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CHAPTER 1

Kyle's Aquariums is crowded with tanks and pumps and shell wind chimes, and A.Z. presses against the tetras to let a family of pilgrims pass. They're headed for the emerald catfish, which are silver and sickly, and which Kyle is trying to unload with a sign that says SEA OF SANTIAGO SOUVENIR CATFISH.

The catfish are actually from South America, but the pilgrims don't know this. They buy them for their kids' tanks back in Tulsa or wherever, and the kids carry the rubber-banded, three-quarters-water, one-quarter-air plastic baggies around until they forget about them. A lot of dead fish end up under chairs at restaurants or on tour buses. It's not very humane, and Sahara, who was A.Z.'s best friend until she turned out to be such a hippie, started a boycott over it two years ago in seventh grade.

A.Z. could never boycott Kyle's because it's the only aquarium store in town. And since the Gordings don't allow anyone beyond the swimming lagoon in the Sea of Santiago, it's the closest thing she has to scuba diving. From what she's seen on TV, this is sort of almost like it: air bubbles rising around her and tetras flickering their fins, snuffling in gravel and swaying plants, which are plastic but still sort of lifelike. If she's stressed about something, like Mrs. Ward almost catching Scotty copying her test, she likes standing between those lit-up tanks. It makes breathing feel sort of miraculous.

Larsley thinks fish are lame. She's over by the ornaments — pastel ceramic castles and pagodas no one buys — looking at a pink humpback whale the size of a stapler. "Check this out," she calls past the pilgrim family. "We should totally steal it."

A.Z. glances around for Kyle, who is fortunately in the back stocking fish food or something.

Larsley isn't serious anyway; she's just trying to freak out the pilgrims. During junior high, she and A.Z. spent a lot of time perfecting this, including running in front of pilgrim cars when Coach W. sent everyone on the loop past the Ark Park. Unlike locals, who speed down the middle of the roads and veer aside when another local speeds around the curve, pilgrims drive on the correct side, braking intermittently, even on flat stretches. When you run in front of them, they get confused and check their maps like you might be a miraculous landmark.

These pilgrims don't look freaked out. The kids are smudging their fingers on the aquarium glass, squealing, "Catch it, catch it!" and the dad is swishing a little green net, trying to scoop the right catfish, which is probably really a bunch of different fish.

"Shit. Dagnabbit," he says, netting a fish his little girl doesn't want. The mom holds the plastic bag of water, and the fish plops in and turns around, like it's trying to figure out where the rest of the tank went.

"It has worms on its face," the little girl says as she starts to cry.

A.Z. starts to say those aren't worms — they're barbels to sense food at the bottom of the water — but then the family might think she works here, and besides, she's trying to stop saying geeky stuff.

Last week, when no one asked her to dance at the Spring Splash Dance — which was dumb and in the cafeteria, so she shouldn't have felt sad — Larsley said guys are just intimidated because she knows so much. This isn't fair. It's not her fault her mom is Compolodo's librarian, and she grew up with books, or that she's teaching herself oceanography, which is the coolest career in the world because you get to study everything about the real nature of the Sea — which no one has researched because the Gordings unscientifically believe God doesn't want people to ask questions about the Sea of Santiago's miraculous waters.

"Speaking of whales," A.Z. calls back to Larsley, "did you see Scotty copying off me in English? He was leaning over with his neck all sideways, and Mrs. Ward walked over like The Shadow."

"What's The Shadow?" Larsley says.

"That radio show from the '40s." A.Z. sometimes forgets that since her mom is way older than regular moms, normal people in 1989 don't know these things. "I thought she was going to fail us both." She doesn't admit she sort of let Scotty copy.

Mrs. Ward had paired them for the review session on Fahrenheit 451 on Friday, which Scotty spent leaning across her desk to talk to Rob.

Scotty and Rob are the two fastest runners in Compolodo and always wear do-rags and shiny grey pants that say COMPOLODO WHALES, and they never have to do any algebra because Coach W. is the teacher. They have to do English, though, so finally, Scotty turned to her and said, "Hey, I've got this sweet idea. I'll just copy from you." This was pretty smart, by Scotty standards. And A.Z. should have told him no, but she didn't.

"So?" Larsley shifts the whale back and forth between her red-and-black-chipped-nail-polish fingers and glances at it like she's really thinking of stealing it.

Larsley never worries about getting into trouble because her parents, the county's two ambulance drivers, are too busy to notice her. And she doesn't have to worry about losing her 4.0 and not getting into Sea Camp because she doesn't have a 4.0 and doesn't want to go to Sea Camp. She says it's probably fascist like the Boy Scouts.

Larsley is wrong: Sea Camp is completely not fascist. It's not even exactly a camp. It's an oceanography program where you get to live on boats in the Florida Keys and study with real oceanographers, and A.Z. is applying to go this Christmas break. Unfortunately, it's also expensive without scholarships and really competitive. Most people who get accepted come from schools with actual classes in oceanography and not just a summer independent study and library books that your mom has let get all outdated.

Standing between the aquariums and thinking about the failed test and her Sea Camp application, A.Z. suddenly doesn't actually feel calmer. She feels like the fish slipping past on every side of her are all the ways she might not quite get in — all the data she has to collect from the Sea of Santiago for her independent study this summer, flickering just out of reach. "Never mind," she says. "We should get out of here."

After the dimness and churn, the world in the parking lot seems bright and sort of transparent — like she and Larsley have also been scooped out of their element into plastic bags. It takes A.Z. a minute to notice her father's brown-paneled Oldsmobile parked in the lot. Her dad is in the car, scribbling notes in his steno pad, which is propped against the steering wheel.

As the only reporter and editor for The Compolodo Daily News, the county weekly, it's been her father's one-man role since before A.Z. was born to try to fill the news hole around the ads for the county's two biggest employers — Chuck Chicken and the Miracle Play — with stories about broken tractors; Compolodo's first proposed stoplight; the anniversary of the Compolodo murder (which involved a cook at the Anchor's Away Inn, an axe handle, and his girlfriend); ratings of the best salt water taffy (before the funnel cakes, one of the two pounds A.Z. has gained this spring); bulletins before and after the Greenville Fourth of July Fish Fry; and stories about the Miracle Play opening night, each year on the second Friday in May.

The Miracle actually occurred in March, but Compolodo is sometimes still icy then, and even devout pilgrims don't want to huddle under rented blankets to watch a two-hour outdoor play.

Her dad looks up when he sees them and waves with his pen. "I'm glad I found you; I wanted to head out to the Miracle Play early to interview some pilgrims about opening night."

"It's opening night?" Larsley says.

"Mid-May miracles," A.Z.'s dad says. Alliteration is his signature style; he says it tames the tempest of every possible thing he could say.

A.Z.'s dad loves The Tempest. He used to be an actor, and his deferred dream is to stage it on Mud Beach, which the Gordings would never allow because The Tempest's magic doesn't come from God, and they probably wouldn't make much money.

"Hop in," he says.

A.Z. hasn't actually admitted to Larsley that she's agreed to go to the Miracle Play. She and her dad go every year to opening night, which they've probably seen more times than anyone in town except maybe the Gordings who work there. It's super long and boring, and pretty much the same every year. A.Z. wouldn't keep going if it weren't for the last two minutes — when the backdrop falls.

"Cool!" Larsley says, even though it isn't. She opens the back door of the Oldsmobile, which she always says looks like it's aspiring to be an RV.

At the Miracle Play, the bleachers are cheap, rattly aluminum, like the ones at the Greenville track, but taller. During peak season, they fill with pilgrims from all over the Midwest and Texas and the East Coast. A.Z. and Larsley walk back and forth on the empty bottom row, which is reserved for some tour group, and A.Z.'s dad climbs to the top to interview pilgrims for "Pilgrim Profiles." In the off-season, there's not much news and he has to recycle old columns, so he tries to find really repeatable stories now: pilgrims who got married on Mud Beach or promoted at work after swimming in the holy water.

"This is boring," Larsley says, which is a bad sign since they've only been here one minute. "We should ask your dad to borrow his press pass so we can go get free Dr Peppers."

"Yeah," A.Z. says, doubtfully. Her dad probably needs his pass to show to pilgrims, and anyway, it's not a real press pass; he typed it himself like he's always typing up everything.

Fortunately, the tour group arrives, clomping up the bleachers with popcorn and cameras and blankets. Larsley steps into the aisle, trying to be casually in the way.

"They died," she tells a guy who is shielding his eyes like he's scanning for his family. "Rogue wave."

"Who died?" Greg says. He's appeared from somewhere — maybe a secret passage in the bleacher wall. He's wearing a uniform with a gold embroidered conch shell and looks weird without his baseball cap.

"Everyone cool," Larsley says. "Except A.Z. and me. What are you doing here?"

"Parking cars." He's got a light wand in his hand, but it's off. "What are you doing here?"

"Her dad's writing a story," Larsley says. "We're getting everything free."

"Hey A.Z.," Greg says, "want some squirrel jerky?"

It's been his joke since fourth grade, when she did a speech on the sailor's diet. She'd just read Lives of the Great Explorers and was planning her own future entry: Anastasia Zoe McKinney, Great Exploreress: First Person to Sail Around the World from Arkansas. That was back when she wanted to be a sailor — before she realized that sailing is about the surface, and what matters more are all the currents and ecosystems and saline levels underneath.

Greg doesn't wait for A.Z. to answer. A double-decker tour bus is pulling in, so he switches his light stick on like he's some parking Jedi and strides over, waving it left and right.

"Germans. A bunch of families and one cute boy with bleached hair," Larsley says. "Like Billy Idol, but all German and stuff."

"Blue-haired ladies from a retirement home in Tennessee," A.Z. says. Of course, they can't see who's inside the mirrored windows, but the first woman out has short permed hair. In the twilight, it could be white or blue, but A.Z. claims victory. "You owe me a Dr Pepper."

Larsley walks backward to the concession stand like she's still watching for a German Billy Idol. It's not impossible. Germans sometimes come on tours from Oberammergau, which has a religious play that is probably just as boring as this one.

"Hey, there's a blind dude," she says. "Can you imagine coming all the way to the Sea and not really seeing it? Your boyfriend is helping him across the parking lot." She always gives A.Z. shit about Greg liking her. "I can't believe he's working here."

"Me neither," A.Z. says.

Greg is Nell Gording's nephew, but it's still a really lame job. A.Z. knows because her dad first came to Compolodo to work in the Miracle Play. He'd seen an ad in his stepmother's church bulletin in Texas and was looking for a way, besides the Dairy Queen drive-through, to use a BA in theater. He got hired as a townsperson, which sounded good, but turned out, like everything at the Miracle Play, to pay minimum wage.

It also turned out not to be a speaking part. Sometime in the late '60s, the Gordings had pre-recorded the entire script. That way, the microphones wouldn't pick up the sound of gulls — and none of the actors would need to act.

At the concession stand, Larsley tells the girl working there that they're reporters for the school paper, which would be a better lie if Compolodo Elementary-Junior-High actually had a paper.

"We're doing this article about ice," Larsley says. "We've heard that some crushed ice has rat shit in it and we're testing all the soft drinks in town."

"The Gording Foundation doesn't allow us to give free concessions," the girl says, smiling stiffly bright, like the cheese sauce they goop next to nacho chips.

Larsley spreads her red-black fingernails on the counter in that "so, here's the thing" way. "I guess we'll just have to put you on the rat-shit list."

"We have cans in the vending machine," the girl offers, "by the Miracle Museum."

The museum is a circular concrete-block building like a highway rest stop, and the vending machine is by the gift shop, which sells Miracle story books, coloring books, and cow statues covered with glued-on shells. There aren't any cows in the Miracle Play, but before the Sea took over their pastures, the Gordings had the biggest herd in northwest Arkansas. A.Z.'s mom still sometimes unfairly refers to the Sea as "that cow pond."

A.Z.'s mother, who was forty when A.Z. was born and had already lived this weird, tragic life, isn't a fan of large bodies of salt water or God or miracles. Once — when A.Z. was young and obsessed with sailing — her mom pulled the red National Geographic Atlas from one of the library's shelves. In the northwest corner of Arkansas lay the Sea of Santiago: a tiny, beautiful, blue splotch, its borders faint and uncharted.

"See all this land?" her mom said, pointing at Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. "The Sea of Santiago is landlocked. You can't sail from here to anywhere."

But A.Z. wasn't convinced. If the Gordings only allowed rented paddle boats as far as the Mud Beach buoys, and no one had ever charted the Sea, they couldn't know where it ended, or didn't end.

And besides, explorers always did impossible things. What about Jeanne Baret, who stowed away on de Bougainville's ship and became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe?

A.Z. spent years secretly singing the Naval Prayer, which she'd learned when her dad was researching "Hummable Hymns" —"O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard and hushed their raging at Thy word, Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea" — and praying, for good measure, to both Poseidon and God to help her sail around the world.

But then in seventh grade, she took Careers, where she became friends with Larsley, who pointed out religion is a drug for the masses, and where she learned about the infinitely cooler science of oceanography.

"Opiate," A.Z.'s mom corrected when A.Z. announced her epiphanies.

Larsley only has two quarters, so they buy one Dr Pepper. There's no line for the museum, and for some reason, no one working the door. "We should go in," Larsley says.

"Yeah," A.Z. says, even though she's nervous a guard will appear. The Gording Foundation guards are sometimes mean. When A.Z. was little, a guard at Mud Beach yelled at her for feeding seagulls, which turned out to actually be chickens that had blown off Chuck Chicken trucks.

A.Z.'s mom almost yelled at her, too. She quoted that hawk and handsaw part of Hamlet, and made A.Z. study The Encyclopedia of Ornithology for the rest of the week.

The museum is dim and has mildewy-smelling blue carpet, and it shouldn't be cool but sort of is. The walls are painted with the story of the Miracle: beginning with Nell Gording's near-death sickness in the spring of 1955, her instantaneous recovery when she found a rowboat floating on her family's cow pond, and finally the miraculous appearance of the Sea, which began with rain rippling the pond in March 1955. Within a month, it covered the Gordings' pastures all the way to the Missouri border.

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Excerpted from "The Principles Behind Flotation"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Alexandra Teague.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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