A wave, the biggest one I’ve ever seen, coming straight towards me – from the Mississippi River? Over the top of the river wall, at least a third of the distance of the wall. So, what? Fifteen feet? At the low end? I don’t know. I was never all that great at judging distance, especially not at seventeen.

I wasn’t driving when I saw it. My caseworker was. Kelli was a newly graduated college student. At least, that was my guess. I’d had four different caseworkers since both my parents died when I was seven. She was the last.

My first one was an older lady, Janice. I think that was her name. She was all business, not letting any emotions show. If she really cared about me, I’d be surprised. Janice knew her stuff, all the forms necessary to process me through the system like a greased pig – sliding right through the different layers of bureaucracy. She knew her stuff. And the last time I saw her, she dropped me off to my fourth family. I was ten and started to figure out the system.

“Allen? You are a very bright child. Keep your ass in school.” Those were the last words I heard from her. I heard from some other kids who were in her charge that she died one night of a heart attack on her couch, eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake and watching some late-night television infomercial. At least that’s what the kids said. The truth was more horrifying. The EMTs found her early the following day when her neighbor went for coffee, a regular thing between both women. Peering through the curtains, she saw a bulge where the spoon was pushing against the back of her throat. When she didn’t answer, Janice’s next-door neighbor, Besty, called the police.

My next three caseworkers were unremarkable. None of them were working for me, instead bouncing me from home to home because of the foster care system. I stayed with two families the longest, one lasting over a year and the second almost three years, because of loopholes in Missouri’s legal system. Both families wanted to adopt me, but the state’s requirements meant more hoops than ever to jump through, thanks in large part to conservative political actions. Politicians didn’t want to pay for more than they needed to, including me. That meant taking money out of foster care, eliminating the amount each foster family receives for my care. Not exactly caring for the kids in the system. Not that I’m an advocate for one party or the other, but if I could vote, I’m pretty sure I’d vote against anything that took money from foster care programs, regardless of the cost.   

I was smart enough to learn how the system worked, who it worked best for, and which documents I needed to take care of myself. That’s why the state was making an exception for me. I’d been bounced in and out of foster homes for the last ten years, and now I was on the edge of being emancipated. The Judge said it was my maturity. Truth be told, I think it was too expensive for the state to continue paying for my care. Katie was working with the state attorney to get the paperwork processed. That’s why we were downtown, talking to Will Atherton about what forms Kelli needed to release me from the state. Judge Procter let me drop out of high school as long as I found work. I had a job. I just hadn’t told the Judge that yet.

Kelli closed her door, and I clicked my seatbelt before I saw the wave of water cresting over the wall. I’m an extrovert, and I’ll talk about anything and everything most of the time. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. The only thing I did was point at the water racing toward us.

“Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod!” Kelli’s hands were shaking. She finally got her Volkswagen started, water rushing over the tires.

“Drive!” I shouted, knowing I was in no position to help her. Kelli needed to figure this out on her own. But I did start to roll up the windows. It was a warm spring day. A balmy 68 degrees with no humidity, a rarity for Southern Missouri. The car was gasoline-powered, so we had enough time to roll up the electric windows before the Mississippi River flooded the engine. I saw people attempting to outrun the water rushing up Broadway, washing everything behind us, knocking at least five people facedown.

Kelli kept screaming, the German road machine floating in the water, slowing tipping upside down. It helped that we had our seatbelts on. And, inside an airtight Volkswagen? No water seeped in. Not even a trickle. Kelli calmed down – well, she stopped screaming.

“Kelli? You okay?” She white-knuckled the glittery steering wheel cover, unable to look at me. “Kelli. Hey. Look over here,” I said, trying to free her hands from the steering wheel. It took what felt like a few minutes to free her hands. I’m pretty sure it was only a few seconds. She was still shaking, the goosebumps visible on her arms.

“Um, Jeffery, we’re upside down. And there’s water all around us,” she croaked. “I’m freaking out.” No kidding, I said to myself, knowing she was referring to boyfriend, and not me!

“I know what you mean, Kell.” She let me get away with calling her Kell. I’d be willing to bet her BFF, or at the very least, her boyfriend, referred to her as Kell, too. I held her hand, looking her in the eyes, and we both felt it – the car started to turn back over. I think we bumped into several buildings, but I wasn’t sure. I was concentrating on not panicking keeping Kelli calm. We both needed that. “Hey, check it out!” Now, I was the one shouting. The water was receding almost as fast as the wave carried us around downtown. The Volkswagen stopped roughly in the same spot it took us from. I think we moved all the way around the block. We were at a diagonal slant, not parked parallel to the curb. But at the least, the back wheels touched the curb, even though the front end was sticking out onto Main Street. With no more standing water, I unlocked the car and opened my door. I didn’t see anyone on either side of the street. Kelli stumbled out of her side.

“What the hell was that?”

“I wish I could tell you.”

It took another four weeks before we could reprocess all the emancipation paperwork. Thankfully, I still had the job, Judge Proctor signed all the documentation, and I had my own apartment before the downtown renovation was complete. Yeah. Me and Kelli? We were lucky. Fifteen people were injured. Three were killed, not because of drowning, but because of concussions. It was a weird day downtown.