Dana's YA Bookpile: Over the Rainbow by Brian Rowe

"Zippy Green never meant to fall in love with a girl, but when she does, her ultra-conservative father tries to send her to anti-gay camp. At the Kansas City airport, however, she hides inside a giant suitcase and sneaks onto an airplane headed not to the camp, but to Seattle, where her online love Mira lives. Halfway through the flight, the plane barrels out of control and crashes into the ground, knocking her unconscious.

When Zippy awakens, she finds that most of the passengers have vanished. She doesn’t know what’s happened, but she’s determined to find out. She begins a quest on foot toward Seattle, and along the way, she meets a teenager with a concussion, a homeless man with a heart condition, a child without a shred of bravery, and a terrier named Judy. Together the group discovers that more than two-thirds of the world's population has mysteriously disappeared. But that's only the beginning...

All Zippy wants is to find her Mira, but before she can she has to contend with two outside forces. The first is her homophobic father, who does everything in his power to keep her from the girl she loves. And the second is extinct creatures of all shapes and sizes, including living, breathing dinosaurs, which have replaced the missing population."

Like an answer to my question, flames exploded out of the house’s kitchen windows, and roared toward the nose of the plane.

We both stopped. I grabbed the young man’s arm and buried my head in his chest. “Oh my God. Oh my God, what do we do?”

“We need to get out of here,” he said.

I peered up at him. We’d just met, but he already felt like a friend. “All right. But where?”

He glanced in every direction. “I don’t know. Should we see what's on the other side of the plane?”

I shook my head and pointed to the left, at the dirt trail with the daffodils. “I say we head that way.”

“You think?”

Before we had to make a decision, a dog started yapping.

“Wow,” I said. “I don’t believe it.” The little dog from the cargo hold came rushing toward us.

The young man bent over a little, and, for the first time, smiled. “I guess we have another survivor, after all.”

“Absolutely.” I leaned down, petted the mutt. “Hi doggie, aren’t you a cute little doggie?” She was a gorgeous white terrier, with the slightest shade of black on her paws. “Which way, girl? Let’s have you decide! Which way should we go?”

The dog barked three times at my face, then started prancing like a little princess toward the dirt trail.

I shrugged. “I guess we’ll go that way.” I put out my hand and said, “I’m Zipporah, by the way. You can call me Zippy.”

He shook it. “Nice to meet you, Zippy. I’m Frankie.”

We followed after the dog, no real destination in sight. I had no idea where the path was going to take us.