“We have a compass and thirty-five dollars,” Eel told Martha as they started down the road. “We charted the route to Ocean City, and if we walk eight hours a day we’ll be there in ten days.”

  “Ten days?” Martha was surprised. “I only brought enough food for one night.”

  “You don’t have to go.” Trout didn’t look at Martha as he spoke. She knew he was giving her the chance to change her mind.

  “Of course I do.” Martha wasn’t about to lose her best friends. If they were gone, there would be no one to talk to. No one to trust. “You’d be lost without me,” she said.

  People went searching for their dreams all the time, didn’t they? Still, Martha dragged behind the boys in the moonlight. She was thinking about how sad her father was and how he would feel when he went to wake her for school and discovered she was gone. All he would find was her open window, along with the note on the door. I’m sorry, she’d written. I love you, but I don’t feel I belong here anymore.

  “Race you to the town line,” Eel called.

  The friends ran as fast as they could, with Eel, always the fastest, out in front. They raced down Main Street, past the shuttered grocery that Martha’s father owned, past the bakery and what was once the dance studio, past Charlie McGill’s construction company. They turned onto Elm and ran along the dried-out bed of Penman’s Creek. They hurried through the dark, raising clouds of dust, laughing until they reached the sign that said OAK GROVE. HOME SWEET HOME.

  Martha stared at the words. Her throat and eyes felt hot, as if this silly sign could make her cry.

  “Which way?” Eel said softly in the dark.

  The moon was behind a cloud, and Martha and Trout felt tentative as well. They were both thinking of people who’d disappeared and were never found again, and of how hard it was to leave behind the people you loved, even if the life you wanted wasn’t the one they could give you.

  Trout took out the compass, then pointed down the road. “East to the ocean. We just keep going.”

  They told themselves they weren’t runaways, they were run-tos. But running is running either way. After a while, they all felt as though they had eaten spoonfuls of lead, and that made running even more difficult. After the first mile they had the shivers. A mile more and they had the shakes. Oak Grove seemed very far away, and when they walked through the woods they could hear things moving. Owls and shrews, bobcats and raccoons. Deer so startled to see the three friends cutting across the meadows, they froze in place.

  When Martha’s feet began to hurt and the boys’ eyes grew blurry, they stopped to make camp beneath a twisted oak tree, one of the oldest in the county. Tomorrow, school would start at exactly eight-thirty, but they wouldn’t be in attendance. If they hadn’t had other concerns they might have begun to worry about what people would think when they didn’t show up for their classes, but for now, all they could concentrate on was their growling stomachs. Martha unpacked the food she had brought along, and Eel produced a Thermos, although too much salt had been added to the water for Martha to take more than a sip.

  In the moonlight the McGill brothers’ complexions turned faintly blue, and the webbing between their fingers was iridescent.

  “What’s the matter?” Trout asked when he caught Martha staring. “Afraid you’re out here with freaks?”

  “I’m out here with my two best friends,” Martha said.

  Trout looked at her with so much gratitude, Martha knew they would be friends forever, no matter what their final destination might be.

  Eel was exhausted, but ever since he’d lost his seashell he’d had trouble getting to sleep. He needed a story, the comforting babble of voices like waves on the shore. “Tell me about when you danced with your mother,” he said to Martha.

  “We’d go outside when everyone else in town was sleeping,” Martha told him, even though she’d told him this story many times before. “She always wore her yellow shawl.”

  Martha reached into her backpack and brought out the shrunken shawl, and the boys understood that even though she was running to something, she was also running away.

  “You can still wear it,” Trout told her. “You can dance right here. Right now.”

  But there were no stars in the sky, and Martha shook her head. Her face was cloudy. “I don’t know if I remember the dances. I’m afraid that before long I won’t remember her, either.”

  “We don’t remember our first mother,” Eel said. The boys rarely spoke of their lives before they’d come to Oak Grove.

  “I remember,” Trout said. “Or at least, some things. I remember that she liked to swim, and when she laughed it sounded like a waterfall.”

  They were so tired, they fell asleep without trying. They were still far from the ocean, but Trout dreamed the same dream he had every night. He was on a beach, and before him the water was dark. A storm was coming up, just like Charlie McGill always feared, and out in the waves, someone was hurt and going under. Someone was calling to him. Swim, she was saying. Swim to the land.

  Where Eel slept, in a tangle of leaves, he had the very same dream as his brother, but he didn’t know it. Because he was younger he didn’t remember as much, awake or in his dreams. All he saw were the blue waves. Whoever was calling was so far out to sea, he couldn’t make out her face. The blue of everything was filling up his eyes, and his heart, and everything he had ever known.

  Martha had a different dream entirely. In her dream she was on a street that was made of sugar, and every time she tried to dance, she slipped and there was no one beside her to break her fall. Martha lurched out of sleep, still feeling as though she were falling. It was morning, but the sky was gray and thick with storm clouds. This was definitely not good weather for running to anything. Up above, the branches of the old oak were shaking, harder and harder still. One of the branches groaned as it broke. Before Martha could move away, it crashed onto her arm.

  Without thinking, she called out for her mother. Trout hurried over and hauled the branch off. He asked Martha if she could move her arm, but it hurt too much to try.

  “This isn’t good,” Trout said.

  “It will be fine,” Martha insisted, but she didn’t sound very sure of herself, and when she sat up the pain made her gasp. She could tell from the expression in Trout’s eyes that the dream of the ocean was fading, and she didn’t want to be the reason for a loss like that. “I mean it will be fine,” she insisted. “And I’m not going back, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “You have to see Dr. Marsh,” Trout told her. “I’m pretty certain it’s broken.”

  The wind was so wild, they had to shout just to hear each other.

  “This isn’t your fault,” Trout hollered. “We just picked the wrong day to leave. I’ve never seen weather like this.”

  True enough, Oak Grove hadn’t had more than morning dew for years, and now the sky was swirling and Martha’s arm was throbbing. All the same, even if she had to go back, she didn’t have to ruin everything. “You should go on without me.”

  “Maybe I should,” Trout said. “I just don’t want to.”

  When Martha heard this, she smiled in spite of the pain she felt. Trout McGill would never abandon his best friend. For the first time in ages, Martha felt happy, even though her arm ached.

  They woke Eel, who lurched to his feet, arms flailing, as though he’d been drowning in his sleep. When they explained they had to turn back, Eel didn’t argue, and a part of him, the part that was worried about Charlie and Kate McGills’ hearts being broken when they opened the brothers’ bedroom door and found them gone, was relieved.

  The weather was more threatening by the minute. Rabbits ran into the hollows. Blackbirds tried to hide in the thickets. Thunder echoed and came closer. Soon enough, the first big drops began to fall. It was the sort of rain that was cold and nasty and fell in sheets, as though a spigot had been turned on up in the sky. Martha was chilled to the bone. The boys, however, weren’t bothered in the least by the rain. They drank in the drops and laughed as their clothes and shoes became soaked. Watching them, Martha felt she had never seen her friends happier. It was as if they’d been desperate for water all their lives.

  In town, people woke up in fear, remembering the storm of the past. The wind had already blown away the note Martha had left for her father and torn the paper into tatters. That same wind whipped through one room after another as Kate and Charlie McGill searched for their sons. The bakery shut down for the first time in fifteen years, with a batch of cinnamon rolls still in the oven, for electricity and gas lines were knocked out by the strong gusts. Dogs huddled under tables and refused to go into their yards. Children stayed home from school. The sky looked the way an ocean does when a hurricane is near, with swells twenty feet tall, and wind mixing with water, and no mercy for those on land or at sea.

  Martha and the McGill boys knew they had to hurry. The morning had turned as dark as night. The friends had never seen a sky so wild. Lightning split the horizon, and water poured down. When at last they reached the road, they saw that the gullies and ditches had filled and were beginning to overflow. Meadows were turning into lakes, and Penman’s Creek was a rushing river whose waters were unable to drain because of the stone wall.

  At first the water on the road was up to the friends’ ankles; then it was up to their knees. They couldn’t help but think of the old days they’d heard about, when all of Oak Grove was submerged underwater and people lost everything they owned.

  By now, the rain was so heavy, Martha could barely see where she was going.

  “Just follow the white line down the middle of the road,” Trout shouted over the wind, but before long that line disappeared into the swirl of murky water that was quickly reaching their waists.

  Eel took out his compass, and they tried their best to head west, huddled together to prevent the wind from buffeting Martha and her aching arm. Just when they thought they had journeyed in the wrong direction they came upon the sign — OAK GROVE. HOME SWEET HOME. Although it had all but vanished in the rising waters, the sign was still the highest, driest spot around. Martha took out her mother’s shawl before she let the backpack float away. The three friends hurried to roost on the very top of the sign. From this perch they saw that all over Oak Grove people had climbed onto their rooftops and were clinging to their chimneys. Penman’s Creek had overflowed, and the center of town was the hardest hit.

  “This is horrible,” Martha said, thinking of her father having to bail out their basement and the grocery store. She noticed the brothers were grinning. “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s so funny?”

  “It looks like the way we pictured the ocean,” Trout told her.

  The rain had slowed to a mere pitter-patter, and they realized that what they heard now were the floodwaters washing back and forth like a tide.

  “Listen,” Eel said. It was just like the echo inside his shell. One wave after another. Water as far as the eye could see.

  By afternoon the sky had begun to turn blue, and the three friends had dried out on their perch above the sign. Trout had made a sling from Martha’s mother’s shawl to ensure that her arm would be protected from further harm until they got to Dr. Marsh’s.

  “We’re still just as far away from the ocean as ever,” Martha said. “There go your dreams.”

  “I’m starting to think that my dream is real,” Trout said as he looked out over the water. “I remember being in the ocean. I remember our mother tried to protect us when a speedboat came too close, and the propeller hit her.”

  Trout might have recalled more if they hadn’t heard somebody shouting. “Save me!” a boy was screaming as he was dragged along what used to be downtown but what was now downstream. It was Richard Grady, who had so enjoyed calling the McGill brothers names. One minute Richard had been riding his bike, taunting the cats stuck up in trees and laughing at folks who were bailing out their basements, and the next minute Penman’s Creek had overflowed and he’d been washed away. Like most of the children in this dry town he’d never learned how to swim. Now, Richard Grady held tight to his floating bicycle, thrashing and screaming, certain he was about to drown. “Help me!” he called to the friends on their perch.

  Before Martha could call back that Richard had better ask nicely if he wanted their help, and apologize for every nasty word he’d ever said, Trout jumped into the water, cutting through the currents as though he were indeed related to his namesake. He grabbed Richard by his sleeve before he was washed into even deeper waters, and Eel jumped in after his brother to help haul Richard to the safety of the Oak Grove sign. When Richard climbed up, the sign shook under his weight, and Martha had to hold on tight with her good arm.

  “A thank-you would be in order,” Martha advised as Richard Grady wiped the water out of his eyes.

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. Thanks.” Richard was still in shock by how quickly the world had shifted. Six feet of water where before there had been none, and those he least expected to save him becoming his rescuers.

  “I hope you regret calling the McGills all those horrid names,” Martha said.

  “I don’t know about that.” Richard peered into the water. “I still don’t think they’re exactly normal. You may have noticed, they’re not coming up for air.”

  Martha saw that indeed Trout and Eel had disappeared in the murky water. The oddest things were floating by — flowerpots and trash cans, doghouses and mailboxes — but there wasn’t a glimpse of the boys.

  Martha grabbed Richard by the collar of his soaking shirt. “Where did they go?” she demanded, her voice shaking.

  “Under the water.” Richard seemed a little afraid of how upset Martha was. “I swear they were there one minute and gone the next.”

  Martha jumped down from the sign to find that the water was now much too deep to stand. She took a deep breath and went under, straining to keep her eyes open, frantically searching for her friends. She worried about what tragic and watery scene might greet her, but there the boys were, swimming underwater, having the time of their lives.

  When they caught sight of Martha, they waved, but Martha couldn’t wave back. She had lost her balance and been pulled into a whirlpool, a spinning circle of wild water right at the corner of Elm Street, where Penman’s Creek ran into the gutters.

  With only one strong arm, it was impossible for Martha to break free of the whirlpool. She felt herself going down, and she saw a bit of her life race before her eyes — her father’s kind face, the yellow stars of a summer night, her mother’s cool hands when Martha was little and suffering from a fever. Maybe these images helped her to think fast. Before she could be carried away, Martha pulled off the sling that had been made of her mother’s shawl and lassoed one of the posts of the Oak Grove sign. The silk shawl was surprisingly strong; not even the whirlpool could take Martha away.

  It took only a few seconds for the McGill boys to swim to Martha. One blink and they were there, helping her into calmer waters.

  “Are you okay?” Trout asked.

  Despite the pain in her arm and a tight feeling in her chest, Martha nodded. She had let go of the shawl when the McGill boys pulled her to safety, and it hung on the sign like a banner before the waters washed it away. Martha felt tears sting her eyes.

  “Boy oh boy, I thought you were a goner,” Richard Grady called to Martha from his perch.

  “Then why didn’t you help?” Martha called back. As the McGill brothers guided Martha onto the only high ground left, a stretch that ran parallel to Main Street that had been a hill before the flood, Martha thought about how comfortable Trout and Eel had seemed underwater. They’d looked as though they were somewhere they finally belonged.

  From high on the hill the friends had an even better view of town. They could hear people shouting and calling for help. Even Richard Grady, now alone on the sign, was worried.

  “My father said the water will keep rising until the wall at the creek is taken down,” he said. “Then the water could flow out of town the way it used to.”

  Trout and Eel looked at each other. Even though they knew it had taken Charlie McGill and his crew two weeks to build the wall, Martha could tell what the McGill boys had in mind. She would have helped if she could, but it was clear she could never keep up with her friends, not even if she had the use of both of her arms.

  “Good luck,” she cried as the boys dove into the water.

  Someone was calling her name, and Martha looked to see Jeanette Morton from the bakery stuck on the other side of the hill. Jeanette was sitting on the roof of her car eating cinnamon rolls. Martha sloshed over, and Jeanette helped her up. Martha was so hungry, she ate two of the delicious pastries before she answered Jeanette’s question of what had happened to her arm.

  “Possibly broken,” Martha said between mouthfuls.

  “My goodness!” Jeanette said. “And what do the McGill boys think they’re doing? That water is dangerous.”

  “They’ll be fine,” Martha said, trying to convince herself of their safety as well. After all, she had seen how they swam underwater, their webbed hands flashing like flippers.

  “What about your father? Is he all right?” Jeanette had an expression that was both worried and faraway. She had been a good friend of Martha’s mother, but ever since Hildy had entered the picture, she hadn’t come around.

  “I’m sure Hildy’s taking care of him,” Martha reminded her.

  “Oh, Hildy,” Jeanette said sadly.

  “Oak Grove is filled with awful things and terrible people,” Martha said. “I’m like my mother when it comes to this town. I belong in a city, like New York or Paris or San Francisco. I’m leaving as soon as I can.”

  “But your mother loved Oak Grove. She told me the happiest day of her life was when she came here and met your father. She used to go out in the field beyond Penman’s Creek at night and dance before you were born.” Jeanette smiled at the memory. “I went with her sometimes. I never saw anything as beautiful.”