The three girls cruised side by side from eastern Missouri to central Kansas. Samantha rode in silence, enjoying the scenery. Then…

“Waitaminute!” Lainey shouted, and pulled ahead of the pack.

She brought her monocycle to a stop beside a sign that read:

WELCOME TO CAWKER CITY

Samantha caught up with her and stopped. She noticed that Lainey’s face was lit up with excitement.

“The world’s biggest ball of twine is in this town,” Lainey told her. “If I had a little brother with me, I know the first thing he’d want to do would be to—”

“But you don’t have a little brother with you,” Fiona interrupted as she rolled up beside them. “You don’t have a little brother yourself at all. Do you?”

Lainey didn’t answer. She looked straight ahead past Fiona.

Samantha thought her expression was angry or sad until she realized Lainey was staring at a bus stop along a road a few yards away.

“Boy in the ball?” asked Samantha.

“Possibly,” said Lainey.

“Definitely,” said Fiona, squinting in the same direction.

“Wow,” said Samantha. “You sure have keen eyesight.”

“It comes in handy,” said Fiona, looking up at the sky.

Samantha could tell she was calculating the position of the sun.

“It’s after two right now in Kansas,” Fiona continued. “We’ll get two hours back in Washington State because of the time zone difference. If we head home without stopping, we should all make it by dinner.”

Samantha hit the gas and led the way. In about a hundred yards, they reached another round, sunken clearing. It was much smaller than the pit by the giant tire in Michigan, but it was still a circle hidden in plain sight.

They parked their monocycles, and from there, they walked back to the bus stop marked with the boy in the ball and found a staircase hidden from view behind a power transformer.

Five minutes later, they were sitting packed tightly together on a foam couch, in a ball on the kogelbaan, rolling home.