Tarnished (4 page)

“Whose car?”

She rolled her eyes. “The railroad company, I guess, or the manufacturer.”

“You mean, like a train. Is that safe?”

“Safe?” She laughed. “None of this is safe. If you want safe, you should let me take you back now.”

I clenched my jaw, but I didn’t respond.

“It’s how I got here…if that makes you feel any better,” she said after a minute.

“Not really,” I mumbled.

“Do you have a better idea?” She picked up the pace and I winced, trotting to catch up with her. “It’s not like we can just hop in someone’s car and ask them to take us back over the border.”

She glanced back at me, as if she was looking for signs on my face that would tell her that yes, that was exactly how I’d assumed we would get back.

“We don’t have papers,” she huffed. “I shouldn’t even be here in the first place. And I’m pretty sure if you go waltzing across the border like a normal person, someone’s going to stop you in less than a minute and turn you back in to your old master. There are plenty of people watching out for you who would be perfectly happy to take his reward money.”

She trudged ahead of me, only glancing back every now and then. Maybe she was hoping I would be gone, vanished, and she wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore. She could go back to whatever her plan had been before she came to find me.

After a while, the sky started to lighten ever so softly. What had been black faded into a beautiful shade of teal. The buildings on either side of us gave way to homes and after a while we came to a long stretch of empty road. It was wide enough for six cars to drive across at the same time, but even though a car passed us every once in a while, it stayed mostly empty. In the distance, the boxy shape of a dozen huge white buildings came into view.

Missy pointed. “That’s it. They make the cars there.”

“And we have to sneak into one of those buildings?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, the train tracks are behind.” She looked up at the sky. “If we run, we might be able to make it before the workers get there.”

“Run?” The word was almost painful to say.

“You don’t want to find a place to hide all day around here,” Missy said. “Believe me.”

I gave her a small nod. I’d save my energy for running. I’d need every last bit of it.

Missy took off at a trot and I followed behind, with the pounding of each step I repeated Penn’s name over and over in my mind. My eyes began to blur. My breath came in gasps and a sharp pain wiggled its way between my ribs like a blade aiming for my heart. Finally, I looked up from the ground in front of me. The buildings loomed large in front of us. We rounded the corner of the nearest one and Missy slowed.

“There,” she panted, coming to a stop.

I looked up from the pavement. In front of us a long train cut a line across the blacktop, through the gaps in between its cars, a sea of vehicles stretched out in the dark. There had to be thousands of them. Maybe more.

“Most of the train cars will be locked, but hopefully we’ll be able to find one that’s open,” she said, taking off again at a run.

I followed. My legs shook. They felt like dead weight, like they hardly belonged to my body anymore.

“Look for one with an eagle on the side,” Missy called back to me as she ran along the side of the train.

It was huge. So much bigger than I would have imagined. Each compartment must have been big enough to fit two-dozen cars stacked on top of each other. Each of the train cars looked almost identical, huge metal containers painted a rusty orange. Along the bottoms of some of the cars, someone had spray painted big, bubbly shapes. On the car nearest to me, there was an image of a skull, but nothing that looked like an eagle.

“None of these have eagles,” I panted, coming to a stop next to Missy.

“It’s still dark,” she said. “Maybe we just didn’t see it.”

“What’s wrong with these other ones?” I asked. There must have been hundreds of cars. Surely
one
of them would work.

“No.” She shook her head. “They’ll be locked. Someone told me to look for the one with the eagle. It’s the only one that will be unlocked.”

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t have time to answer all your questions right now, Ella,” she snapped. “I’m going to look on this side again. Maybe I missed it. You go check the other side.”

I climbed over the metal posts that connected the cars and stared down the seemingly endless length of the train. It seemed impossible that humans could have built something so huge, yet here it was. And somehow Missy had known about it. How? How did she know that there would be an eagle?

I stopped, staring up at the huge doors on the back of one of the cars. Near the bottom, a metal padlock held them closed. I pulled on it, testing it, but Missy was right. It was locked tight.

I trudged more slowly now that Missy couldn’t see me. The sky was definitely changing color now. The deep turquoise was shifting into purple and the edges of the horizon were tinged with gold. I didn’t know what would happen if we didn’t find the right train car before the sun came up, but I didn’t want to find out.

Behind me, a pair of headlights cut across the gigantic parking lot and a moment later, the beams of light bounced across the train, slicing a golden path almost directly in front of me.

“Missy,” I squeaked. Her name stuck in my throat. Should I duck underneath the train? Go back to the other side?

I ran faster, scanning the sides of the cars. She must have been wrong. There wasn’t anything that looked like a bird. These marks were just wild scribblings. Maybe Missy and I were better off finding a hiding place. But if we were going to, we needed to go now, while there was still a bit of darkness to hide us.

I slowed down, ready to make my way between the train cars to the other side, when I saw it.

The eagle.

Chapter Four

M
aybe I’d just been looking for the wrong thing. I’d imagined that it would be a bird with its wings outspread, but the image was more abstract, just the head of a bird, its regal beak and fierce stare were so simple, just a few quick strokes of white paint, so stark that it almost got lost amid the tangle of shapes painted around it. It was possible there had been others just like this and I’d walked right past.

I scrambled back over the huge metal latch to the other side. Missy had traveled much farther than I had—almost four train cars farther down. I called her name, hoping desperately the person in the car was still far enough away that they wouldn’t hear me.

“Did you find it?” Missy panted, running up to me.

I nodded and brought my finger to my lips. “I think I found it,” I whispered, “but there was a car that pulled up a minute ago. Maybe we should forget about this for now and just find some place to hide until tonight.”

Missy peered between the cars. “I don’t see a car,” she said. “Maybe you just imagined it.”

“I didn’t—” I started to say before I cut myself off. We didn’t have time to argue. “Never mind.”

I headed back toward the car with the eagle on it, Missy trailing behind.

“It’s this one,” I whispered.

The two of us rounded the corner, coming to a stop at the base of the gigantic doors that bisected the entire back panel. Here too, there was a solid metal lock, latched to hold the doors securely closed, but where I’d seen a padlock on the other door, this one was empty.

Missy smiled, relieved. With two hands, she pulled on the metal latch and the large door to the right cracked open ever so slightly.

“Help me open this,” Missy said.

Together, we pulled and the metal door groaned. Somewhere behind us, a car door slammed and the two of us froze. Missy’s eyes widened.

“Hurry, get inside.”

The door wasn’t open wide, but there was enough room for someone small, like me or Missy, to fit through. The large metal post connecting the train cars was only a few feet off the ground, but to my tired muscles, it felt like ten feet. I heaved myself up, and collapsed through the doors with a thud, landing far too loudly against the metal floor. It was almost pitch black inside and I tried to scramble out of the way, but a second later Missy followed, landing on top of me.

“Quick, help me close this door,” she hissed near my ear.

There wasn’t a latch on the inside and our fingers scrambled to find something to hold onto to pull the door closed. Outside, the sound of voices drew near. The noisy sound of my own breathing and the scratch of my fingernails against the metal blurred out their words.

“Pull,” Missy growled in my ear and the two of us tugged.

The door groaned shut again, blocking out all the light. Missy and I froze together in the darkness, listening for the sound of the voices to draw nearer. Her knee jabbed into my thigh, but I didn’t move.

“…all but the last few containers are loaded.” The voice sounded close. It couldn’t be more than a few yards away.

“Steve’s guys are supposed to finish loading in a couple hours,” another voice said, moving in our direction.

“Just so long as they give me enough time to get ’em cleaned out first.”

The two men kept talking and after a few minutes their voices faded away.

“Do you think they’re coming back?” I asked.

“No,” Missy said. It was too dark to see her face, but her voice sounded strong. Confident.

I scooted backward, crashing into something metal. A…car?

“Come on,” Missy said. “We should go find a better place to hide. Just in case anybody decides to check on that door.”

I heard Missy scuffle across the hard metal ground and I scrambled forward on my knees, trying to follow behind her. I got to my feet and stretched out my arms in front of me. My fingertips brushed the smooth metal of a car and I kept my hand there, dragging it along the surface as I stepped forward, one small step after another until I bumped into Missy.

I waited for her to scold me, but she didn’t. “We’ll just move back a little,” she said. “Two or three cars in should be plenty.”

I kept one hand on the side of the car and raised the other to hold lightly onto Missy’s shoulder. Together we inched our way forward. Underneath our feet, the metal floor rose and fell, shaped to cradle each of the cars. My fingers traced the outline of a window, a door handle, the sharp, jutted angle of a mirror. We stayed close to the car, tracing the line of the hood until its shape ended in darkness. Here the floor slanted up ever so slightly, the tiniest ramp that must have kept the car from crashing into the one in front of it.

Missy paused for just a moment before she stepped forward into the blind darkness. “Just a few steps until the next one,” she reassured me.

A moment later my hand touched metal again. We scooted slowly forward, finally coming to a stop at the next car.

“Hopefully it’s open,” Missy said. “I don’t want to spend ten hours sitting on the floor.”

There was a small click and she sighed, relieved. “Come on,” she said, pulling me inside the dark interior of the car.

Paper crinkled noisily underneath our feet, but the seat was soft and I let myself relax into it, resting my tired head against the back. I closed my eyes, the lids suddenly more heavy than they’d ever felt before.

A
small tapping sounded at the car window and I sat up, turning toward the dark rectangle. But in the space where I thought there would only be darkness, every star in the whole sky suddenly shone down on me. My galaxy. My universe. My Penn. His beautiful smile illuminating the train. How could it be?

“Ella.” He said my name and the next moment he was beside me. His strong arms encircled me, pulling me close to his heart. That heart, pounding so hard it felt as if it were beating in my own chest.

“I want to be with you,” I said, pulling on his shirt. “I need to be closer. I can’t bear for there to be any more space between us.”

“I can’t either,” he said. “It’s killing me, Ella.”

I stared up into his face, into his dark eyes, their own mini galaxies. How had I never noticed before? His long hair fell in front of one of his eyes and I pushed it back. I wanted to stare into those eyes, lakes so deep I could swim in them forever.

I touched a strand of his hair, rubbing it between my fingers. That hair…why did it make me feel like I was supposed to remember something? Something important. But before I could think about it, his mouth was on mine and everything else slipped away. We were one breath. One heartbeat. One body. I moaned and the sound came from somewhere so deep inside me that it must have traveled miles to reach my ears. An eternity.

Penn
.

I opened my mouth to say his name, but no sound fell from my lips.

Penn
.

A screech of the train startled me and I gasped awake, clutching at the air in front of me as I sat up. Alone.

My arms empty.

I hadn’t realized that I’d fallen asleep, but when my eyes blinked open quite a bit of time must have passed because the small holes that lined the walls now filtered in enough pale light to see by. It was still dim inside the train cars, but at least I could tell that Missy and I were sitting in the backseat of a medium-sized car. She was turned slightly away from me, with her head tipped back, in what I thought was sleep, but when I shifted in the seat, she raised her head.

My stomach let out a long growl and I covered it with my hand, embarrassed. I hadn’t even thought about food. It would have been so easy to save a bit of each meal from the refugee center instead of leaving it all sitting on my plate like a sullen and ungrateful child. It didn’t matter that I didn’t like the food, at least it would have given me energy. Even the overly sweet breakfast cereals that they gave us each morning sounded appealing now.

Missy reached down and dug through her bag. “Here,” she said, handing me a small bag of nuts. “It’s going to have to last all day, so you might want to save some.”

I tore open the corner of the bag and dumped a few salty peanuts into my palm. My stomach growled again, even louder this time, and Missy suppressed a laugh.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s nothing great.” She shrugged. “But at least it has some protein.”

I looked down at the bag in my hand. “I didn’t mean these,” I said. “I mean, I
do
, they’re great and I was starving, but I meant…thank you for this. For coming.”

It was probably naive to trust her. For all I knew, she could be leading me back to a trap. What if the congressman had hired her to find me and lead me back to him? There was nothing in this for her. No real reason to help me get back to Penn. She wasn’t doing it out of the kindness of her heart, that was for sure. It wasn’t her style. And it was pretty difficult to believe that she was helping me for a bigger cause. This was Missy—selfish, demanding, egotistical Missy. But what other choice did I have?

Missy closed her eyes for a moment, unsmiling. “You’re welcome,” she finally said. “But for the record, I think it’s stupid. I think
we’re
stupid. Both of us. Obviously you are, for wanting to go back. And for a boy, no less. That’s not a good reason. It’s a dumb reason. You don’t even know if he wants you back. And me…” She paused. “I’m stupid for taking you. There can’t be a good outcome to this. I have this terrible feeling of impending doom, like I’m walking straight into a fire. I can practically feel it licking at my feet, but am I turning around? No. I just keep walking, even though it’s probably going to get me killed.”

The hairs on my arms prickled. It didn’t seem like a good idea to be talking about death that way. If we were in one of Ruby’s stories, saying something like that would be the surest way to end up dead. A curse.

“So, now what?” I asked, looking out the car window at the sides of the train car. The tiny holes that dotted the sides were only big enough to let in a coin-sized bit of light, beyond that, it was impossible to see anything that was going on outside.

Missy shrugged. “We wait,” she said. “At some point the train will start moving and then we’ll know that we’re on our way.”

“And then we just wait until it stops?”

Missy nodded.

“And then what?”

She sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “We backtrack.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we go back to the place I just barely got away from.” Her face looked pained.

“But you said you got here through the black market.”

“Yeah.”

It was only one word, but it spoke volumes, telling me that I was the dumbest person she’d ever met.

“Isn’t it dangerous?”

“What other choice do we have?” Missy asked. “You want to try calling your boyfriend and ask him to come pick us up? Because something tells me that’s not such a good idea.”

“I didn’t—”

“Look, the black market isn’t ideal. Yes, it’s dangerous, but at least I’ve been there before. I know every greasy, dirty, dingy corner of it. It isn’t fun and it isn’t pretty, but we’ll have a place to stay. We’ll have some food to eat and a way to make a little money of our own. And best of all, we’ll have a way to hide you.”

“Hide? I thought people bought pets on the black market. How are we supposed to hide when people go there looking specifically for pets?”

Missy’s grin widened. “That’s it exactly,” she said. “We’ll hide you in plain sight. No one’s going to think to look for you there. They’ll expect you to be safe inside Canada, or hidden away with a group of Liberationists.”

Somewhere behind us, there was the loud clang of metal hitting metal and Missy and I ducked, cowering down in our seats. My heart clamored, like those same huge chunks of metal were being struck together inside me, reverberating through the rest of my body.

“Is someone coming?” I whispered.

Missy poked her head up above the seat, glancing back toward the big doors we’d snuck in through. “The doors are still closed,” she said.

From the front of the train, a whistle blew. The sound was enormous, blaring, filling the space around us. If sound had been a color, it would have been a shock of red, lighting me from the inside. It still rang in my ears. But before I could prepare myself, the train lurched beneath us, jerking us back in our seats as we began to move. The wheels squealed and the metal frame of the train car groaned as we picked up speed.

Missy’s face looked almost as alarmed as mine, but after a moment she relaxed. “Get comfortable,” she said. “We’ve still got a few hours until we get there.”

“And where is there, exactly?”

“Buffalo,” Missy said.

The name didn’t sound familiar. “That’s in the United States?”

She nodded. “Say good-bye to freedom. A couple more hours and you’ll be the property of Congressman Kimble again.”

The train swayed underneath me. Maybe this was how I was going to feel from now on, as if steady ground was forever rushing past my feet, nothing solid to stand on.

The train moved forward, pulling us along. The wheels continued churning beneath us and after a while the steady and subtle rocking lulled me a bit. Missy was silent next to me, but the car was filled with noises, the
clicks
and
whirs
and
clangs
of movement, and every once in a while the whistle cut through it all, as if to remind us it was in charge of all this.

Time hung suspended, rocking on its hinges. We could have been inside the train for an hour, or a week, or a year, I couldn’t tell. Without conversation, there was nothing to punctuate the time except for the occasional wail of the horn and the sense of moving forward toward some scary future that I both dreaded and longed for.

“Missy,” I finally said, breaking the silence within our tiny vehicle. “Tell me about the black market.”

She sighed and stayed quiet, shifting slightly in her seat, but I couldn’t tell if she was getting ready to speak, or if she was actively ignoring me.