I have to admit she’s probably right about that stuff, but I still want a phone! All my friends have one. I told Mom that I need one so I can reach her in case of an emergency, but she wasn’t falling for that. Everybody knows that when you get a phone for emergencies, you end up using it to text goofy pictures and stuff to your friends.
“Hey, are you coming to my birthday party?” Zeke asked me out of the blue.
“When is it?”
“Next Thursday,” he told me. “I e-mailed you an invite. Didn’t you get it? You didn’t reply.”
“I didn’t check my e-mail.”
“You need to get a smartphone, dude,” Zeke told me. “Join the 21st century.”
“I know.”
“It’s an escape-room party,” Zeke said.
“Escape rooms are lame,” I replied, even though I had never been to an escape room and had no idea what they were like.
“No, this one is supposed to be cool,” Zeke told me. “They lock you up in a dungeon and you have to figure out how to open a bunch of locks to get out. Just like your man, Houdini. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
“Okay, I guess I’ll go,” I replied.
Suddenly a train roared through the Freedom Tunnel. We rushed over so we could see it through the gate. Trains go all the way up to Albany and Maine on the tracks. I like to watch them go by. It’s one of the few places you can see the trains up close.
“Hey, did you ever put a penny on a train track?” Zeke asked me as we peered through the gate.
“No, why would I do that?” I replied.
“If you put a penny on the track and a train runs over it, the penny gets flattened, like a pancake,” he said. “It’s cool.”
“Couldn’t that derail the train?” I asked.
“A penny derail a train?” Zeke said with a snort. “You nuts?”
“Did you ever do that?” I asked him. “Put a penny on a train track?”
“No, but I heard kids talk about doing it.”
“Sounds like one of those urban legends,” I told him. “I bet the penny just gets knocked off the track.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s for real,” he replied.
The train tracks were just a few feet away, on the other side of the gate. You can’t climb over the gate because it goes all the way up to the top of the arch. There was no lock on the gate, but it looked like it was all rusted shut. Just for the heck of it, I gave it a yank.
It swung open with a loud creaking sound.
Zeke and I looked at each other and smiled.
“You wanna do it?” we both said at the same time.
“I will if you will,” he said. “You got any change on you?”
I reached into my pocket. I had a quarter, a nickel, and four pennies.
I peered inside the dark tunnel. There were signs on the wall: KEEP OFF THE TRACKS. NO TRESPASSING. NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT.
“This is illegal, you know,” I pointed out.
“So is jaywalking,” said Zeke.
“What if we get caught?” I asked.
“We won’t get caught.”
We tiptoed into the tunnel and closed the heavy gate behind us. It was mostly dark in there, with a little light shining down through a grate in the ceiling. We could see graffiti written on the walls and some rubble scattered around the ground. Something smelled bad. The gravel crunched under our feet.
“There are probably rats in here,” I said, almost whispering.
“I don’t want to know what I’m smelling,” Zeke said, his voice echoing off the walls of the tunnel.
“How often do the trains come?” I asked.
“All the time,” Zeke replied. “My dad takes it to Albany to go to work. They come every half hour or so.”
“We really shouldn’t be doing this,” I said. “You hear stories about kids getting killed doing dumb stuff like this.”
“Dumb kids get killed,” Zeke told me. “We’re not dumb.”
Let me say right here that putting pennies on train tracks is definitely one of those things you shouldn’t try at home. It’s just stupid and dangerous. But my mom once told me that the human brain isn’t fully formed until we’re in our twenties, and that’s why kids can’t be thrown in jail for doing the stupid things we sometimes do.
Zeke got down on his hands and knees and put his ear against the track.
“What are you doing?” I asked him. “You wanna get your head crushed?”
“They say that if you put your ear against the steel track, you can feel the vibrations of a train coming from miles away,” he told me.
“That’s probably another one of those urban legends.”
“No, it’s true,” Zeke insisted. “Hey, I think I feel something! A train is coming! Quick, put the coins on the track!”
I looked around to see if anybody was watching before digging the coins out of my pocket again and carefully laying them in a row on the track. I could hear the rumbling of the train now, and I could see two headlights in the distance.
“I see it!” I said. “This is gonna be cool.”
Zeke scampered out of the way. I was about to do the same when I felt a tug on my left foot.
“Wait up!” I shouted. “I think my shoelace is stuck!”
“Very funny,” Zeke replied.
“I mean it!” I shouted. “The tip is stuck under the rail!”
“Well pull it out!” Zeke yelled at me.
I tried to pull it out.
“I can’t!” I shouted back. “I can’t see it! It’s too dark in here!”
Now we could both see the light of the train approaching in the distance. This was not funny. This was
