and we sprint as we push through the long, untamed grass of the forgotten yard. The barn door is at an angle, and we slip through just as dawn breaks against the edge of the trees.
    Inside it smells like sweet hay and dry wood and the musky, warm scent of horses, though the barn is long empty. The caved-in wall is on the right side, resting on the wooden beams of the old animal stalls and letting in light through the splintered boards. It’s a large space, with a hayloft above our heads and a tack room in the back. I can see a strip of darker wood that runs near the floor—the flood line, where the water rose, and still rises in the rainy months. The way the color fades as it gets to the top reminds me of the rings on a tree, a slow marking of time.
    “If there are clothes, they’ll be in the back,” Wes says.
    “I’ll look.” I walk forward, the heels of my sandals sinking into the soft dirt floor. Wes moves to follow me, but Twenty-two holds him back with a hand on his arm. It is the first time she has touched him not in character as Bea, and I stop, frozen, unable to look away from where she curves her fingers into his mud-spattered black jacket.
    “Come on.” Tim stands beside me. “I want to see if they have any medicine.”
    “Fine. Let’s look.” It is such a small thing, her hand on him, so why does it make my chest hurt so much? I touch the exposed skin near my collar, remembering a time when Wes’s pocket watch would have swung there. It was the only thing that he had from his old life, from his family, who