“I thought it was in the blood. How you gonna know if you never try?” Mr. Ronnie gathers up his tools. “I suppose you folks still haven’t put in for the reward? Must be nice to afford to let it rot there. All I’m saying is you and your family better watch out or you’ll be sorry. People are talking.”

This time he doesn’t wait for me to answer. I would have explained that rocks crumble and break or erode but they don’t rot. That Braggy has Bower blood but he can’t dowse. Mr. Ronnie turns and makes his way past the water pulsing out of the ground.

I take a big breath and hold it until Mr. Ronnie is out of sight. I think about our house flooding and the town well going dry, Birdie’s openmouthed crying for Lilygirl, and Mom covering her eyes. And the pieces of our house floating in the water. It makes me mad that the best thing that ever happened, the meteorite landing, also made the worst thing happen.

Then I get an idea.

I run up to Braggy’s shed and find his longest pry bar. The only person who ever tried to move the rock is Birdie with her hands, and she’s two years old. I’ve got a hard metal lever that’s taller than I am, and the ground is soft now.

At the edge of the field I find a rock big enough for a fulcrum to rest the lever on. I’ve seen Dad move big rocks this way, using one rock and a lever to move another rock.

If I can tip the rock forward and set it rolling down the hill, the meteorite might land downhill from Bower Four. It could have Bower Five. Or Bower Six. It could draw up the water from there instead. Then maybe the water over our house would dry up.

If the stone-wall basement is still standing, Dad could build a new house on it, in the same place as the old one.

If the water dried up now, maybe we’d find some of the things that hadn’t gotten washed away yet.

If the bottom surface of the rock is flat and just resting on the ground, and the soil is soft, maybe I can wedge the lever right underneath it.

That’s a lot of ifs.

On the uphill side of the meteorite, at the bottom edge of the rock, I push the heavy pry bar into the ground until it won’t go in any more. I position the fulcrum rock under the bar.