The Tidebook

The tomatoes leaned on twine like tired dancers, their skins taut and warm. Leila crouched between planter boxes, the rubber soles of her shoes tacky on the roof’s blistered tar, and pinched away a yellowing leaf. A gull cut across the afternoon, its shadow sliding along the faded mural of a crane painted on the building next door. Harborview’s waterfront sprawled below—salt smell, diesel, and the faint metallic tang that came after a hot day when the tide pulled back to show the city’s underbelly.

She got a text from her mother—bring jasmine rice, please, and a sack of scallions—and tucked the phone into the pocket of her overalls. The little radio on the milk crate hissed. “High tide at nineteen-thirty,” a soft voice said, the volunteer weather watcher from Pier Nine. “Watch for slosh on Buckle Street.”

“Like anyone forgets,” Leila murmured. She pushed her hair under a bandana and stood, the rooftop garden all around her—basil scent, soil damp from her last rinse, little flags her neighbors had labeled: chard, cilantro, ghost peppers that her grandmother always whispered to as if plants preferred secrets.

Below, an air horn honked twice. A freight truck edged along Canal, its tires sending gritty rainbows through puddles. Across the way, the new seawall glared a pale concrete white. Someone had painted a line of sunflowers at its base, bright faces turned toward a slice of gray sky.

“Leila!” The building’s super, Mr. Ortiz, stepped out from the stairwell door with an armful of laundry. “You talking to your plants again?”

“They talk back,” she said.

He grinned, teeth flashing against his salt-and-pepper beard. “Tell them to vote, too.”

“Already registered.” She brushed soil from her knees. Her palms held the clean smell of tomato stems, and for a moment it calmed the tremor she only noticed at night, when the wind rattled the window screens and the old drainpipes gurgled like someone whispering.

A scooter clattered over the rooftop hatch. Yara, the kid from three floors down, popped her head up and flopped onto the tar. “Your mom sent me to remind you,” she said between breaths. “Rice and scallions. She gave me a dumpling advance.”

“Bribery works.”

“Also, you got mail. It looked official.” Yara made a face. “Don’t fight me for the last sesame cookie.”

Leila took the envelope as if it might bite. The City crest. Thin paper. “You can have the cookie,” she said, fingers already feeling for a tear. The seal opened with a soft sigh that sounded like the tide turning.

She didn’t read it yet. She folded the letter back into the envelope and slid it into her back pocket, where it pressed like a coin too hot to hold. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go get that rice before the store closes.”