Mommy does not like it when we screech at each other. She says it makes her head migraine, so Keithie and I agree not to play Monkeys anymore.

    Keithie sits on my bed and swings his legs forward and back, forward and back. “What are we supposed to play now?” he whispers.

    I shush him. “I’m thinking, Keith, hold on.” I look around the room for anything we could play with, but all the toys are in their boxes and Mommy does not like it when we make a mess. She says it makes her eyes dizzy. “How about we make a new game?”

    Keithie’s eyes get big and happy. “Yeah! New game!”

    I point to the tall blue door and put my other finger to my lips, so Keithie can see he’s got to be quiet. “What we’re gonna do,” I say, in a whisper so he knows it’s secret, “is go on an adventure…”

    “Adventure!”

    “And we’re gonna find a special gift for Mommy…”

    “Ooh!”

    “So when we come back…”

    “Yeah?”

    “She won’t even be icky we were gone!”

    “Woo!” says Keithie, throwing his arms in the air. “Susie, you’re a genius.”

    “Well duh.”

    Carefully, Keithie and I slip on our quietest shoes and tip-top-toe out of our room, then down the hall, then past Mommy who is on the phone doing some business with someone who is making her brain hurty, and straight out the door. We sneak past all the other apartments on our floor and crawl like secret spies into the elevator when it comes. An old man who has a shiny cane looks at us and shakes his head.

    “I bet he’s never played secret spies,” I tell Keithie when the old man leaves on the 4th floor.

    “Maybe we should invite him with us,” says Keithie.

    “No, he’s too old,” I say. “Adventures are for kids.”

    Keithie doesn’t like this but he nods. We ride the elevator all the way down to the lobby, and then we run as fast as we can outside, while the lobby man Mr. Glens shouts at us to stop running, it’s making his floors scratchy.

    Outside the sky is still dusty and blue, kind of wet because of the fog but not raining so there isn’t a lot of mud on the road. Keithie grins at me because he is excited, and I tell him to calm down because we are secret spies and we don’t want people to be jealous. Keithie agrees.

    “First stop,” I say, “is we got to get a cab.”

    Keithie’s eyes light up. “You mean one of the yellow taxis?”

    I nod and Keithie jumps in place, rubs his hands together really fast and squeals high and happy. “Gee, Mommy’s never let us get on a taxi by ourselfs!”

    We wait by the edge of the sidewalk some blocks away from the building, so Mr. Glens can’t tell Mommy we left, me patiently, Keithie wiggling cause he can’t hold in the energy.

    “Are you hungry, Keithie?” I ask him, and he nods. “We can stop for breakfast. What do you want?”

    “Scrambled eggs!” says Keithie. “And a pancake!”

    “They’ll give it to us free cause we’re kids,” I say.

    “Plus secret spies never pay,” says Keithie. 

    “Exactly. 

    We wait for a few minutes but all the taxis drive by us, even though we wave at them to stop.

    “They must not see too good,” says Keithie. We decide to walk to a breakfast shop by our own feet instead. Keithie skips all the way.

    At the breakfast shop, which is a little place Poppy used to take us when he was not divorced, Keithie and I order scrambled eggs to share. Keithie changes his mind about the pancake but he still puts maple syrup on his eggs. I like mine salty, so I don’t do that on my half. Keithie gets a hot cocoa to drink with his eggs, but I get English Breakfast tea which is what the adults get. When Keithie and I are done, we wipe our faces off with napkins and run out the café before the woman who is the owner gets mad at us that we didn’t pay like Poppy did.

    When we go outside, there are sirens everywhere, and Keithie’s big dark eyes get even bigger as he watches the police cars up close. They drive right to us, loud and blue and flashy.

    “This is our secret-spy ride!” says Keithie. “They’ll help us on our mission!”

    A woman in a blue cop suit gets out of the car. She has a notepad in her hands and slams the door behind her. “Are you Susan and Keith Dalton?” Keithie nods, and even though we should have secret identities I decide the cop is on our mission so she can know. “Alright, get in the car.” Keithie claps his hands together and squees as he climbs into the backseat. I hoist myself behind him. As the cop holds the door, she talks quiet into a walkie-talkie. “Yep, got the two kids. Seven-year-old female, four-year-old male, unharmed.”

    Keithie swings his legs in the back seat. “Are you ready for our mission, Captain?” he asks me in his little-boy voice.

    But before I get to answer him, another car pulls up and the door flies open, and Mommy practically falls out, and her face is all crying and she’s screaming, no, she’s totally baby-shrieking, and she comes right up to the cop car.

    “Mommy!” says Keithie, and suddenly he forgets he’s a secret spy.

    “Oh my god, oh my god,” cries Mommy. The cop car drives all three of us back to our building. Adventure over.

    When we get home, Mommy holds us tight and says she doesn’t have a headache anymore.