Chapter One Summit, Georgia, 1927 I might never have met Bailey if Poppy hadn't decided to climb the magnolia tree. She had insisted we have a tea party with my doll, Zillah, in the "cave" formed by its low branches, which came all the way to the ground. Back when I was ten, the cave was my favorite secret place, and Zillah and I had played pretend there a lot. Now Zillah spent her time sitting on a shelf by my bed, except when Poppy came over. Poppy didn't have a doll of her own, even though she always bragged on how her mama gave her everything she asked for. I tried to tell her that tea parties didn't interest me anymore, now that I was twelve. She got that half-hurt, half-mad look that spelled trouble, so I gave in, as long as we could look at a book and not just talk baby talk to Zillah. Poppy agreed, so there we were, sitting in the shade under the tree, having our party.

"Drink your tea," I told her. "It's good." Poppy sipped from her mug and made a face. "It ain't sweet," she complained. "I want sugar in mine." "Mama said we can't have any sugar. Besides, it doesn't need any. Doesn't it make your mouth feel cool?" I had made our tea by crushing some mint leaves in a bowl and stirring them up with well water.

"It's nasty," Poppy said. "Ain't even hot." "Zillah likes it." I held my mug to her mouth. "Don't you?" I felt stupid offering a drink to a cloth doll, and annoyed with Poppy for being ungrateful about the tea. Mama had made Zillah for my sixth birthday. She had been beautiful once, but her face and arms, made of brown cloth the same color as my skin, were faded and stained now. Her black yarn hair, braided into two pigtails, just like mine, was all frizzy because the yarn had frayed.

I guess Zillah didn't know how shabby she looked. Her pink embroidered mouth remained frozen in its happy little smile. "I don't want no more tea," Poppy declared, putting down her mug on the bare ground. "Then I'll read to you." "The one about the boat." "That's the one you made me bring." Poppy smiled, showing the gap where she'd lost both her front teeth. Mama asked her once if she'd knocked them out by running and falling, or by walking on a fence and crashing face-first onto the ground.

Poppy said no, they'd come out on their own, with just a couple of yanks. Mama shook her head and told Poppy she was a mess. That's what Mama always said: "That girl is a mess, and her mama is sorry." Looking at Poppy now, I had to agree. Her hair looked like nobody had tried to wash or comb it in days. It was brown with dust, and there were bits of leaves and grass in it. At the moment, Poppy's knees and elbows were crusted with dried mud, and the spaces between her toes were dark with dirt-leftovers from yesterday, when we'd played in mud puddles. Her dress needed washing, and so did her face.

But Poppy didn't care, and neither did her mama. "Read," she said. The book was titled My Adventures on the Seven Seas, by Howard W. Armstrong. It had pictures, showing places he had visited all around the world, places with exotic names like Bora Bora and Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope. Mr. Armstrong's ship, a schooner with tall, straight masts and white sails that puffed in the wind, was named the Pegasus. But even more than the Pegasus and the different lands, I loved the pictures of the ocean.

Poppy did too. We had never been to an ocean or seen what Mr. Armstrong called ".