Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4 A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Charlie answered it and found his best friend, Sarah, standing on his porch in her redand-white-striped bathing costume. She was carrying a beat-up metal washtub. "Come on!" Sarah said, flashing her very large front teeth. "I heard there's an amazing overflow." "I'm coming!" Charlie said.

An overflow was a special kind of Galveston flood. Not from pouring rain—from the Gulf. Galveston sat on a small island. When Charlie saw the island on a map, he always thought of the noodles Mama made for their soup—long, skinny, and very flat. Their noodle island was twenty-seven miles long and only a mile wide in places. It sat on the Gulf of Mexico, about two miles from the main part of Texas. There was water all around them—the Gulf to the south and Galveston Bay to the north. Sometimes during storms and high tides, water from the Gulf overflowed and filled the streets near the beach. There was nothing better than an overflow, especially in the steamy summer. In a flash, Charlie had changed into his bathing shorts and tank top. He quickly peeped in on Lulu—still fast asleep—and waved goodbye to Mama and Papa.

"Have fun!" Papa said. He'd loved playing in the overflows when he was a kid. "Let's go this way," Sarah said, taking the lead as they headed out from Charlie's house. Sarah had strong opinions about everything. Like back in kindergarten, when she announced that she and Charlie would be best friends forever. She could be pushy. But that didn't bother Charlie. He didn't have to think too hard when he was around Sarah. The street was busy—clogged with all kinds of wagons and carriages and buggies. But Charlie was used to it. Every street in Galveston was busy these days—it was the fastest-growing city in all of the south. Papa had told Charlie that. He was always bragging about how great Galveston was. Last night at dinner, Papa had looked up from his stew and said, "You know what I just heard? There are more millionaires in Galveston than in almost any other small city in the world." Mama had waved her hand over her faded apron.

"Oh, indeed," she said in a fake fancy voice. "We millionaires love Galveston!" That cracked them all up. But Charlie got why Papa was proud. Who wouldn't want to live in Galveston? It was a city that had everything—restaurants and stores and theaters. They had their port, with big ships coming from all over the world.

And the beach, of course—miles and miles of the prettiest beach in Texas. That's what everyone said about the beach, which was on the Gulf side of the island. There were hotels and shops along the beach, and even big bathhouses where you could dry off after swimming, change, and buy a snack. The biggest and best bathhouse was the Pagoda, which Charlie could see now, in the distance. It was built out over the water of the Gulf, maybe thirty feet from the beach. You walked on a long, skinny raised walkway to get to it. Charlie liked to imagine it was a floating palace. "We should have brought Lulu," Sarah said, snapping Charlie out of his thoughts. "She's napping," Charlie said. "The storm scared her. She thinks there's a monster in the sky." Charlie shook his head as her wails echoed through his mind. "It's really sad."

"It makes perfect sense to me," Sarah said, blowing a hunk of her thick brown hair out of her eyes. "Lulu doesn't understand what a thunderstorm is. And if you didn't understand the weather, a thunderstorm would be pretty terrifying—all that noise, and the clouds, and the lightning…" Sarah was right. As usual. "Think about it," Sarah said—she started half her sentences with those three words—think about it. "A long time ago, even the smartest people thought gods and goddesses controlled everything, including the weather." "Gods like Poseidon," Charlie said, remembering the book of Greek myths Grandpa used to read to him. "Exactly," Sarah said. Charlie's heart cracked a little as he thought of his grandfather, who'd died last year. He was a hero of the Texas Revolution—he was always