Extraterrestrial dust means that some meteorites have dust in them from the beginnings of the earliest stars.

Stardust.

I already said out loud in the microphone what I needed to say about the stone, so I stand there watching everyone look at the big rock.

“Some people have all the luck,” Mr. Ronnie says.

“Yeah, they’re lucky it didn’t fall on their house!”

“When you put it on the news, call it the Bower meteorite,” James says to the newswoman, “ ’cause my friend Henry Bower found it on Bower Hill Road.”

“I wonder what it weighs.”

“It’s really hard.” A girl kicks at the stone and cries out, “Ow, it hurt me.”

I don’t like that she kicks the meteorite, but I don’t want her to hurt herself, either.

“It would take a big excavator to move that thing.”

“Or a crane.”

“I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon.”

“How can a rock cause a flood, even if it’s from space?”

“It has a funny smell. I never heard of a rock that smelled.”

“It smells like the inside of my greenhouse.” A woman sniffs the big rock.

“I saw on TV that a meteorite caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. I’m gonna check on my pigs when I get home.”

“How do you know it’s a meteorite?” Priscilla, our town clerk, asks me. “Maybe you saw fireworks someone set off and came out here and found a rock. Plenty of big rocks around.”

I take the round refrigerator magnet out of my coat pocket and hold it in my open hand. The magnet jumps out of my hand and sticks to the side of the stone.

“Whoa!” the camerawoman yells. “I didn’t catch that on tape. Can you do it again?”

I’m as surprised as she is. Last night I read that most meteorites contain iron and that a magnet will stick to them. I wanted to test it on the big rock, but I didn’t expect the magnet to fly out of my hand like that!

I’m reaching for the magnet when I sense that something is wrong. I haven’t heard from Braggy since we reached the big rock. He isn’t giving everyone his opinion about the flying magnet or the giant meteorite or Dad’s artesian well theory. For once, there’s not one word from him.

Braggy stands downhill from the meteorite, hands on his hips, staring silently out toward the gushing water. When I go down where he’s standing, I see what the helicopter must have seen—water slowly spreading sideways in the direction of our house.

“I guess I’m smarter than I thought, building a three-story house,” Braggy says, but he doesn’t sound glad about it.

The helicopter circles back up the hill and a loudspeaker booms out,

“EVACUATION ORDER. EVACUATE TO HIGHER GROUND.”