By the end of September, Ginger thought the desert had forgotten how to rain. Summer had been brutally hot and dry. Day after day, the sun had burned white in the sky, the ground had hardened until it was almost like stone, and dust puffed beneath Ginger’s shoes wherever she walked. The grasses had turned brittle, the weeds drooped, and even the prickly pear looked tired.

Everyone talked about rain. “We need it badly,” the grown-ups said. Ginger knew they were right. She had watched clouds gather over the mountains more than once that summer, dark and promising, only to disappear without dropping enough rain to settle the dust.

Then, one afternoon near the end of September, the sky changed. The blue disappeared beneath a blanket of gray clouds. A cool wind moved across the yard, carrying that wonderful smell Ginger knew before the first drop ever fell, the smell of rain coming to dry desert earth.

Ginger ran outside. A drop struck her cheek. Another landed on her arm. Then the rain began, soft and steady, tapping against the roof and darkening the dusty ground. “Finally!” Ginger shouted.

She stood on the porch and watched the dirt drink it in. Water gathered in tiny hollows. Drops clung to the sage and slid down the spines of the cactus. The whole world seemed to sigh. That night, Ginger fell asleep listening to rain against her window.

It was still raining when she woke up. She pulled back the curtain and smiled. The yard was soaked, the air was cool, and the sky was a deep, heavy gray. “Good,” she said. “We need it.”

The rain continued through breakfast. It continued through lunch. It continued all afternoon. By evening, Ginger had stopped saying, “We need it.”

The next morning, she opened her curtains hopefully.

Gray.

Rain streamed down the glass. “You’re still here?” Ginger asked. The rain answered by falling harder.

Water now stood in places Ginger had never seen water before. The dusty lane had become a ribbon of mud. Puddles spread across the yard until they joined together, and the shallow ditch beside the road had become a rushing brown stream.

The desert soil, baked hard by months of heat, could no longer swallow the water quickly enough. It ran across roads, filled arroyos, covered low places, and gathered wherever it could. Ginger stood at the window and watched it come down.

She missed the sun. She missed the enormous blue sky that usually stretched above her house. She missed being able to see all the way to the mountains without clouds hanging between them. Most of all, she missed being outside.

By the third day, the rain had become a constant sound. It drummed on the roof, splashed from the eaves, rattled against the windows, and gurgled through gutters. Ginger tried reading. She drew pictures. She played on the floor. She wandered from one window to another, but every window showed the same thing.

Rain.

“Please stop,” Ginger whispered.

That afternoon, the flooding became worse. Water crossed part of the road. A neighbor’s yard looked like a shallow lake. Branches and leaves floated through the ditch, carried along by water moving much faster than Ginger expected.

She watched from the porch until someone told her to stay well away from it. “But it’s just rainwater,” Ginger said.

“Not anymore.”

Ginger looked again. The muddy water pushed past rocks and bent weeds flat as it rushed along. She understood. Water didn’t have to be deep to be strong.

That night, Ginger lay beneath her blankets listening to the storm. She remembered how desperately everyone had wanted rain. She had wanted it too. The plants needed it. The animals needed it. The dry ground needed it.

But this was too much.

For the first time, Ginger understood that something could be needed and still become dangerous when there was more of it than the land could hold.

Sometime during the fourth morning, Ginger noticed something strange.

Silence.

She opened her eyes. No tapping against the window. No water pouring from the roof. No steady hiss outside.

Ginger threw off her covers and ran to the window. The rain had stopped.

The clouds were still there, but they were breaking apart. Through one opening came a thin shaft of sunlight. Ginger watched it touch the wet ground, and then another patch of blue appeared.

“Oh!”

She ran outside onto the porch. The world was a mess. Mud covered the yard. Water still filled the low places. The ditch was swollen, and puddles stretched everywhere. Everything dripped.

But above it all was blue.

Beautiful, impossible blue.

Ginger tipped her face toward the opening in the clouds. She had seen the desert sky nearly every day of her life, but she couldn’t remember ever being so happy to see it.

By afternoon, the sun was shining again. The desert had changed. Little streams had carved paths through places that had been dry only days before. Seeds buried in the ground had been soaked awake. Plants that had looked nearly dead stood straighter, their leaves washed clean of dust.

There would be mud for a while. Some roads would need fixing. The flooded places would take time to dry. But the desert had its water, and Ginger had her sky.

She stood beneath that great blue September afternoon and decided she would never complain about an ordinary sunny day again.

At least, she thought, not until next summer.