Break The Ice (10 page)

“I found our seats,” I say. I walk deeper into the car and stop at the door marked S-3. Sliding it open, I stare into the open compartment. Three beds, stacked and interweaving. A second room attached next to the entrance leads into a bathroom.

“Good idea not listening to me,” Ted says, poking his head around the doorway. He slides past me and jumps onto the bottom bunk. “Dibs.”

“I’ll take the floor,” I say

“You can share a bunk with somebody,” Mel says.

My face gets hot.

“I’m sure Ted wouldn’t mind,” she adds.

He throws his pillow at her. “I don’t think you’d fit on any of these beds anyway.”

They do look small. I lean my back against an empty wall and slide onto the floor. The train’s whistle blasts outside the window, gears grinding beneath us as we begin to move.

“They don’t waste any time,” Ted says.

“That’s probably a good thing. How long do we have, anyway?” Mel says.

I shrug. Tinjo didn’t give me any details. “I hope at least two days.” Nobody says anything for a minute, so I say, “I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Good idea,” Kaitlyn says. She climbs into the highest bunk.

“Sleep? No way. I want to explore the train,” Mel says.

“In!” Ted says. He jumps out of the bunk and tosses me his pillow. “For the ride.”

He laughs as the compartment door closes behind him and Mel.

Alone with Kaitlyn. Again. The last time I was a lot more nervous but not as embarrassed at the same time. I can’t figure out why I’m acting so weird around her. I want to ask her what’s wrong, but I can’t form the words. I close my eyes instead.

The train cruises along, bumping and whining underneath my back. I can’t erase the picture of that little girl from my mind. The experience etched her face onto the back of my eyelids. Her laughter, her toothy smile, the way she seemed overjoyed at the amount of people she killed. I can’t look at her anymore and force my eyes open.

Kaitlyn leans over her side of the bunk, staring at me. She twitches, her eyes growing two sizes as I catch her staring. She doesn’t pull away. “Hey,” she says.

“Hi.”

“Sorry I’ve been acting like a bitch the past few hours.” She lets her head fall onto the bunk’s railing. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

“I don’t think you’ve been…” I don’t want to call her a bitch, even if she said it first, so I finish by saying, “Mean. You’ve been fine, remember?” Bitch might have been a better way to say that.

She rolls her eyes. “So…how long have you known Mel?”

It finally clicks. She’s not mad at me, she’s jealous of Mel. Why did it take me so long to notice? I guess I’ve never been around two girls for this long before. And none have ever been jealous before. That’s kind of sad.

“Uhh, three days I think.”

That answer surprises her. “Really? You two have quite a rapport already.”

“Not the same one you get with somebody after six years,” I say.

She smirks. “Yeah, yeah.” She jumps down from her bunk and lies next to me, her hair almost touching mine. “When you both came out of the room together, the way you held her–”

“So that she didn’t freeze to death in the impossible act of teleportation,” I say, cutting her off.

Her hand flings around behind her head and hits me in the eye. “Oh, shoot, I’m–” She can’t finish her sentence because she’s laughing so much.

My eye waters and burns a little, but I can’t stop myself from laughing with her. I remember her carefree laugh. I enjoy it, always have.

When she stops laughing, her hand drops to the floor and slides over to where mine is. The backs of our hands sit side by side, almost touching, and I smile. “I felt–” My normal tendency to keep things to myself kicks in, and I stop talking. Except I already started–and used the word felt. If I don’t finish, she’ll say something for sure. Or think I’m hiding something. “I felt the same way when–”

“So then the building explodes, and I’m checking on the people and what the hell are you two doing on the floor?” Ted looks at Kaitlyn and me. “Whatever. Anyway, that’s pretty much what happened before we came to the hospital.”

“Catching her up on all of your heroism?” Kaitlyn says.

“Sharing our war stories, that’s all,” Ted says.

Mel looks at me, then Kaitlyn, and back to me. Her expression is different from Ted’s, much more critical. She hovers by the door for a second before climbing onto her bunk.

Kaitlyn must have picked up on the tension because she sits up, leaving me on the floor by myself. “We should all get some sleep,” she says.

“Good idea,” I say, turning to face the wall. I close my eyes and battle the nausea fighting its way through my stomach. What if I would have finished my sentence? Ten more seconds and I might not be alone on the floor.

Don’t be stupid. Saying that you don’t like the way Ted acts around her wouldn’t change anything.

I squeeze the pillow in half, crushing my head as much as a pillow can. I’ll never get any sleep if my thoughts don’t shut up. Thinking about something else might help but the only other thing I can come up with is mom and that’s a door I don’t need to open right now in a room with three other people.

A walk might help. I get up and walk to where I think the door is. Mel had shut off the lights and now I can’t see a thing. My hand bumps the handle, and I pull it to the side, hoping no light comes in.

The hallway is much darker than I recall, every overhead light spaced out ten feet. Our room sits right in the middle of two lights. The hallway to my left leads to the regular seats and where we came from, so I turn right.

Five more private compartments fill up the remainder of the train car before I hit the end. I don’t know if people are in any of them, or if we’re the only ones on board. Nobody sat in the cars we walked through, but it’s past midnight.

At the beginning of the next train car, I find a locked door. I peek through a small crack in a set of blinds. At least two dozen people are sitting in the seats. Some older, some younger. A few kids are asleep in the aisle seats.

I squint to see through the dim lights when a face appears on the other side. Jumping back, my foot bumps into the metal door and echoes in the small space around me. I retreat into my train car when somebody stops me.

“Excuse me,” he says. “What were you doing?”

“I was, uhh.” I can’t think of what to say. Calm down, take a deep breath. I exhale and say, “I couldn’t sleep so I took a walk. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

The guy is at least twenty. He has a dark shadow growing on his chin like he hasn’t shaved in days. Uncombed hair juts out in twenty different directions. Both eyes droop and sink in. I recognize the look–exhaustion. He scrutinizes me a moment more before he smiles. “It’s okay.” He rubs his eyes. “I didn’t mean to sound harsh, sorry. I can’t sleep either.”

“Is everything alright?” I say, not sure why. If I were smart, I’d apologize again and go back to our compartment.

“It’s been better. On the way to a funeral out of state. My dad passed away and…” He shakes his head. “Sorry, I don’t mean to bore you with the details. Anyway, we rented out this entire car, so they let us lock the doors. Once you pass us it’s the conductor, so you’re not missing out on much anyway.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll, uhh…I’ll let you get back to your family,” I say.

“Wait, what’s your name?” he says.

“Sam.”

“I’m Dan. Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” I say. I nod once more before hurrying away.

Back on the floor, I rest my head onto the pillow and stare up into the darkness.

“Sam, that you?” It’s Kaitlyn, her voice sounds sleepy.

“Yeah, just me.”

“Okay, good.”

I smile in the dark, a genuine smile as she called it, and close my eyes. I relax, something unimaginable five minutes ago. For whatever reason, my mind keeps showing me pictures of Dan. Perhaps it’s from meeting someone new at midnight on a train heading to Utah to fight the Sunjin and my brain is trying to keep from going crazy. But I can’t shake a weird feeling about the whole encounter.

“You’re going mad,” I mutter to myself. Just go to sleep. I squeeze my eyes shut harder and count to three.

One. Inhale. I hold it in until I get light headed.

Two. I exhale, waiting for my chest to stop hurting. I picture the next number in my head, shutting out every other thought that tries to break in.

Three…

I wake with a start. Again. For the third time. At least this time it’s light outside. Every time I drifted to sleep, Dan’s face crept into my dreams, his face transposed onto the Sunjin at Orange Cone or the little girl, laughing. This last time, it was our meeting between the train cars, except his eyes were red from the small flames behind his pupils.

“You alright, man?” Ted says, leaning over his bunk. “That was a wicked scream.”

“What? No. I mean yes, I’m fine. Where are the others?”

“Showers. Some old guy knocked on our door this morning and told us they have a breakfast car and a place to shower that we missed on our way in.”

I rub my eyes and drag my hands along my cheeks.

“You’re into Kaitlyn, right?” he says.

Two beats of my heart sends enough blood into my face that they’re bright red in a second. “What?”

“You heard me. Kaitlyn, you dig her.”

“We’re friends,” I say. It feels like a programmed response.

“Right, right. I may be an asshole, but I’m not stupid. So while you’re busy being friends with Kait, I’m going to take a crack at Mel.”

“Take a crack?”

“Dude, she’s a solid seven point six. I have to try.”

I want to end the conversation now, but there’s nowhere for me to go. What if I stop talking altogether? I try my best until the urge to ask grows, and I can’t help myself from saying, “You have a decimal point system?”

“It’s a perfect scale, every detail and idea taken into account. Take Kait for example–”

I hold a hand up. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Ted furrows his brow like I suggested the sun revolves around the Earth. “Why not?”

“It’s a dumb idea, to rate something–someone–like that. Why not be happy and go from there?”

He looks off to the side, thinking it over, or maybe deciding what he wants for breakfast, then shrugs. “Trust me, it works. She’s a six point three, by the way.”

I laugh out loud. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard you say yet.”

The door to the compartment slides open. Kaitlyn and Mel walk in, both smiling and laughing together. Mel is in front, walking backwards while facing Kaitlyn. “And then he–” She looks over her shoulder at the both of us. “I’ll tell you later.” They both laugh again.

My stomach drops. I swear she looked at me before saying that.

Mel reads my expression. “Relax, we weren’t talking about you.”

I wipe whatever pathetic look she read off my face. “I didn’t think you were,” I say.

“Why do you look like you licked a lemon?” She squishes her face together and the others all laugh.

Trying to play it off, I shrug. “I just woke up. This is me waking up. You’ve seen it before.” My face reddens again. I need to change the subject. “Who wants breakfast?”

“Someone give this man an award for best idea all morning,” Ted says.

“Let me change first,” Mel says.

“Did you bring extra clothes?” I say.

She wrinkles her nose. “Shoot. I guess not.”

“We should probably find some soon,” Kaitlyn says. “It’s only a matter of time before people question why your white shirt is full of red stains.”

I pull at the hem. I had forgotten about the dried blood that stains the majority of the shirt. The sight gives me goose bumps. All those dead bodies, piled up outside of the Orange Cone. The apartment building…

Kaitlyn puts a hand on my shoulder. “Sam? Snap out of it. I know what you’re doing.”

I lift my head and our eyes meet. How can she understand? She didn’t see everything I did. “None of them died right in front of you,” I say.

“No, you saved me from that,” she whispers next to my ear. Standing up and clearing her throat, she says, “Let’s get some food. It’ll help.”

Ted jumps off his bunk. “Enough talk, more walk.”

“Alright,” Ted says, mouth full of eggs, a strip of bacon hanging out. “Let’s talk battle strategy.”

I cough some of the orange juice in my mouth back into my glass. “Quiet down,” I say, checking around us, making sure nobody heard him. “You can’t shout those things.”

He points at the shirt he’s wearing. It still says
The Konami Code
. “I’m the perfect stereotype of huge gamer nerd. I say battle strategy and people think of Warcraft.”

“What’s Warcraft?” Mel says.

All three of us look at her.

“I believe you’re at the wrong table,” Ted says.

She laughs. “Sorry, nursing school took up too much time. No room for video games.”

“World of Warcraft isn’t a game,” Ted says. “It’s a way of–”

“Enough,” I say. “A little too dramatic, man.”

He shoves more eggs into his mouth.

“Good idea, though,” I say. “Talking about our next move, I mean. What are we supposed to do when we get there?”

“Aren’t you our leader?” Mel says.

“Sam’s right,” Kaitlyn says. Her eyes flicker to mine and she smiles. “Even if he is the one who Tinjo picked, let’s discuss this as a team. After all, we’d never have beaten C’Thun without help from–”

Ted waves his hands in the air. “Don’t say his name. I have nightmares about that monster. I still don’t believe you two beat him.”

Mel groans. “Should I bother?”

I shake my head. “You don’t want to know.”

“I have to ask,” she says, stirring some cream into her coffee. “Were you all friends before this?”

Kaitlyn, Ted, and I look at each other.

“It’s, uhh,” I say.

“Kind of…” Kaitlyn adds.

“Hard to explain,” Ted says, finishing it.

“I don’t want to know?” she says, mimicking my voice.

If we’re all going to be fighting together, she might as well know. “I met Kaitlyn on an online video game about six years ago. We’ve been playing since.”

Kaitlyn grins at me before pointing at Ted. “I know Ted from school, but we don’t hang out much there.”

“She ignores me no matter how hard I try,” he says. “But damn it if we don’t run the best guild in Azeroth.”

“And you and Sam?” Mel says.

Ted leans back in his chair. “Well, this man is a legend who–”

I cross my arms and glare at him.

“Who I only met yesterday. So it’s safe to say we’re great friends, yep.”

Mel looks from him to me. She sighs. “I’ll never understand you guys, will I?”

“It’s best not to try so hard,” I say.

After a few minutes of silence, staring out the windows, watching a busy city speed past, I turn my attention back to the table. The others all do the same thing. I bet they’re all freaking out on the inside like I am.

“We really should think of a plan,” I say, breaking the tension.

“How can we? We have no idea what to expect when we get there,” Kaitlyn says.

“We know there’s a group of people waiting for us,” I say. “Right? How about starting with what we’re going to say to them.”

“Be honest,” Mel says. She’s folding her napkin into a flower. At the last fold, she presses the crease too high and crumples it up. “It sounds crazy, yeah, but how are they going to help us if they don’t know any details?”

“You don’t know the details. Not completely, at least,” I say.

She shrugs. “I teleported through a wall and saw those things first hand. I don’t care what the details are, I believe you.”

I nod. Honesty. It sounds crazy, but it might work. Especially if I can somehow show them the truth. A shiver shakes my chest. I can’t deny that I somehow used the Dinmow, no matter how much I want to try. If I can demonstrate it to a group, they’ll have a small reason to believe me.

“Hey, Sam.”

I pull my eyes up from the table to meet someone standing next to it. I don’t recognize him at first, freshly shaven and hair styled ever-so-slightly. He looks completely different from last night.

“Hey,” I say. “You look better this morning.”

He chuckles. “A little sleep goes a long way.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Who’s your friend?” Mel says. She’s staring at him, not even looking away to ask me the question.

Not only Mel. Everybody stares at him, unblinking. Even Ted. I can’t help but laugh. “This is Dan. His family and he are in the car up from us.”

“Ted,” he says, trying to make his voice deeper.

“Kaitlyn.” She reaches for another piece of toast.

“And you?” Dan says, looking at Mel. She hasn’t said another word and won’t stop staring.

“Melanie,” she says.

Dan smiles. “Nice to meet all of you. I should head back. Good seeing you again.” He leaves, walking back to a table with two dozen people circled around it.

“Where do you find these people?” Mel says.

I glance at Ted for a second, expecting him to be red with jealousy or embarrassment, but he doesn’t seem to care. I wish I could act nonchalant like that. “I met him last night,” I say. “I wandered into his train car on accident.”

“You said he was right next to us?” she says.

I nod.

“We walked through that train car last night,” Ted says. “Didn’t we?”

“I thought so,” Mel says.

“Maybe he wasn’t on board yet.”

“Well he is now,” Mel says, leaning over the table to look again. Her arm lands in a bowl of butter, and she falls back into her seat. “Damn it. We need to find new clothes, fast.”

The rest of us only laugh.

“Are we there yet?” Ted says for the eighth time that hour.

“No,” three of us say in unison.

“We’ve been on this damn train for almost two days straight and nothing has happened,” he says.

“Tired of spending time with us?” Kaitlyn says, shuffling a deck of cards.

“I’m tired of being the only one talking,” he says.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “We’ve answered every one of the thousand questions you’ve asked.”

“You know enough about us to write three biographies,” Mel says.

Ted falls back onto his bunk after pacing for a minute. “What’s the fun of knowing that information if you all keep the dirty secrets from me? I can’t write a biography and only include boring facts. I need scandals.”

“I made a secret IF account to play without you knowing,” Kaitlyn says.

“I cheated on every math test I ever took,” Mel says.

They all look at me. “I’m not a very exciting person,” I say.

Ted looks at Kaitlyn. “I already knew that.” He turns to Mel. “That’s at least something I can use.” Finally, he points at me. “And that…doesn’t surprise me much.”

I grab the closest pillow to me and throw it at him.

He ducks to the side to dodge it, but instead of stopping, his body launches to the side, slamming into the bed rail.

It happens in slow motion, so I don’t understand why until I’m rolling across the compartment myself. I grab a bed leg bolted into the floor. I reach out to grab Kaitlyn’s arm, but she slips through my fingertips and crashes into the wall.

Mel stumbles across the compartment, starting near the door, until she falls onto Ted’s bunk.

He does his best to catch her and stops her head from crashing into the window.

A deafening screech fills the air. It hurts for the first few seconds until it’s the only thing my brain registers. Black dots blink around the edges of my vision. Screams distort everybody’s faces, but no sounds break through.

The train’s momentum breaks and everybody falls back in the opposite direction. Ted and Mel roll off the bed, and Kaitlyn falls to her knees next to me.

I can’t tell if the screeching stops because it still rings in my ears. I blink a dozen times to get rid of the black spots. Sounds make their way back, slowly at first until nothing but screams fill our compartment, spilling in from the hallway.

Ted climbs onto his knees and says, “I’m okay, thanks for asking.” He has to yell to be heard over the noise from outside our doorway. “You guys good?”

Mel slides her feet over the bed’s edge. Blood streaks her left shin. She uses the bed sheet to clean it off, staining the light blue cloth. “It’s a small cut,” she says. “I’ll live.”

“Kaitlyn?” Ted says.

“Yeah.” She rubs the back of her head. “The wall stopped my fall.”

I’m the only one who doesn’t answer Ted. I climb to my feet and walk straight to the door. When I open it, I can’t keep my thoughts to myself. “Dear god…”

“What is it?” Ted says.

“It’s…it’s…” I can’t get the words out. How can I explain that instead of staring at the hallway of our train, I’m looking out at nothing but…green. In all directions, nothing but trees, cascading up a mountainside. I can’t even see the top. It’s a shot stolen from a cliché post card, but it’s spreading out in front of me.

“What happened to the rest of the train?” Kaitlyn says, now standing behind me.