Pebbles

By Jordan Giffin

The pebbles beside the train tracks are the best ones to build houses. Not real houses, my

hands are too small for that. But there’s so many rocks of different sizes that you can make a

whole tiny town for the ladybugs. I usually start with a bank because my daddy says that the

bank is the most important building in town because it has all the money in it and money makes

people do lots of things. Then I build the grocery store, the school, and the Wendy’s. Churches

are really hard to build because of the steeple. I have to be really careful to stack the pebbles tall

enough and when the train goes by the rumble always knocks it over. My favorite things to build

are the houses. All of them have to look different and I like to picture the way the ladybugs live

in them. I make up stories about the spaghetti their mommys made for them for dinner and the

cartoons they’ll watch on the weekends and how happy they are when their daddy comes back

from a trip. I like to build the houses out of the special red pebbles. They look like bricks. Those

pebbles are usually harder to find because they’re buried underneath all the normal ones.

Yesterday was a weird day. Somebody dumped a big pile of dirt on my normal building

spot so I was building my houses on the other side of the tracks. There aren’t as many red

pebbles on that side so I built them out of the normal ones. It didn’t look as cool but there was a

puddle right next to the neighborhood so I made them look like the big fancy houses by the lake.

Well, I tried really hard to. They kept falling down because they were too tall.

The stories I was making were very fun. In the biggest house next to the lake lived a

family with three kids and an ant that they kept like people do dogs. The ant’s name was Spot

just like the spots on the ladybugs’ backs. Their daddy was a super secret spy and their mommy

flew airplanes for the army so when they went away on missions the kids put on their superhero

costumes and went to save the day too. Like Spider-Man. The really fun part is that they live
right next door to the evil villain but they don’t know it because they all wear masks. Their other

next door neighbor was a magician with real magic powers. He helps them save people but only

because they pinky promised not to tell anybody about his powers. The Magician reminds me of

my Uncle Bobby because he always helps them and makes sure their parents don’t know about

their superhero adventures. He made them a really cool secret lair in the lake. It looks like a big

bubble that they can breathe inside of and their stuff never gets wet. I saw somebody walking

around on the other side of the tracks. Sometimes people do that. Most of the time they leave

when they see me but the guy just got on top of the pile of dirt and sat down. His pants were

going to get dirty and his mommy was going to be very mad at him. He looked sad. I heard the

train coming so I did my best to keep the big house from falling down since I hadn’t built the

church yet. I like to watch the trains go by because they go very fast. I want to drive a train one

day. The guy stood up when he heard the train and when it went by he jumped and then he was

gone. He must’ve been a magician too. There was some red stuff on the ground, like paint or

something. He must have thrown it before he disappeared so people would know he was there.

Maybe that’s how the pebbles got so red. He must have been practicing his tricks a lot.

I told my mommy about the Magician when I got home. She was really mad at me for

playing by the train tracks because she says the trains aren’t safe and a really nice policeman

came and talked to me today. He gave me a lollipop and asked me a lot of questions. He didn’t

seem to like the magic trick. My mommy made him go away and I was sad because I liked

talking to him. But she promised we could get a big pile of pebbles to put in the backyard so I

could build my houses there so it was okay. She won’t let me have any of the red ones though. I

don’t understand why.