A few weeks later I stayed home from school with a cold. Mom was sick too. The movie I was watching ended and Mom was sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake her up.

So I pulled Murphy off my bed and took him on an adventure around the living room couches until I decided he was lonely and needed a friend. I opened the door to Ruth’s room and took Yoko off her bed.

I took the killer whale and the penguin back to the living room and played Treasure Hunt. I wasn’t so good at coming up with the words myself, so I used singing, a word Ruth had used for one of our recent Treasure Hunts. I played that they were in a band together, a killer-whale-and-penguin duo. I took them all over the house, looking for all the Bluetooth speakers. I took them to the piano, to Mom’s round brush that looked like a microphone, to the mantel in the living room that was the perfect stage. I played until I was too tired to think of any more singing treasure. I took Murphy back to my room and collapsed on my bed for a nap.

I left Ruth’s stuffed animal in the living room, and Ramses, our dog, got to it. Guess he couldn’t control himself when he saw the perfect chew toy lying unattended in the living room. When Ruth got home from school, her penguin was ripped and shredded across the whole main floor, headless, gutless, every limb torn off except the misaligned left wing. And it was my fault.

Dad took Ruth to the mall that night and let her pick out whatever animal she wanted, plus a Ringo Starr poster. Ruth came back with a pink elephant that she never slept with, put the poster above her bed, and didn’t talk to me for a week. We didn’t play Treasure Hunt for even longer.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

An announcer on the radio interrupts a foot cream commercial to give a monsoon warning. He says we’re beginning the wet season for the southwestern United States. Which, at the moment, is us.

We passed through El Paso about half an hour ago, and there are still four more hours until Tucson, but Eddie and Ellie are giving each other worried looks. The rain is coming down so hard that the highest setting on the windshield wipers can hardly keep up with it.

The water is haunting. Hypnotizing. Magic, even. I sit with my nose inches from the window, looking at the world through a sheet of rain thicker than the glass.

The trees and leaves, though sparse, are whipping and flapping like those inflatable tube people in front of car dealerships. There are fewer and fewer cars on the road ahead of us, which has turned into a black lake.

“I don’t know,” Ellie says below me. “I’m getting nervous.”