Malorie(36)

Malorie pulls herself up, all the way, onto solid footing. She’s standing—standing!—gripping metal bannisters, already thinking that, however long this trip takes, she will not take off her fold for the duration.

They are moving without walking. In the new world.

A man’s voice breaks her reverie.

“You got her?”

“Yes,” Olympia says. She sounds like Shannon did on the dock.

“Who is that?” Malorie asks. But the thunder that usually accompanies these inquiries from her is absent.

They just made a moving train.

The man is talking again, but his voice grows distant. Malorie understands he’s heading deeper into the train. She hears a door slide closed.

She climbs the remaining steps.

Olympia and Tom are there. She hugs them in turn, as the three exclaim brief hollows of relief. Then she turns to face the darkness she just ran through, wondering if this was the right decision, if this isn’t the most dangerous thing she’s ever done.

She has put her teens’ lives in danger. There is no rationalizing this. No pretending she hasn’t.

“We did it,” Olympia says. She sounds ecstatic. Alive. Like a teen who has begun the biggest adventure of her life.

Malorie faces the train’s back door, the world of dirt roads and Camp Yadin fading out behind her.

She breathes in, she holds it, she breathes out.

Who knows what kind of people are inside this train.

Or how many.

She thinks, If it gets bad, we can leap.

“Okay,” she says, flecks of mania in her voice. “Keep your folds and hoodies on. Gloves, too. We’re going in.”

She feels a pat against her bag. Is it Tom trying to hug her again?

Malorie steps between her teens and finds the handle for the sliding door. She thinks of her mom and dad because she can’t not think of them. Their names, emblazoned on the pages in her bag, their names that got her on this train.

“You do exactly what I say,” she says. “And you only talk to who I say you can talk to. You tell nobody where we are going or why. We are not here to make friends. We are here to get from one place to another. That is all. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Olympia says.

“Yes,” Tom says.

“Okay,” Malorie says. “I love you guys.”

All images, memories, and fantasies leave Malorie’s mind at once, leaving only the infinite black of what’s to come before her.

She slides the door open.

She breathes in, she holds it, she breathes out.

And the trio enters the blind train.





THIRTEEN


This will end in madness.

Because it always does. When Malorie is around other people, someone makes a mistake. Someone tries something they shouldn’t. Someone believes something they shouldn’t. No two minds are alike, she knows. Not even her teens, raised as they have been in the same exact manner, having experienced the same exact series of events from when they were born to now, this minute, running for, and making, a train. Even someone who appears kindhearted might glance out a window. Even someone abrasive might never. The old constructs of good and bad have long been replaced with safe and unsafe. Are you a safe person? She thinks she is. She knows she is. At the school for the blind she was ridiculed for it. Others thought her precautions meant she thought they weren’t doing it right. Insecurities, here, even in the face of madness, the sight of a creature, not of this world, not of the old world, anyway. Long dead is the idea of the enthusiast, the go-getter, the happy man, woman, or child. Now, you either look or you do not. You either live by the fold or you do not. You either dedicate your life to the darkness, shared, at times, by rope, by hands, by voice, with those closest to you. Or you do not.

And this, this place that smells of people, where bodies can be heard shifting in the darkness, where conversations mingle with the throbbing of the engine and the rolling of the wheels on the pre-existing tracks, this place will end in madness, too.

Malorie only hopes they get to Mackinaw City first.

Someone walks toward them; Malorie hears heavy steps in what feels like a hall. The teens behind her, she stops and puts her arms out, acting the part of a shield. She thinks she hears movement behind a door to her left. Sleeping cars, then. A house moving at five miles per hour on a track. This is good. Or can be. Personal space. And if they get that space and someone invades it?

Jump.

“Latecomers,” a man’s voice. Sounds about Malorie’s age. “But comers all the same. David told me you just made it. Welcome. Isn’t it fantastic?”

Malorie feels the swaying of the car. Movement without moving her own legs. The first since taking a rowboat twelve years ago.

She doesn’t speak. She isn’t sure what to say, how to respond. This isn’t the same as encountering someone in Camp Yadin, a place she called home. This also isn’t like meeting someone in the woods, with no semblance of society at hand.

“I have a feeling you’re not going to want to do this,” the man begins. Malorie leans back, into her teens. “But you don’t have to wear your folds on the train.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Malorie says.

“No, no. I get it,” the man says. “I didn’t mean to get us started on the wrong foot. Honestly. Don’t worry. Some people prefer to wear them the whole time. But the truth is—”