Malorie(53)

“Okay. Thank you.”

This is something.

“But he stood between the cars for a long time.”

“How would you know that?”

“Because I listen closely, ma’am. And I didn’t hear that second door, the door to the next car, open for a long, long time.”

“How long?”

“Two, three minutes.”

“But you heard it open?”

“Yes.”

“So you know he went through?”

“Me?” the man says. “What do I know? I think we’re out of our minds for taking a blind train in the first place. Could’ve been a creature that opened the next door for all I know.”

“But, you—”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he says. “That’s all I know.”

Firm. Final.

She understands. She thanks him as the door slides closed again.

Two or three minutes.

Between cars.

What was he doing there? No hoodie. No gloves. No fold.

Malorie hurries to the door, slides it open herself.

She stands where he stood.

She listens.

She thinks.

She feels.

Wind. The openness. Is that all? Or did Tom leave from here, from this very spot? It’s not hard to imagine him doing it. Tom jumped from the roof of Cabin Two, landing on a pile of mattresses he’d prearranged himself. Once, he rolled down a particularly steep hill in the woods bordering Camp Yadin. He swam the lake, eyes closed. He’s been injured, broken bones, spent weeks laid up in his bunk. His whole life he’s dared, been daring, tried new things, pushed back against his lot, their lot, the new world in full. It’s not hard to see him making a decision, his face still red from where Malorie struck him. It’s not hard to see him smiling even as he leaps from the moving train, the gravel cutting into his elbows, his bare hands splintered by the tracks.

But then what? Where from there? And while Tom might flee Malorie and her rules, would he ever go without saying goodbye to his sister?

She can’t help but think of her own sister. Shannon, dead upstairs, a glimpse of something she shouldn’t have seen from the upstairs bedroom window. A bedroom they fought over when they moved in together.

Malorie enters the next car and knocks on the first door she comes to. Silence from within.

Someone’s coming up the hall. A woman speaks.

“Is everything okay?”

Malorie stands still, just like she would’ve had someone asked her the same thing, suddenly, in Camp Yadin.

But the truth is, this train is not home. And sometimes the clearest path to safety is through other people.

“Did you see a teenager ahead?” she asks. “A young man. About my height. Dark hair. Short-sleeved shirt?”

“Did you lose someone?”

The way she says it, Malorie wants to reach out into the dark and grab her.

NO, I DIDN’T LOSE SOMEONE. SOMEONE LEFT ME.

“Yes,” she says.

“No. I didn’t see anyone like that at all.”

“Not in the dining car? Not seated? Think.”

“I’m thinking.” She sounds like the people from the school for the blind. No doubt she is questioning why Malorie is wearing her sweatshirt, gloves, a blindfold, in a place they were told is secure. “I didn’t see him, no.”

Malorie walks. She knocks on the next room. There’s movement within. The door slides open.

“Is someone there?” a voice asks. Maybe this is the blind woman Dean spoke of.

“My son is missing,” Malorie says.

“Oh, no.”

“He’s sixteen. Did you…see…or hear a young man, dark hair…”

“I’m wearing my blindfold.”

This steals Malorie’s breath. In a place where they’ve been told it’s okay to look, this woman still lives by the fold.

Lives like Malorie does.

“Please,” the woman says. “Don’t ask me to look.”

“I wouldn’t dare. I understand.”

There’s a moment of silence between them. Malorie feels it, a kinship. Something deeper than personality or character or even worldview.

Instincts.

The word doesn’t feel as good to her as it normally does. She has trusted her instincts since the world went mad, and so far it has served her well. She is alive. Her teens are alive. Despite abhorrent tragedy erupting around them, they have survived. Yet, only days ago, Malorie abandoned those instincts for the first time. Even as her parents’ names flared bright from the page, even as images of the people they once were and the people they might’ve become rose like colored fog in her personal darkness, Malorie’s gut told her to stay. Her gut told her she’d been doing it right, that it was the only way to do it, and that to leave, in a rush, to run for a train run by who knows who, to be accompanied by who knows who, was all much worse than simply being unsafe; it was playing too many games of cards at once, too many chances to lose.

And now she faces her old self. Her strict, instinctual self. And she feels shame for having come.

“It’s the only thing in the world I’d remove my fold for,” the woman says.

“What is?” Malorie asks.

“My boy.” Then, “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.”