It Happened on a Train

by Mac Barnett

  “I’m going for it,” Steve said.

  He ran up toward the rock.

  Claire followed.

  Dana came up last, walking backward, brushing the sand with his arm to cover up their tracks.

  Steve stood atop the old man’s belly and grinned. At his feet was a crack in the cliff, just wide enough for a grown man to fit through. “Follow me,” he said.

  “Down there?” said Claire. “I can’t see the bottom.”

  “There’s a secret path down there,” said Steve.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to jump down a hole in a cliff,” Dana said. “What if it’s a sea cave?”

  “It’s not a sea cave,” Steve said.

  “It could be a sea cave,” said Dana.

  The buggy’s engine grew louder.

  Steve jumped into the blackness.

  CHAPTER LXVIII

  UP THE ARROYO

  HE LANDED ON SOFT SAND.

  “Not a sea cave,” he called up.

  Claire hopped down after him. Dana slid down.

  “Wait,” Steve said.

  They pressed their backs against the smooth stone and heard the buggy’s motor come close. Steve stopped breathing for as long as he could. The buggy passed them by. The sound of its engine grew distant.

  Steve clapped his hands.

  He had saved everybody.

  Claire hugged Steve.

  Steve looked over her shoulder at Dana, whose eyes were wide.

  “Let’s get moving,” Steve said.

  The narrow ravine opened into an arroyo that they followed up a hill a long way. The arroyo became a path that dumped them out on a two-lane highway next to a long-closed roadside concession stand. Painted on the side of the old wooden building was a peeling advertisement that showed three penguins cradling ice cream bars in their wings while they danced around a barber’s pole. Across the top of the painting were the words ES TIEMPO DE HELADOS in snowcapped letters.

  “The south pole,” Steve said, putting his notebook back in his pocket.

  “What?” said Dana.

  They started down the highway together.

  CHAPTER LXIX:

  THE START OF SOMETHING

  STEVE HADN’T SLEPT since his naps in the Phoebus’s trunk, so that day passed like a dream: trudging along the road underneath sky that went from orange to blue; catching a ride on the back of a truck filled with ripe tomatoes; arriving in a small seaside town of wooden shacks and brightly painted adobe buildings; finding the local police station; Dana talking, in Spanish, to a police officer with deep laugh lines on his face; Claire reading a beat-up English paperback the cop pulled from a desk drawer; phone calls, long waits, and tacos and cold horchata for lunch; and then, before sunset, the arrival in handcuffs of the Vanderdraaks and Chuy; more statements, more translating; that evening, a small caravan of trucks and cars pulling up bearing federales, American officials, and Rick (Rick was the only person wearing a bulletproof vest); a long drive home during which Dana learned that the Model UN had voted, in the absence of a speech from the Icelandic delegation, to award Great Britain unrestricted fishing rights to the waters off Iceland, and Steve learned, talking to his mom on Rick’s cell phone, that he was grounded.

  But there was one moment among that day’s otherwise hazy parade of events that would remain clear and vivid in Steve’s memory for the rest of his life.

  It happened just after lunch. Steve was standing near the police station watching two surfers who’d paddled out past the waves. Their brown backs were to the shore, and they sat half submerged on their boards, watching for the next swell to come rolling in. They reminded Steve of Danimal. He wondered where Danimal was, and if he’d gone to the police to report that fake shark attack. When Steve got back to Ocean Park, he’d have to find him and tell him he’d found his grandfather’s secret spot. Steve guessed that meant he would come out of retirement, at least for now, and the thought of his future cases made him happy. Of course, those same cases, like his next case, Danger Goes Berserk, would bring about their share of danger too.

  Twelve years old was too young to retire, Steve decided. He thought about what Mrs. Vanderdraak had said to him about talking to her later, when he’d been married for twenty-five years. Marriage was a mystery Steve had no interest in solving. The Vanderdraaks were incomprehensible to him. He had learned so many of their secrets and had only come away more confused. What bound them together? It didn’t seem healthy. Why was his mom with Rick, for that matter, when Rick was a doofus and his mom was not? Or Dana and Other Dana. What was going on there? No, Steve decided, he’d never understand what Mrs. Vanderdraak had been talking about, because he wanted nothing to do with love.

  “Hey, Steve,” Dana said behind him. Dana had both hands in his pockets and looked nervous. Steve figured it was time to go give another statement to the police officer.

  “So, well, you know Claire—I mean, of course you know her; we both know her—but um, she wanted me to ask you—”

  Steve noticed now that Claire was standing under an arch on the patio of the little police station.

  “—I mean,” Dana said, “she was wondering if you wanted to be her boyfriend.”

  Steve felt like he had just taken a Shawn Bailey haymaker right to the kisser, but in a good way. Steve walked past Dana and up the brick path to where Claire was standing with her hands behind her back.

  “Sure,” Steve said.