“Hold up a sec,” he said. I didn’t know if he was talking to me, but I nodded just in case.

When I looked down the sidewalk, I saw even more kids wearing those vests. They were helping the little kids get on the bus and giving them high fives and carrying their projects made out of shoeboxes and clay.

The big kid in front of me waited until some more little kids straggled over. Then he stepped into the smack-dab middle of the sidewalk. He blew a whistle and stuck his hands up to stop all the kids coming from the other direction. Everybody saw him and listened.

“Take it easy,” he said as I passed by.

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

When I got to the street corner, there was a real crossing guard. I mean, like, a grown-up making the cars slow down and stop. I guess they only let kids do the sidewalk traffic. But it still looked like kind of a cool job.

5. Desert Sand, Beaver, Mahogany, Copper, Inchworm, Shamrock, Granny Smith Apple

Our new apartment was only a few blocks away, but they were the long kind. I passed a self-storage place that looked like a neighborhood of garages that forgot to add the houses. The sign said STUFF IT. That was pretty funny.

Then there was a low line of stores stuck together, with a coffee place and a floor place and a laundry place and a pizza place. I could smell the clean-laundry smell in the air, all soft and full.

After that, there was a random field with a big For Sale sign stuck in the middle of it. It was just weeds, or maybe it was wheat. I don’t know. And next to that was the sign for Hidden Rivers.

Hidden Rivers was three brick buildings that almost made a square around a fence around a pool. Our new apartment was in the back building, farthest from the road. My mom always tries to get an apartment in the building farthest from the road. But what I didn’t understand was why Hidden Rivers was called that. Unless it was because there weren’t any rivers around, so someone must have done a pretty good job hiding them.

I unlocked the front door and walked up the stairs. Then I unlocked the door to our apartment. Everything was still in boxes, but I saw that my mom had found the picture of us from the fair last summer and stuck it on the fridge.

The fair had this water ride that snapped your photo when the boat swooshed down and the water splashed up to soak you. I love that picture. I’m sitting in the front with my arms stretched high over my head. My mom is sitting behind me, squeezing me like a sack of potatoes. Her chin is on my shoulder, and she’s smiling.