The Girl Who Stole the Train

It started with a dare. That’s how most bad ideas do.

Callie Brookes was seventeen, bored, and barefoot, standing on the gravel beside the old freight station in Otter Hill, Arkansas. It was just after midnight. Her two best friends, Mason and Lila, were slumped against the broken vending machine that hadn’t worked since the Obama administration, sipping warm soda and talking about nothing.

That’s when Callie said, “What if I stole it?”

Mason blinked. “Stole what?”

“The train.”

They all turned to look. There, under flickering security lights and wrapped in Southern summer heat, sat the Otter Hill Switcher — an old, retired diesel locomotive with peeling red paint and dusty windows. No one had driven it in years. It was practically abandoned, parked on a dead-end spur behind the station, used occasionally by the historical society during town parades.

Callie was joking, mostly. But not really.

“Come on,” she grinned. “We climb stuff all the time. We skateboard through the school roof, we snuck into the mayor’s pool, we can climb a train.”

“Climbing it and driving it are different things,” Lila said. She always played the realist. “You don’t even know how.”

Callie shrugged. “How hard could it be?”

That’s the moment it went from a joke to a mission.

The Climb

They found an old milk crate behind the station and used it to boost onto the engine’s rusting metal steps. Mason, of course, went first — he always did — and Callie followed, her heart beating a little faster with every step. It was nothing like climbing the water tower or sneaking into the school auditorium. This felt bigger. Stupider. Glorious.

The door was unlocked. That surprised them.

Inside, it smelled like oil and dust and old leather. The cabin had two cracked seats, a control panel filled with faded dials, and a giant lever with a warning sticker that had been scratched beyond readability.

Mason pushed a few buttons, grinning. “What if it starts?”

Lila stood in the doorway. “It won’t. No way it still works.”

But when Callie flipped the switch marked MAIN, a low hum began. The cabin vibrated. Something clicked deep in the bowels of the machine.

“I think you just woke it up,” Mason whispered.

The Ride

What happened next was part instinct, part fate, and part dumb luck.

Callie, her hands trembling but weirdly confident, eased the throttle forward. At first, nothing happened. Then the floor lurched. A slow metallic groan filled the night as the engine hissed and shuddered. They were moving.

“Oh my God,” Lila whispered, gripping the doorway.

The Otter Hill Switcher, dormant since 2011, began rolling forward on squealing tracks, picking up speed like an old horse who’d suddenly remembered how to run. Callie laughed — a wild, stunned, can’t-believe-this-is-happening laugh — and Mason whooped beside her.

“We’re actually doing it,” he said.

They rumbled through the edge of town in the dark, past sleepy houses and empty parking lots, past the water tower they used to climb and the Walmart where they bought firecrackers on the Fourth of July. The train whined and creaked, but it didn’t stop.

“Where does this line even go?” Lila asked.

callie didn’t know.

The Consequences

Twenty miles down the track, past soy fields and forgotten gas stations, the train slowed on its own. An automatic brake kicked in as they approached a junction near Hollow Creek. A blinking red light pulsed ahead.

They could see flashing police lights in the distance. Someone — probably the station manager, or a very confused night janitor — had called it in.

“Guys,” Lila said, her voice low and serious. “We’re in so much trouble.”

They had two choices: stay and face it, or jump.

Callie hesitated. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her fingertips. She looked at Mason. Then at Lila. And then, without a word, she opened the cabin door, climbed down the steps, and leapt into the tall grass beside the tracks.

The others followed.

They ran until the train shrank behind them, a mechanical ghost disappearing into the warm Arkansas night.

The Fallout

They were found the next day, of course. Otter Hill wasn’t exactly New York City. A sheriff’s deputy spotted them walking back into town just after sunrise, covered in dirt and scratches, looking like kids who had both won and lost something important.

Their names were plastered across local headlines the next morning:

“TEENS STEAL HISTORICAL LOCOMOTIVE IN MIDNIGHT JOYRIDE”

There was outrage, naturally. Their parents freaked. The mayor called a town meeting. The historical society demanded restitution.

But something else happened too.

People smiled when they read the story. Teenagers in small towns don’t usually make national news unless something goes wrong. And this — this was different. Reckless? Yes. Illegal? Technically. But also… daring. Unscripted. The kind of thing you might’ve dreamed about doing when you were seventeen and the world still felt like a door you could kick open.

The mayor — secretly amused — gave them 200 hours of community service. They scrubbed graffiti, cleaned gutters, and helped repaint the elementary school gym. They did it without complaint.

And the train? The Otter Hill Switcher was cleaned up, polished, and — due to a sudden surge of interest — put back into parade service. It became something of a local legend. School kids took field trips to it. Tourists came for photos.

And Callie Brookes? She never drove a train again.

But she did get a full ride scholarship to a state college, majoring in mechanical engineering. Mason joined the Coast Guard. Lila wrote an essay about that night and won a national writing contest. She called it “The Night We Didn’t Ask Permission.”

Their friendship changed. But they never forgot.

Some nights, years later, Callie would drive through Otter Hill and slow down near the tracks, watching the old engine where it sat like a sleeping lion. She’d smile to herself, remembering how it felt to pull that lever and hear the rumble of the world waking up.

And for one bright, impossible moment, believing that anything — anything — could happen.