Mom and Dad took me to the grand opening of Lily’s friend’s little brother’s new playground. They wouldn’t tell me why. Nacho and Burke and Ernie were there too. Everybody was staring at a big humpy something under a tarp. When Mom and Dad whipped off the tarp, I suddenly knew why I was there and what Dad had been working on in the basement. It was a wooden locomotive. Red and blue and silver. Letters running from headlamp to engineer’s cab said CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR.
My parents held off the swarming little kids so my sister and I could sit in the cab first. Lily was crying. I might have too, if I was a girl.
“It’s our dream train,” she said.
“Our birthday train,” I said.
I closed my eyes. I was back in the Moffat Tunnel. I could hear the click of train wheels.
Lily poked me. She was grinning. “Smell anything?”
I sniffed. “Pickles!”
We laughed.
I told her I was sorry I missed our birthday sleepwalk at the train station. I told her if it would make her feel better she could punch me one time to make up for it. She did.
I invited her to come to the new clubhouse. She said she has better things to do. I told her Bump is gone. I told her we’re not the Death Rays anymore. She could bring Sydney and Devon. She said why would she want to hang out with a bunch of boys. I reminded her that a couple months ago she said she wasn’t a girl. She punched me again.
The next day we tried to play hide-and-seek. We couldn’t.
Lily said “I ate them” before I could say “Where are my pumpkin seeds?”
It looks like we’re back on track.
And it feels like the end of this book, so