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Floating Boars Julia Yang
It began as innocuous as any flooding in Houston. The facts of life here are simply: One, it is wet; Two, the roads always flood; Three, Houstonians take it in stride— we rehash the same jokes, check if Waffle House is still open, and remind each other to avoid the roads that flood the worst. So really, Hurricane Harvey began as innocuous as any flooding in Houston. On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall. We got a few days off from school. The neighborhood streets caught a few inches of water. Some of the kids set up a slip ’n slide. At one point, cars could no longer drive out of our neighborhood because of the flooded intersection, but this was nothing new— the roads in Houston always flood. However, as the days passed and the rain kept falling and the waters kept rising, my family and I watched black water creep up the curbside and then up our front lawn and then up our driveway. This was not normal; the roads always flood, but it was supposed to be only the roads that flood. I kept watching. The water heaved up into our front garden— how unfortunate, my dad loved those flowers. I kept watching. The days stretched, and we waited, unable to leave by car and waiting for the inevitable, helpless in our house. (It was the same house I hid in during Hurricane Ike, my first hurricane, when I was eight years old. The winds had been fiercer and louder then, and I had been a scared little child, but now, this watching and waiting felt much worse.) Three days before the water hit, we moved our things upstairs. Two days before the
