Maybe if the Plague continued, Brooks’s body would become as unrecognizable as what was inside of him. Since the Plague had overtaken him, his clothes didn’t fit right. He caught glimpses of his body in reflections and was startled by his gait. He walked differently, lurching. A change had come into his eyes. A hardness had entered. It clouded his vision.
Fourteen days of enslavement had taught Brooks that the Plague needed him for his memories. He hated to surrender them, but he didn’t know how to turn them off. Reveries were the only place Brooks felt at peace. The Plague became a patron at a movie theater, watching the show, learning more about Eureka.
Brooks understood more than ever that she was the star of his life.
They used to climb this pecan tree in her grandmother’s backyard. She was always several branches above him. He was always racing to catch her—sometimes envious, always awed. Her laughter lifted him like helium. It was the purest sound Brooks would ever know. It still pulled him toward her when he heard it in a hallway or across a room. He had to know what was worth her laughter. He had not heard that sound since her mother died.
What would happen if he heard it now? Would her laughter’s music expel the Plague? Would it give his soul the strength to resume its rightful place?
Brooks writhed on the sand, his mind on fire, his body at war. He clawed at his skin. He cried out in anguish. He yearned for a moment’s peace.
It would take a special memory to accomplish that—
Kissing her.
His body stilled, soothed by the thought of Eureka’s lips on his. He indulged in the entire event: the heat of her, the unexpected sweetness of her mouth.
Brooks would not have kissed her on his own. He cursed the Plague for that. But for a moment—a long, glorious moment—every future ounce of sorrow had been worth having Eureka’s mouth on his.
Brooks’s mind jolted back to the beach, back to his bloody situation. Lightning struck the sand nearby. He was drenched and shivering, up to his calves in the ocean. He started to devise a plan, stopped when he remembered it was useless. The Plague would know, would prevent Brooks from doing anything that contradicted its desires.
Eureka was the answer, the goal that Brooks and his possessor had in common. Her sadness was unfathomable. Brooks could take a little self-inflicted pain.
She was worth anything, because she was worth everything.
TURN THE PAGE FOR A Q & A WITH LAUREN KATE
A Q & A WITH LAUREN KATE
What inspired you to write Eureka’s story?
When I lived in rural Northern California, the nearby lake was a flooded valley that had once been the site of a small village. Imagined ghosts of this underwater town haunted me, leading to an obsession with flood narratives, from Noah’s Ark to Plato’s Atlantis to the Epic of Gilgamesh.
I was especially drawn to the legend of Atlantis: a glorious and advanced ancient civilization that disappeared so completely under the ocean it slipped into the realm of myth. For several years I knew I wanted to write about Atlantis, but I didn’t know whose voice would tell this story—and isn’t that always the most important question?
Inspiration struck one day when I was crying. My husband was listening to my sob story, never mind what it was about. He couldn’t reach me; I was trapped under the flood of my emotions, as tear shedders often are. But then he extended his hand, touched the corner of my eye with his finger, and captured the tear welling up. I watched as he brought my tear to his face, as he blinked it into his own eye. Suddenly we were bound by this tear. Suddenly I wasn’t alone. And suddenly I had the first scene between my hero and the boy she loved.
That tear unlocked this story. Instead of an angry god generating the deluge, a single tear incites Teardrop’s apocalypse. And in the tale I wanted to tell, I knew that a tear capable of flooding the world could only be shed over a mighty heart broken.