Brandy tickles my feet. “Are you wearing shoes now that you run more?”

“Nope. I do everything possible to avoid shoes.”

She looks at my feet more closely. “Eww. Your feet look like they were in a knife fight. You walk over glass, or what?”

“Probably,” I tell her. “But I don’t remember feeling anything.”

“Well, you’re braver than me. I love my sneakers.”

“Do you still sleep with them on?”

She gives me a little shove. “That was forever ago.”

“Fourth grade wasn’t that long ago. Now, that’s weird. Admit it.”

“No way. Never.” Then she looks at me over her sunglasses. “So what’s the plan? Should we go for a swim? We have new boogie boards.”

I look back over the ocean. “We can’t go swimming,” I say. “A storm is coming in.”

“The weather says cloudy but no rain.”

I realize that I forgot to check our weather station at home today. But I’m pretty sure I’m still right. “No. Rain is coming. Those are cumulonimbus clouds. Besides . . . can’t you smell it?”

“Smell it?”

“Yeah, smell it. Seriously? You don’t smell the rain? It’s beautiful.”

“I think you’ve baked your brain in the sun, that’s what I think.”

Soon a light rain begins to fall, and Mrs. Fiester yells, “Oh no! Girls! Please run down to the beach and collect my towels.”

Brandy looks at me like I have special powers, and we leap up. By the time we’ve taken just three steps, the rain has started to come down like God pulled the plug on his bathtub. “You were so right!” Brandy yells as she runs. We laugh, running across the grass as tiny water bombs drop from the sky. The rain doesn’t just fall. It’s driven, carried by the winds. Out over the sea, the dark clouds flicker like heaven is about to lose power.

At the top of the stairs, I spot some sheet lightning in the distance, which is one of my favorite kinds. I stop to count so I’ll know how far away the storm is. Five seconds in between seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder means it’s one mile away. As my counting reaches five, the thunder cracks and rumbles above, shooting vibrations through the wooden steps. The storm is a mile away.

Brandy squeals, running down the steps, and I follow. She scurries around gathering towels and flinging them over her shoulder.

But I am stuck in place. Staring at a boy wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt even though it’s summer. He stands at the water’s edge, looking out over the ocean.

“Hey!” I yell. “It’s dangerous to have your feet in the water during a lightning storm!”

“Dels! C’mon!” Brandy yells, bolting up the stairs in a frenzy.

There’s a flash. Then I count. After four seconds, the crack of thunder sounds like a giant breaking the sky in two. The storm is closer.

“Hey!” I yell to the boy. “Did you hear me? Get out of the water!”