Intrepid (39 page)

The rocks were slippery and slimy on my toes, and the water bit into my waist and hovered just above my navel. I hated being short. Xavi never had the problems I did, and he’d splash water into my face to taunt me since less of his surface area was submerged. This boy, too, did not have my problem. He was tall in ways that made my stumpy legs jealous.
 

“Here?” I asked.
 

“It’s one of my favorites,” Xavi said.
 

It was my first trip, and I’d spent the summer training for it. He said I was ready, but I knew he was only being encouraging. I knew that the weather was changing, and so must we. I was nowhere near ready, but time was not on my side.
 

I definitely didn’t feel ready as I saw the bridge come up.
 

“They always slow just before this particular bridge. It’s around that bend in the trees, and they want to make sure the Rebels haven’t blown it up,” Xavi explained. “Especially on a freight, it’s better to jump directly on this bridge.”

“But we’re going too fast.”

“They’ll slow. They always slow here. They never know if the bridge’ll be gone or not because there are too many trees, and they won’t pull their speed up fast enough once they see it.”
 

“Are you sure?”

Xavi laughed as he remembered a tidbit of track knowledge. “If the Rebels didn’t rely on the tracks so much for sneaking in and out of the Colonies, they’d have already set explosives on every bridge. As it is, they only do it every so often to remind the Republic to slow down and make sure. They’ve found the balance. They blow up just enough to make the Republic cautious, but never enough to hinder the movements of the trains.”
 

“They don’t want to shoot themselves in their own feet?”

“Exactly.” He tapped my nose with his forefinger. “Look at you, smarty pants.”
 

The freight felt like it was going entirely too fast to be thinking about hopping off on a bridge, even though the wheels slowed and chug-chugged along with caution. “In the past, we’d jump before the bridge, but now, they have the train jetties for a mile out before and after. So we jump there,” Xavi explained.
 

“Into the water?”

“Sometimes. If it’s hot. Want to try?”

I shook my head. I could see where the bridge towered over the river at a height I couldn’t fathom jumping from. “How do we jump on the bridge?”

“Just like we talked about.”

He was right. We talked about it over and over again. The rusted beams were bloodstains in the sky. They arched over the bridge in criss-crossed pillars that extended even higher than the train. The beams reached out to hold hands, like trees connecting limbs on opposite sides of a trail.
 

As the wheels moved from a tha-tha-thump to a cha-cha-chunk, he leapt at one of the pillars, wrapped his arms around the beam, and pulled his body in. His body was thick, and his pack was slung on one shoulder, giving him more room. When all was said and done, he still had about a foot of air between himself and the train.
 

But I was thick in a different way, and I still had my doubts. It took all my courage to pull up the topic the day before. “What about my chest?” I finally asked. It was no small question, and it took all sorts of efforts to push it out. My body wasn’t something I wanted to draw attention to out on the Tracks, but, since I was twelve, the monstrosities got in my way. I remember overhearing comments from the other girls such as: “She’s like a cantaloupe carrying watermelons. They look ridiculous on her.” I remember the boys’ comments more though. I think out of everyone in my Institute year, I was the most thankful for the Propriety Lessons that came that next semester. The comments about my body ceased, and I found a small ounce of peace. But thoughts were still visible in eyes, even when words and actions did not exist. I never liked to bring up any unnecessary attention to the topic, but I legitimately worried if they’d cause me to not have enough space between myself and the train when I hopped.
 

Xavi’s laughter was unstoppable. “Death by boobs! That’s a new one!”

He was right. I’d asked the embarrassing question for nothing. Even with Xavi’s pack on, he had plenty of room, and I ended up having feet upon feet between my body and the train.
 

I almost didn’t follow him, but in the split second between Xavi and the next beam, I realized that if I didn’t, I’d be stuck on the train without him. I wouldn’t know how to get off, or how to survive if Xavi wasn’t with me. He’d gone first, leaving me no choice but to follow. So I leapt. I wrapped my arms around the beam, and I hugged it tighter than I’d ever hugged anything in my life. Adrenaline coursed through every ounce of me as I waited for the long freight to move past. My eyelids squeezed out all the fear of getting yanked off by the train, and after a minute or two, I was able to listen to the momentum of the metallic beast behind me. It was going by so much slower now that I was no longer on it. It rambled on as the sun began to slip from the sky, and, eventually, it was gone.
 

We climbed down so that our feet hit the planks. “Whooooooahhhh!” Xavi yelled after the train, laughing out his pent up energy. All the months he’d been teaching me, I’d never seen his brown eyes so bright. It was a softer Xavi. The kind of Xavi that wasn’t worrying or preparing or thinking ahead. The kind of Xavi that healed my heart before he broke it.
 

He turned to me and winked. “Want to see something really cool now?”
   

 
The boy and I waded through the water for what felt like forever, and my legs screamed as they punched against the current and the sharp, sharp cold. About a mile before the bridge, as the river began to expand and deepen to cut a wider stretch of sky through the trees, I motioned for the boy to keep to the left bank, since the train— and the explosion— was somewhere parallel to the right bank. It was where the river stretched the widest that the tracks passed over it. I thought it was odd that somewhere in the distant-distant past, someone engineered it that way, and I always wondered why they didn’t use a different path— an easier one. When I brought it up, Xavi theorized that it had something to do with pride. Humans liked to show off what they could do. Morph nature. Mold it. Control it. Make it theirs.
 

The bridge was rust-red, even in the moonlight, and the pillars that held it up were concrete and smooth. It was my first bridge— a bridge Xavi and I had camped at several times, and, like everything along the tracks, it brought him to the forefront of my mind. I tried to shake him away because I couldn’t let him take hold of every thought. I knew I’d never escape him if I let him exist in everything. Instead, I let the cold water wake me up from him. It bit in places that only cold can bite, and I breathed in the shudders and shivers. I looked ahead, since that was all that was left.
 

Around each concrete pillar that held the bridge up were little islands of dense brush. If the leaf-brained boy following me hadn’t blown up the train, and I wasn’t currently on the run, I’d be camping there right now. As it was, I needed to go further than that for the night.
 

I pulled myself out of the water as we neared the bridge, and my teeth chattered as I yanked off the thin shirt. I scolded myself for not having just gone in my underwear in the first place. The boy was too bashful to even pay attention to my modesty. I kept sneaking glances his way to make sure he wasn’t watching, but he remained facing away from me. He averted his eyes as much as I averted mine. His form blocked out the river as he dressed, and layer by layer, his muscled back disappeared. His reaction was a tell-tale sign, and I knew what he was, if not who. He was a Colony-kid, through and through.

Which meant I needed to ditch him sooner than later. I moved the wheels in my brain for a plan on that, but nothing came up. My dry clothes were on again. However, even that warmth was not enough. My teeth rattled uncontrollably while my damp underwear created vivid reminders of cold with every movement I made.
 

I was ready before he was. His fingers fumbled on his laces, and I contemplated leaving him to his own troubles. I was still frustrated that he’d followed. I thought for sure he wouldn’t trust me and head the other way. It’d be as good a time as any to leave him, but then I realized even that process would take too long— too many words I didn’t have time for. So I bent down to help him tie his other shoe. It was the closest I’d gotten to him yet. We were still just strange shadows in the night, but I could make out subtle things about his shape. A sharp jaw. Brillo-pad hair, short and cropped. Muscles, but the kind that were created from forced exercise, not necessity— a Republic body. I could tell that he was used to being well fed, and even his boots gave clues beyond that. They were of the quality that not even my middle-Caste family could afford.
 

I finished the knot and looked at the rock wall next to us. We still needed to climb. This part of the task was tricky, and I didn’t know if the boy knew how to take it on. The wall of the bank was only twenty feet high, but the jagged rocks made for easy hand and foot holds.
 

I took another steadying breath and began the climb.
 

“See. Easy as cake.”

“I’ve never had cake.” I laughed.
 

“Me neither.” Xavi grinned as if remembering an inside joke I wasn’t a part of.
 

Climbing down the ledge felt scarier than climbing up, and I think it had something to do with constantly looking down to make sure I placed my feet correctly. I was constantly aware of how high up I was.
 

“You were the one who didn’t want to swim.”

I growled out a response. I’d hopped on and off trains several times since my first trip, but jumping off a bridge from a moving train still was not in my comfort zone. Besides, the water didn’t look deep enough, even though he promised it was— that there was a water pocket that went so deep the water turned black. The odd thing was, for as much as I was learning, I became more and more scared every day.
 

Migratory birds. That’s what Vagabonds were. North for the summer. South for the winter. We avoided heat stroke and frostbite through movement, but each new thing brought on new questions that I had to swallow and move past. With every step into my future, there was a new danger to conquer.
 

Jumping into the water from that high up? I just wasn’t ready yet. So we climbed down the ledge.
 

Sometimes, I still wished we could use ropes and harnesses. I’d seen it at Mama’s gym. She was a fitness freak— always wanting to hit the treadmill but never losing that muffin-top that rose around her pants-line. She’d leave me in the cafe if I didn’t want to work out. “That’s right, love. Your brains. That’s what’ll land you a position.”
 
In between the subjects I studied, I’d watch the climbers on the indoor rock-wall: colorful handholds, grunting, ropes, harnesses, fancy shoes, and fancy commands. With Xavi, it was just a few lessons in technique, like how to hold my thumb over my fingers when the hold was too small and I needed extra strength in my grip. Or how to hang my body close to the wall, with two hands on the same hold and both feet on the other to lean back if I needed to rest.
 

“Ropes are just a different kind of chain, Niko.” He laughed when I asked. “Besides. Where would you keep all that crap in my pack?”
 

Once we found our way back to the horizontal ground, we waded to the islands in the middle of the river. Under the brush, there was a spongy, clear space with a canopy roof. It let the sunlight filter through, and it reminded me of a sea-glass mosaic made of variegated greens. There was a different shade for every fragment of sunshine, and our skin became dappled, like freckled bird eggs.
 

That was when it happened. The world shifted, and I felt my heart unstitch itself from my chest to become sutured to his. I’d been feeling the tugging since I’d met him, but kept reining it in. He was something I could never have— an abomination. But the way he looked at me just then made me wonder, and just by wondering, I couldn’t untie myself from a different truth and how I felt about him.
 

His brown eyes were still bright against his coconut-brown skin. It reminded me of lightly tanned leather. Not in texture, but in color, because his skin was smooth and soft despite it all. And his hair was black— blacker than tar. Blacker than soot. I could never think of beautiful things to compare Xavi to, because that was him. He was beauty in the strangest of places. So leather and tar and soot always felt more honest.
 

And when he leaned in close, he smelled like sweat and fresh water and train and air. He hovered near my face and judged my reaction. I was pretty sure the world was freezing and my heart was exploding because there was no way on earth it could have been moving the way it was.
 

But, as he leaned in, an awkward cough came from the shadows.
 

“Hey there. Care to share a camp?”
 

Chapter Three

The boy was determined, I’d give him that. Not a single obstacle had deterred him yet, and this one was no different. The only way back to the tracks past the bridge was to climb— in the dark.
 

I went first. I didn’t know if he’d ever climbed before, and I wasn’t going to be under him if he fell. I blindly felt with my hand for every solid hold. I had to trust my fingers more than my eyes, and I felt my forearms tense as I gripped. Climbing had a way of using muscles that weren’t supposed to exist, but I’d grown into those muscles over the past two years, like I’d grown into many things about life on the Tracks.