Being a teenager is no easy role. This doesn't seem to be that troubles Dougie. Although he labels himself as unpopular, the fact that his "best friend" Andy likes him, even though they don't hang out as much as he used to, makes him feel normal. Normal, because to him, he is pretty normal even though he may not share the same interests that other kids his age have. He likes trains. he loves train. He even calls them his obsession and for the last two years and eleven months he has been working on building Madham. He calls this his obsession. His friendship to Andy is endearing and it isn't until he is asked if he is seeing Andy again after he puts the blame on him for calling in a bomb threat at schoo that a doubt is put in the reader as to whether Andy is a part of a double identity that he may have. It turns out that Andy was very much real and was a friend of Dougie who burned and died at the Tuttle place a day they broke in because of a fire that he and Dougie started. All this is difficult to process. And as a result of this he is permanently expelled from his school. The ambigous ending gives the reader the freedom to decide whether as result of his last experiment, if you can call it that, Dougie died or is just badly burned.
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