The strangest thing about the nightmares was that Serena never knew the screams were hers until Aunt Loula woke her. In her dream, the screams were always Kris's.

Always Kris's. Aunt Loula's husky voice would croon as she patted Serena, "There, there.

It's all right. It's all a dream.

Go back to sleep now. "But it was never all right.

And she almost never went back to sleep, for fear it would come again. .

. The accident that injured her seven-year-old brother, Kris, was all Serena's fault.

Her mother and Kris are in Texas at a rehabilitation center, and Serena has been exiled to her farmer relatives in Oklahoma. Serena misses the accelerated school she attended in Minneapolis.

She misses her family, and she misses her best friend, Brent. Through the hot Oklahoma summer, Serena struggles with a heavy load of guilt.

By mid-summer when her mother and Kris come for a visit, the sight of Kris in a wheel chair is almost more than Serena can bear. Open friendship is offered to Serena by her extended family, by a stray dog named Rompers, and by a young man named Vince-who seems to know a lot about dogs, and about wounded hearts.

What will it take for Serena to emerge from the morass of guilt and self-pity so she can truly see the sterling friends with whom she's been surrounded during her Oklahoma exile?. .