The conductor blinked a few times. Her eyes shifted over to Wunder, who gave her his best calming smile. Davy pulled his knees up to his chin and studied the floor.

“Anything else you’d like to know?” Faye asked.

“Not a thing,” the conductor said. She scanned their tickets and handed them back. “But your heathen father better be at the station at Benedict to pick you three up. Those are the rules.”

When she left the train car, Wunder let out a sigh of relief.

“Great job, Faye!” he cried.

“Thank you, Wundie,” Faye said. “But we still have to sneak off this train. And please stop smiling like that. It’s very unnerving.”

“Okay, I will,” Wunder promised. But he didn’t stop.

“You look insane,” Faye told him. “Certifiable.”

“I don’t think so.” Davy uncurled himself. “I think he looks happy. He always used to look like that.”

“Well, then he always used to look insane,” Faye said.

Wunder laughed, and Faye jerked her head away from him, her expression alarmed. “Stop that,” she said.

“It sounds good,” Davy said.

“It doesn’t,” Faye said. “Don’t tell him that. It sounds maniacal, and you know it.”

Wunder kept grinning. All he could think was that they were doing what the witch had asked. They were getting the tree.

And then there was going to be a miracle.

The stone of his heart was rolling from side to side to side, waiting, anticipating.

Chapter 33

As the day wore on, the train filled and emptied, filled and emptied. Faye spent the time reading a large leather-bound volume entitled The Book of the Divine Prescriptions. She said it was a very secret, very ancient text that almost no one else had read, but it had a library sticker on it, so Wunder was pretty sure that wasn’t true. Davy had brought some comic books. And Wunder had The Miraculous—dirt-flecked, leather worn, thin and gutted.

“I haven’t seen that in a while,” Davy said when he noticed what Wunder was reading.

“I put it in my closet,” Wunder confessed. “I even tried to leave it in the graveyard. But it kept coming back to me.”

“Read me one,” Davy said.

Faye closed her book. “It’s impossible to concentrate on the paranormal with this incessant chatter,” she said. “So let’s hear one of your sunshine-and-sparkles miracles, Wundie.”

Over the past few weeks, Wunder had shared more from The Miraculous than he ever had before. And every time he shared a miracle, he felt how powerful they were. He saw how they comforted, how they connected. He knew the perfect one to share with his friends.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s one. Here’s one for Davy.”

Miraculous Entry #893

I realized today that I’ve never done an entry about Davy. Davy has been my best friend since we met in day care. As babies! How miraculous is that?

It’s true that I met my other best friend, Tomás, in more “miraculous” circumstances (see Entry #97). But there are all kinds of miracles. There are everyday miracles. And I guess I just realized that meeting your best friend before you can even walk is one of those.