Whichwood(25)

“Hello my name is Sana, and I’ll be your ticket master today. It’s our business here at the Whichwood train station, Peninsula division, to make your travel dreams come true. May I interest you in a dream come true today?”

Laylee, who’d not only known Sana all her life but, more critically, knew they had only ten minutes before their train arrived (as it arrived every two hours on the hour), was even more curt than usual.

“Four tickets into town, please,” was all she said.

But four tickets was three more than usual, and this was an anomaly Sana could not ignore. She turned to look Laylee in the eye for the first time in over two years and stared, unblinking, for five solid seconds.

Laylee tapped the window with a gloved finger and spoke again. “Four tickets, Sana.”

Sana jumped, remembering herself, and nodded several times before ducking out of sight. She reemerged with four silky green tickets (which she slid through a slot in the window), and in a strange, uncomfortably sincere voice she said, “Is there anything else I might help you with today?”

Laylee narrowed her eyes, scooped up her tickets, and walked away.




Alice, Oliver, and Benyamin had regrouped.

They were huddled over Benyamin’s barrow of saffron flowers; Alice was prodding one of the purple blooms with her finger while Oliver spoke quickly and quietly under his breath. Benyamin was frowning as he listened, and he was just about to respond when Laylee approached. Seeing her, he forced a cheerful smile and changed the subject.

“Anyway,” he said loudly, “we’ll get the two of you cleaned up straightaway and then we’ll see about getting you some proper winter clothes, won’t we?” He smiled at Laylee. “What do you say? Don’t you think we can set them up nicely? They’ll need a good pair of boots at the very least.”

But it was Alice who responded. She was pointing solemnly at Benyamin’s bare feet when she said, “You mark my words, Benyamin: If anyone is getting a new pair of boots today, it’s going to be you.”

Benyamin blushed to the roots of his hair. He was both touched and mortified, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to respond. Instead, he stared—and quite a bit too much.

At Alice, that is.

They were awkward, stupid stares, clumsy stares that only grew in number as the seconds ticked by. Too soon, Alice was angry beyond words. In fact, she was horrified.

Alice had had a lifetime of experience dealing with people who stared at her for too long. She’d always known she looked different from everyone else; she knew her extreme paleness often scared and confused people, and it made them cruel to her. But after struggling for so long with accepting her differences, she’d vowed to never again allow anyone to make her feel bad about who she was or what she looked like. Not ever. She had too much pride to waste her patience on the ignorance of insensitive people.

Remembering this now, she glared at Benyamin and turned away. She’d thought Benyamin was a nice enough person; she’d thought he had a trustworthy face and a pleasant demeanor, and she’d felt comfortable with him right away. But now she was sorry for having exercised such poor judgment.

Oliver, who was still lost in thought over their group’s brief, heated discussion, had looked up just long enough to make sense of the tension contracting before him now. He was, as I mentioned some pages ago, a sharp fourteen-year-old boy, and he was fully wise to the look in Benyamin’s eye. And now, understanding their silent exchange, he couldn’t help but be stunned by what he saw.

Oliver had never seen anyone take a romantic interest in Alice before. And though he’d occasionally wondered what that sort of thing might be like—ultimately, the thought of Alice as anything but a friend made as much sense to him as wearing a sweater to go swimming.

(His loss. I think Alice is lovely.)

In any case, things had gone suddenly quiet, and Laylee couldn’t understand why. She’d only just rejoined them, and already no one was speaking. Alice was frowning at the floor, arms crossed against her chest, Benyamin was looking suddenly stunned and bewildered, and Oliver, who’d taken all of thirty seconds to stop caring about Alice and Benyamin, was once again so lost in thought about a difficult truth he’d recently uncovered that he could focus on nothing else.

Laylee, meanwhile, had been duly ignored.

Realizing this, the young mordeshoor chose that moment to pass out the train tickets—hoping the gesture would inspire new conversation—but their earlier camaraderie would not be revived. In any other situation, Laylee wouldn’t have minded (as she had no great passion for casual conversation), but there was something about her presence that appeared to instill a quiet terror in the others, and she wondered then if she was the problem—if, in fact, they simply wouldn’t speak comfortably in her company. And Laylee was surprised to find that this bothered her.

Which made her a bit mean.

“I’m not your mother,” she said sharply, apropos of nothing. “You may carry on talking about whatever it is you normally talk about without worrying I’ll disapprove.”

But just then came the sound of a loud, joyous whistle, and Alice, Oliver, and Benyamin were saved the trouble of having to respond. Bells rang out across the station, and the rush and rumble of frenzy (that always precedes the arrival of a train) sent their hearts into motion. This was it—this was their cue. Benyamin took hold of his barrow, Laylee shouldered her bones, Oliver took Alice’s hand, and the four of them charged out the doors and into the cold toward an evening they could never undo.