No Passengers Beyond This Point (17 page)

“Did he wake up, Finn? Did he?” Mouse asks.

“No,” I whisper. “He didn’t.”

It’s quiet now. All I see is Mouse’s eye pressed up close against the locker vent.

“Two: Ask a question you can’t answer,” Mouse prompts.

“Uh-huh,” I mutter, trying to keep the waver out of my voice. “How do you grow up without a dad?”

“Don’t worry, Finn,” Mouse chirps, “there are books for that. Mommy will take us to the library when we get home. I get to do the last one, Finn. Remember what you didn’t want to forget. What’s Coach P.’s cell number?”

“Eight-oh-five, five-five-five, oh-one-oh-nine.”

“Did it open? Did it?”

“That
is
his cell number, Mouse.”

“Oh, I’ve got it. How old is Henry in dog years?”

“Twenty-eight. That won’t work. That’s right too.”

“Finn,” Mouse scolds, “what have you forgotten?”

“I don’t know, Mouse. That’s the point.”

“What is Uncle Red’s address?”

“Fourteen Horsehair Reservoir Road, Fort Baker, Colorado.”

“Nu-uh. It’s twenty-seven Horsehair Reservoir Road,” Mouse cheers. “Open it now, Finn! Open it now!”

Once again I try the lever, but the lever doesn’t budge. “Still locked.”

“How could it still be locked?”

“Maybe because I didn’t want to remember that,” I mutter.

“Ohhhh,” Mouse sighs.

In the silence I hear my clock ticking and Mouse’s too. What if she can’t think of something? What if we time out right here?

“I know,” Mouse says finally. “Finn, what was it like to sit on Daddy’s lap?”

I try to call this up. I want to remember what it felt like to be that safe, that loved. I want it more than anything. I can remember his face. The way he laughed. The way his eyes shone.

“I don’t remember, Mouse,” I say miserably as the lock mechanism clicks open.

“Finn!” Mouse is smiling now, her face lit up like a carnival ride. She wraps the fingers of her good hand around mine. “C’mon, Finn,” she says, “let’s go.”

It seems like everything happened so fast. One minute I was in Chuck’s taxi. The next minute I’m in this tram whizzing back to my welcomer station, gliding along on the cushiony blue monorail seats. Finn and Mouse will do fine without me. They stick together, those two. They don’t need me to solve some puzzle about a box, that’s for sure. They are better at puzzles than I am.

My wrist screen has my welcomer group on it. They are singing a new welcoming song, but there’s an empty spot in row two. My spot. See, that’s just like them. They saved a spot for me and I’ll save one for Maddy. She’ll find a way to get here. Maddy gets what she wants.

I wonder who will be arriving today. For a second I feel an aching longing for the sound of my name on the loudspeaker. India! India! There is nothing like your own welcoming.

But a welcoming like that only happens once. I know that now.

I shouldn’t have made Laird mad. I will need to apologize to him first thing, I decide as the tram passes through the great entrance, which I remember from when we came through in the feather cab.
Welcome to Falling Bird,
it says in a prism of color glowing on the streets below
.

The tram hums on beyond the city gates. The glass doors open, but there’s no one to get in or out. The doors slide shut again and the tram zips forward. According to the map posted above my seat, the next stop is mine—the amphitheater—and from there it’s a short hop by foot to my welcomer station. I scootch down the row of sky blue cushions to the glass doors, which are already opening. I’m getting up when the white cat from my dream house leaps into the tram, landing on the seat almost noiselessly. Where did she come from?

I brush past her, fur grazing my arm as I lurch toward the doorway, but the glass door slides shut, bumping me back. I flail around, grabbing for a handle to keep from falling as the tram glides on with me and the white cat inside.

What happened? Did I hesitate and lose my chance to get off? It almost seemed like the tram door closed in my face on purpose. I know what my mom would say.
Don’t be a victim, India. The world is not out to get you, you made a choice
. But how could that be? I chose to get off and the cat got in my way.

Don’t make tough decisions when you’re upset
.
Wait until you’re calm and you can think it all through.
But I don’t have that luxury here, Mom. What then?

I study the color-coded map again. There are five more stops on this line. The next one is Headquarters Bungalows. I’ll get off there.

The white cat is retching. She pukes up a yellow green mess of slimy liquid on the blue cloud carpet.

“Kitty?” I call.

I don’t even know her name.

She stares at me as if she knows things she doesn’t want to tell. But how could she tell me anything? She’s a cat. Am I losing my mind?

The tram doesn’t slow at Headquarters Bungalows. I can barely read the letters on the platform as we speed by. I only recognize the stop by the blur of purple and turquoise colors on the sign. The tram rumbles in a hopeful way at Vehicle Registration. There’s a small cluster of passengers waiting to board. I’m sitting in front of the doors now, so I can leap out the second they open. But the tram doesn’t stop at Vehicle Registration or Weather Group Station or Awareness Training. There is only one station left. Passengers Waiting.

Passengers Waiting? That sounds lame. I hate waiting. Still, something about this tram is creepy, and I want to get off.

When we pull up, the stop isn’t outside as the others have been. The doors open into a room with glass walls, jam-packed with people. Men, women, and kids are sitting on the floor hunched over game boards, drinking sodas, lazily fanning themselves. The trash cans overflow with drink cups and empty hamburger containers.

Every chair is claimed. Almost every square foot of the floor too. These people look like they’re camping out in this room. How long have they been here?

No way am I getting off. Even if the tram is creepy, it’s a whole lot better than that place. The white cat is up now. She walks on stiff, uncertain legs.

The cat’s weird. I don’t know why she was in that perfect house with me. She was the only part that didn’t totally make sense. She’s a white cat with a dark side, I swear it. Now I wish she’d go away.

I stare out at the packed room as numbers are called over the loudspeaker. “Five-eight-two-two-two-one dash four-five-seven-six-seven-eight-A,” the mechanized voice announces. But no person looks at his or her number. No one even listens to the numbers being called. They continue talking as if the numbers don’t mean anything. Nothing at all.

If only this tram would move so I can book it back to the amphitheater and have a do-over of this lame day.

“Final stop. All passengers must disembark and take a ticket from the dispenser located on the rear wall.” The mechanical voice is closer now—it’s coming through the speaker inside the tram. My scalp begins to itch, my head throbs.

“Final stop. All passengers please disembark,” the voice repeats.

Mom. I need my mom. Whatever is happening here is beyond what Maddy can handle. I dig in my pocket for my cell and push the on switch, wishing so, so hard that it would connect. Mom could tell me how to get out of here. She would know what to do, but the stupid cell won’t turn on.

The tram motor gears up into its about-to-move hum. I sink back into the cushion, breathing out a tiny sigh of relief. But when my back makes contact with the sleek blue cushion, a burst of turbulent air sends me flying head over heels. I grab the seat, the handle, the glass, but the air system like a mini tornado carries me and the hissing, scratching cat out the tram door and into the crowded room.

The doors of the tram slide shut and the tram glides forward.

I watch from the glass-paneled room, a ticket I don’t remember taking in my hand. The tram gains speed quickly. I watch until the last car speeds by in a blue blur.

I
try my best to hurry Mouse along. We lost a half hour in the lockers. We can’t afford to make a mistake like that again. We don’t have time to take a wrong turn either. So far there has only been one direction, but up ahead the paths diverge in all directions like the spokes of a wheel. This worries me. Plus, before you even get there, you must first pass through a door made entirely of glass.

I try the handle. Locked, of course.

It’s Mouse who sees the sign.
Ticketed Passengers Only Beyond This Point
.

“Do you still have your boarding pass?” I ask.

Mouse digs in her pocket with her good hand and fishes out her boarding stub. I find mine and together we locate the bar code reader. The red light scans the tickets and the door slides open.

On the other side, Mouse begins looking for signs to tell us which way to go, when a dog howls in the distance.

“That way!” Mouse shouts. “That’s them . . . the tunnel dogs!”

It’s possible there are dogs in each direction. But I can’t stop Mouse now. She is half running down the center path.

And then the tunnel makes a sharp right and a solid corrugated aluminum door appears, also locked. More dogs are howling now, just beyond the door.

I smell dogs and straw and kibble and wet fur. It smells like Henry! Mouse is jumping up and down, holding her arm steady. All we have to do is open the door.

I kneel down, running my hand along the locked handle. Is there a key pad? A bar code reader? A fingerprint access? Could we jimmy the lock?

Mouse studies the corrugated door and the sleek surrounding space looking for signs.

But there are no signs; there is nothing but a small insignia of the company that manufactured the door.

“What’s it say?” I ask.

“Franklin Doors,” Mouse answers.

“I never heard of ’em,” I mutter. “But then again, I don’t know the names of any companies that make doors.”

“Franklin,” Mouse repeats. “Do you know anyone named Franklin, Finn?”

“There’s Benjamin Franklin. And a turtle named Franklin in a book. And a president named Franklin,” I say.

“A famous president?”

“All presidents are famous, Mouse,” I tell her as she leans against the door and wiggles the fingers of her good hand into her shoe.

“No, Finn. Only the rich ones are famous. The ones they put on money,” Mouse insists.

“The money presidents aren’t rich, they’re just extra-famous,” I tell her as she hands me a dime.

“What’s this for?” I ask.

“Which president is on there?”

I look closely at the dime. Eisenhower maybe? But wait. Could it be Franklin Roosevelt?

I inspect the mechanism under the handle again. This time my fingernail detects a small silver slot just dime-size.

I slip her dime into the slot. The coin hits the money box and the lock clicks open. “You’re brilliant, Mouse,” I tell her as a mechanical arm opens the door
tchk, tchk, tchk
.

Inside is an enormous room full of dogs in traveling cages—one on top of the other five pallets high. The pallets are stacked next to a series of ramps so the dogs can go up to their cages. Some crates are empty, but most have one dog inside. There are all kinds of dogs: German shepherds, golden retrievers, Great Danes, poodles, Yorkies, corgies, and some breeds I’ve never even seen before.

The dogs aren’t locked into their traveling crates, the doors are open. Each dog is free to go. There’s even a doggy door in the back wall of the room where they could leave if they wanted, but every dog stays in its crate. The dogs sniff, their tails wag hesitantly. They’re eager to check us out like people scanning the crowd for familiar faces. Once they’ve seen us, they settle back down again. We are not who they’re waiting for.