Malorie(45)

“What’s wrong?” Tom asks again.

When Olympia looks to him in the glass she sees herself, reflected in the lenses of the glasses he’s built. For this, two mirrors face each other, and her own form is repeated, over and over, into infinity.

“Athena Hantz says we’re allowed to look,” Tom says. “She says it’s all a matter of us accepting them. Living with them.”

Olympia thinks of the predominant theory that a creature drives you mad because people can’t fathom what they are. Malorie’s told her about the man Tom was named after, and how he was sure that the entities outside their house, the house Olympia and Tom were born in, simply couldn’t be understood.

But what does this mean for those who can look? For those who are immune? Does it mean those people are smarter? Does it mean they look at the world in a different way, just different enough to save themselves without realizing they’re doing it? Does it mean those people are already mad, and no amount of unfathomable information can change that, speed it up, bring it to a bloody end?

“Indian River,” Tom says again. He shakes his head, flipping through the pages.

Her brother is enamored with making progress. For as long as she can remember, he’s proffered ideas, theories, inventions.

She wishes he would stop thinking this way.

But is that just Malorie talking? Is Olympia’s worldview only Malorie’s and nothing of her own? What if she’d been raised by her blood-mother? What if she and Tom had been raised by their namesakes instead?

Where would they be right now? What would they know?

What would they believe?

And if people are right, that the creatures cause harm because they are beyond human comprehension…then what would someone like Tom the man make of people who were raised with the knowledge of the creatures’ existence? What about the people who do fathom them because they’ve lived with them their entire lives?

Olympia looks to Tom just as he looks up, quick, to the door, a half second before a knock rattles her reverie.

Tom quickly shoves the papers back into Malorie’s bag. He removes his glasses and hides them in his lap.

“Hello?” a man says. “Anybody home?”

Tom looks to Olympia. Do they speak? They know they shouldn’t. They know Malorie would kill them if they do.

But Tom does. And Olympia knew he would.

“Yes,” Tom says. “Who’s there?”

“Ah!” the man says. “My name is Henry. We are neighbors. Insomuch as everyone on board lives in the same traveling neighborhood.”

He sounds older than Mom, Olympia thinks. Maybe as old as Sam and Mary Walsh. Did somebody think this man was dead for years, too? Has he survived the new world in anonymity like Olympia and Tom’s grandparents might have?

“Nice to meet you,” Tom says. He smiles Olympia’s way. This is all so incredible. First, leaving home. Then, making the train. Now, on the train and here a man, a stranger comes to say hello.

“If you don’t mind,” the man says, “I’d like to slide your door open. I’m old-fashioned in that I like to look at the people I speak to. And here, on this train, we’re allowed to.”

“Allowed to what?” Tom asks.

“Allowed to look!” The man laughs.

Tom and Olympia exchange a glance. Olympia’s excitement is tempered. Was the man listening to them? Or is the word “allowed” fashionable in the real world?

“I don’t know,” Olympia says to Tom.

She’s worried about Malorie discovering they’re talking to a stranger. She’s scared to open the door for him.

And is she really considering doing that? Opening the door? Is entering the real world such a slippery slope?

It doesn’t matter if she’s considering it or not. Tom is already up, crossing the cabin, sliding the door open.

Olympia thinks to close her eyes. Because that’s what she’s been told to do her entire life. Despite what the man Dean says about this being a safe place.

The school for the blind was considered safe. The home they were born in was considered safe. Why should this train be any different?

But it is different. She can’t deny this. And, again, she feels a sense of having shed her skin, of having stepped, clearly, into a new phase, a second life.

“Hi,” Tom says. “I’m Tom.”

And now, giving out their actual names.

“Tom.” The man smiles. “What a wonderful appellation.”

The man, Olympia sees, is much older than Malorie. He has gray hair and white stubble on his chin and face. Olympia hasn’t seen someone this man’s age in ten years, not since the school for the blind.

“And you?” Henry says, raising his eyebrows her way.

It chills her that they’re doing this. And more. Something more. Something similar to leaving Camp Yadin behind. That feeling of never getting something back again.

“I’m Jamie,” Olympia says.

Henry smiles. He wears a sweater, despite the heat, and sweat drips down his cheeks.

Does he know she’s lying about her name? He looks like he does.

“Well,” he says. “I just wanted to introduce myself and to let you know…if you want to learn anything about this train, anything at all, feel free to knock on my door. I’m what people used to call a regular. My good friend Nathan and I are just a couple cars that way. Cabin Sixteen, I believe.”