“Maybe we can climb over it,” Rachelle said in a voice that reeked of doubt. She reached out and touched one of the logs. Her hand came away smeared with ash.

John studied her hand and then looked back at the barrier. “The storm must have hit somewhere that there was a wildfire,” he said. “And everything got washed here.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” Marisol said. “It wasn’t raining here. The sky was hardly even cloudy. How did we end up in the middle of a flash flood?”

Lavender said, “I remember a news story my mom told me. A bunch of people got caught in a flash flood way north of here, and when it hit, the sky where they were was totally blue. The actual rainstorm was really far away.”

“What happened to them?” John asked.

Remembering the end of her mom’s story, Lavender was quiet a long minute.

Marisol spoke for her. “They died, didn’t they?”

“Some of them,” Lavender said reluctantly.

“Well, thanks for sharing that,” said Rachelle. “But guess what? We already survived.” She started shifting some of the smaller branches. “We’ll dig our way out of here with our bare hands if we have to.”

“Rachelle! No!” John said.

He was too late. Water was already seeping from the debris Rachelle had moved. They all jumped back.

“Whoa,” Marisol said. “What was that?”

“It’s just water,” said Rachelle.

“Just water that almost killed us a couple hours ago!” Lavender said.

“Let’s not argue,” said John again, his shoulders tense. “We don’t know what’s on the other side of all those branches. What if they’re acting like a dam? A ton of water could be trapped behind there. I don’t think we should move any of it.”

Lavender waited for Rachelle to argue with John. Rachelle always thought her ideas were good ones—no matter what anyone else had to say—but eventually, to Lavender’s surprise, Rachelle nudged her toe into a fresh puddle where water had seeped out of the brambles and said, “Fine. You’re probably right.”

Marisol was studying the canyon. Lavender had seen that expression on Marisol’s face before. It was the same look she got when they were doing math homework together and Marisol was trying to solve out a really difficult problem.

Now Marisol asked, “But if we don’t go over the dam, how do we get out of here?”

Lavender could think of only one way, but Marisol didn’t wait for a reply. “Help!” she cried out. She cupped her hands and shouted again at the top of her voice. “Help! We’re down here! Someone help us!”

The only answer was Marisol’s own voice echoing off the rock walls.

“Come on,” Marisol said, sounding desperate. “The class can’t be that far away. They wouldn’t leave without us. Maybe they’ll hear us.”

A sliver of fear shot through Lavender. Until Marisol mentioned it, it had never occurred to Lavender that the class could have left without them. The teachers wouldn’t just abandon four of their students. Would they? No, definitely not. The rest of the sixth grade had to be nearby. She joined Marisol. So did Rachelle. The three of them yelled again and again … until John caught their attention, waving his arms in an urgent no-don’t-do-that gesture.

“Careful,” he hissed as the last echo of their voices died away. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” Rachelle asked.

“You could start a rockslide.”

“What are you talking about?” Rachelle said.

“Haven’t you seen it in movies? It happens all the time.”

“Those are just movies,” said Lavender. “Scientifically, I don’t think it’s possible.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” said John darkly. “After all, they told us rain and flooding are almost impossible this time of year.”

“Good point,” said Lavender. She’d been having astonishingly bad luck: getting ditched by Marisol; finding out that the telescope money was stolen; sitting on the bus with John, who didn’t want to talk with her; and now she was stuck in a ravine after a flood tried to kill her … “I’ve been having some bad luck recently.”

“No one is there anyway,” Marisol said. “They would have answered by now if they could hear us.”

“But they’ve gotta be waiting for us,” John said. Then he ruined it, by adding, “Right?”

Lavender rubbed her arms and tried to think of the easiest way to rejoin their classmates. The dam was between them and the others. The ravine walls in this part of the wash were too steep to climb. Their only option was to walk until they found a place where they could hike out of the canyon. They couldn’t just stay trapped here forever. So Lavender did what she did best. She took over.

“Then we walk that way,” Lavender said, pointing back in the direction of the tree. “We need to go that way until we find a way out of the canyon.”

“Then what?” John asked.

“We walk back along the canyon’s ledge in the direction of our class. They’ll be there, looking for us.”

The other three exchanged looks.

“Fine,” huffed Rachelle. “Let’s just get this over with. I’m getting hungry, and you are pretty much the last people I want to be stranded in the wilderness with.”

“Hey,” Marisol said.

“You know that I’m not talking about you,” Rachelle said. She marched away from the blockage, away from the last place they’d seen their teachers and friends. The wet sand and gravel squelched under their feet as they picked their way between puddles. Lavender tried not to wonder what the chances were that another flood would come or that the natural dam of leaves and branches and rocks would break. Would more water come roaring toward them, this time without any notice? She sped up her footsteps.

As the sun sank steadily lower on the horizon, the huge, distant clouds from earlier in the day broke into smaller puffballs. A slight breeze rustled its way through the slender branches of desert brush that dotted the canyon floor.

Rachelle complained that her new hiking shoes were being destroyed by all the muck left behind from the flood, and Marisol made a few sympathetic noises, but otherwise they walked in silence.

The poufy clouds on the mountainous horizon had turned different shades of pink and gold by the time they came to a section of the wash where the ravine walls were less severe. There was even a series of natural divots that Lavender thought looked like some sort of primitive path.

“What about here?” Lavender said, but there was an unexpected echo. Marisol had said the exact same thing at the exact same time. They must have both spotted the same crumbling, unmarked trail within milliseconds of each other.

“Whoa,” John said, looking back and forth between them. “That was weird.”

Lavender smiled. She and Marisol often had the same ideas: It had happened before. They could even finish each other’s sentences. “Great minds …” Lavender said, hoping that Marisol would finish the phrase, but instead of saying “think alike,” Marisol said, “So are we climbing out here or not?”

“Yes.” Rachelle breezed past. “Get me out of this death trap. And I’m not going last this time!”

She started pulling herself up the sides of the steep slope. Lavender followed, ungracefully hopping from one boulder to another. At one point, Rachelle slipped, sending a spray of loose gravel trickling down behind her and falling into the wash. “Hey, watch it,” Lavender yelled up at her.

Once she reached the last boulder and left the ravine behind forever, Lavender felt her worries melting away. Now they just had to follow the edge of the canyon. They would catch up to the rest of their class in no time. Everyone had survived the flood—and with a rush of warmth, Lavender remembered that was because of her. Thanks to her radio. Rachelle could never make fun of her “nerdy” hobbies ever again. Everyone would finish the hike—together—and when the entire class was back at camp, eating a warm meal around the fire, they would probably give Lavender a standing ovation. She would be the hero. Again.

She was going to be the most popular kid in class, way more popular than Rachelle. And once Marisol had time to realize that Lavender had risked her own life to save her, Marisol would apologize for abandoning Lavender. She and Marisol would be best friends like they were meant to be. Everything would be all right.

A sharp slapping sound grabbed Lavender’s attention. She turned to see Marisol and Rachelle sharing a high five. Wanting to join in their celebration, Lavender shouted out, “We did it!” She held her two fists in the air over her head and smiled like she didn’t have a care in the world. If her legs weren’t sore and cramped from perching in the tree and climbing the canyon, she would have jumped up and down.

Her shout echoed off the rocks and repeated through the wilderness. It was returned with an answering cry, a faint, high wail. At first, Lavender thought it was human, probably someone from their class who was looking for the four of them. Then the noise sounded again, clearer this time: an eerie howl.