Signal in the Water

The bus slid along the river road like a dull insect, windows drizzled with the smell of diesel and damp weeds. Ivy pressed her forehead to the glass and watched the brown water flex under a slow wind. Brackenford’s flood siren tower rose from the levee like a tuning fork planted in concrete. She remembered how, as a kid, they’d stop their bicycles under it during scheduled tests and feel the sound vibrate in their ribs. Now the metal ladder was chained, the paint flaked, and the platform’s rail was bent where somebody had thrown rocks.

The driver called her stop. Ivy stood, backpack on, and stepped into the thin light of late afternoon. The river’s breath mixed mud and a faint tang of engine oil. Across the street: a billboard with a smiling face promising Renewal, the VALE name stamped in silver along the bottom. People squinted past it and hurried on with groceries and worn coats. She dragged her rolling suitcase toward her grandmother’s rowhouse, its brick darker than the others, and the gutter full of last year’s leaves.

Mail overflowed from the slot. Ivy gathered it into a stack on the old hall table, wiped rain from her bangs with the sleeve of a denim jacket, and thumbed through coupons and pastel envelopes from churches. One parcel was wrapped in brown paper and tied with butcher’s string, the corners softened by handling. No return address. The postmark had bled into a cloudy circle. She set it down, listened to the house—pipes ticking, the refrigerator’s uneven hum—and pulled a pocketknife from a mug of pens.

Inside lay a cassette tape in a clear case, the plastic yellowed, and a note on lined paper: Press PLAY under the tower at dusk. The handwriting had the neatness of someone who learned on a slate, each letter squared. The tape’s label read only KBR in black marker.

She laughed once, a quick release of nervousness. A prank from an old classmate? Except she hadn’t told anyone she was back. A cold tremor ran along her spine, not fear exactly, more like gravity shifted under her heels. She found her old portable player in a drawer that still held paper clips and a rubber band ball fossilized into one lump. Batteries rolled in a tin; she shook two out and slid them into place.

The siren tower waited across the road, mutely patient. Ivy tucked the cassette into the player but didn’t press play. She opened the window a crack and let river air into the hallway until the smell of paper and dust thinned. She turned the note over. Nothing on the back but a faint smudge that looked like a thumbprint smoothed by erasures. Outside, a gull raked the sky and screeched, as if mocking the whole thing.