No matter where Dex looked, in every direction, as far as he could see, Joplin was in ruins. What was once his city — his peaceful, bustling city — had been shattered into millions of pieces.

He made his way into his neighborhood, where just yesterday he had been riding his bike. The streets were filled with downed wires and splintered telephone poles. The trees that had shaded him on hot summer days were now naked sticks, their leaves and branches carpeting the ground. Cars and trucks were everywhere but parked in driveways. They were crushed in the middle of the street, flipped upside down, wrapped around poles.

And then there were the houses.

Some had been swept away completely, so that only cement slabs remained. Others were chopped up, or cut in half, smashed by trees or peeled open. And what had been in people’s kitchens and bedrooms and desk drawers and toy boxes was now scattered everywhere. Someone’s family portrait, smudged with grime, smiled out from under a pile of plaster and jagged glass. A page from a children’s book blew through the air like a dead leaf. A basketball rolled down the street, as though someone had just missed a free throw. Mixed in with the piles of wood and roof shingles were parts of couches, stuffed animals, a smashed oven, a headless Barbie doll, dishes, pots … parts of people’s lives scattered like puzzle pieces. Everything was soaking wet and covered with brown filth.

Dex rounded the corner onto his street.

Or was it his street?

He couldn’t know for sure, because there was nothing left.

He didn’t see a soul.

He walked more quickly, gaping in horror at the wreckage of the Tuckers’ house. He whispered a prayer of thanks as he remembered that the Tuckers had left yesterday. Their house was destroyed, but the Tuckers were safe in Arkansas.

He walked faster and faster, and soon he was running, until he reached the spot where his own house should have been.

Mom’s car was upside down. Dad’s station wagon was nowhere to be seen.

And the house.

The house where Dex had lived his whole life. The house where Dex had learned to walk and talk and tie his shoes and read and write, where he’d put his baby teeth under his pillow and waited for Santa to come down the chimney. The house where he rode around on Jeremy’s shoulders, feeling like the luckiest boy on earth.

The house that had made him.

The tornado had smashed it to pieces, and now it was just a mountain of rubble.

And where were Mom and Dad?

Where was Zeke?

They would have taken shelter in the basement. And now they were trapped somewhere under the wreckage.

Dex climbed up the pile of ruins and dropped to his knees.

“Mom! Dad! Zeke!”

He grabbed hunks of wood and plaster that used to be his house and he started throwing them aside. There were bricks from the fireplace and huge shards of glass and broken plates and Dad’s smashed laptop and an old baseball bat.

His whole body shook with sobs as he tore away at the wreckage, desperate to reach his family. He barely noticed that a huge nail was stabbing into his knee, and that both of his hands were dripping with blood.

Don’t quit.

Don’t quit.

Don’t quit.

And then something touched his neck — something warm and slobbery.

Dex spun around.

He looked up, and there was Zeke standing behind him, balanced on a wooden beam.

He stared at his dog, his beautiful ugly dog who was soaking wet and covered with dirt and grime, whose tongue was hanging out of his mouth.

Where had he come from?

Zeke licked Dex again.

Dex threw his arms around his dog, burying his face in his filthy fur.

And then Dex heard voices calling from the street, ragged shouts that rose up over the sirens that wailed all across Joplin.

“Dex!”

“Dex!”

Dex jumped up and practically flew toward the street, with Zeke following right behind him.

Mom reached him first, and then Dad.

They all grabbed hold of one another, and Zeke nuzzled in, too.

They clung together and cried.

But they did not cry for what had been lost.

That would come later.

Right now, they were crying for what they had found.