Eggs by Jerry Spinelli Page B

.
    Around the bend . . .
    “David!” she screamed. She shucked her backpack and took off. In her mind’s eye she could see a huge diesel lumbering around the bend, and something told her the dumb clunk had no intention of jumping this time.
“Daviiiid!”
    It took forever to catch up. When she did, she yanked him from the tracks and shook him like a rag doll. “You stupid jerk! What do you think you’re doing?”
    He screamed back in her face, jaw jutting, hateful: “What do
you
care?”
    They glared at each other. She thought he might cry. She thought she might cry. And then she heard the rumble. Felt it first, actually, in the soles of her feet, on her shoulders, then heard it, low and faint as her own heartbeat; then louder, sooner than she would have guessed.
    She grabbed him and pulled him farther away, up against a wall of gray rock, David trying to wrench free. She held on tight as the blue face of the engine poked around the trees and the ground trembled and thunder drowned out everything but fear. Ten steps away the train went by, blotting out the world, fanning her face. The first brown leaves of August leaped from the cinder bed and settled at their feet.
    The engine grumbled on toward Philadelphia, and soon the only sound was that of boxcars and coal hoppers: the
k-chk k-chk
of their barbelled, pennymashing wheels. When the last car went by, she spat after it in disgust. “Look at that. Not even a caboose.”
    David squirmed free. They resumed walking, but he kept way ahead of her. She didn’t mind, so long as he stayed off the tracks. When he came to her backpack, he gave it a kick.
    “You’re kicking your own food,” she called.
    They walked like that for a while, the separation a full block if they had been on a street. They came to another bend in the tracks, a sharp one this time, sharp enough so that suddenly David was out of sight. Primrose clutched her backpack straps and ran — and practically plowed into him. He was standing stone still, staring ahead.

34
     
    At first he thought it was some kind of mountain range, hazy blue with distance. Or giant churches, with their pointy tops.
    “There ya go,” came Primrose’s voice behind him. “The big city. Skyscrapers.”
    Two of them were way taller than everything else. They speared skyward so high it seemed they would snag the passing clouds.
    “We’re almost there.” She tugged at him. “Come on.” He went with her.
    She handed him a hoagie, unwrapped one for herself. “Got them at 7-Eleven.”
    David hadn’t realized how hungry he was till he smelled the hoagie. “Aren’t we going to stop?”
    Primrose bit into hers. “Gotta keep moving. Let me know when you’re thirsty. Look.” She held up a bottle of Mango Madness. “One for each of us. A cupcake too.”
    David had walked while eating before — an ice-cream cone, a candy bar — but never a meal. “Is this lunch?” he said.
    “Did you have lunch?”
    “No.”
    “Then it’s lunch.” She grinned. “At least there’s no carrot.”
    They walked on, eating, staying off the tracks, listening. When Primrose finished her hoagie, she tossed the wrapper. David retrieved it, growled “litterbug,” and stuffed it into the backpack. “I don’t see the skyscrapers anymore,” he said.
    “Don’t worry,” said Primrose, “they’re there.”
    The river, in the distance before, was nearby now, separated from the tracks by only a thin row of trees and viny tangle. They threw stones into it for a while, then they went down to it. Rocks and tree limbs jutted from the water.
    “How much farther?” said David.
    “Not far,” said Primrose.
    “You said we were almost there.”
    “I lied.”
    “How far do we have to go?”
    “I don’t know. Miles.”
    “How many?”
    “How do I know?”
    “Guess.”
    “Fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-two.”
    They walked on.
    “Primrose?”
    “What?”
    “What would you rather get hit with, an egg or a stone?”
    “What