February Fever (8 page)

Fifteen

I mulled over the
weirdness of what had just happened all the way to the other end of the viewing car, which took approximately seven minutes to reach. I stood near the door for three more minutes as Mrs. Berns signed us up on the Valentine Train activities board that had appeared since we'd gone to dinner. My stomach's wobbles grew more acrobatic as I noted what she was enlisting us for—a makeover, a Hunt for Love event, a Music Mixer, a painting class, an aerobics class, a scavenger hunt, and a geology lesson in the viewing car as we passed through the Rocky Mountains.

“Everything is more fun on a train!”

I nodded. She was turning my words against me. But I knew that attending these events with her was a small price to pay for a train ride that would bring me to Johnny, even if only for a few days.

“Hey,” I asked, changing the subject as we wrestled our way out of the viewing car. We stood for a moment in the quiet bubble that separates cars, a tiny shifting room encased in a rubber accordion with a sliding door on each side. I liked to pretend that it was a foyer on the Star Trek
Enterprise
. Don't judge. “Over dinner, you guessed that Terry was traveling to Portland. How'd you know?”

The door in front of us slid open to Car 8 with a pneumatic hiss, and she lowered her voice out of respect to the quieter feel of this car. “Lucky guess. It's the final stop on the train, and who gets off in Montana or Idaho?”

“Hmm.”

We passed Jed on our way to the rear of the car. Like the rest of the inhabitants, he was asleep, a fuzzy blanket pulled tight up to his neck. Mrs. Berns softly kissed his cheek before heading back. I smiled, grateful to have such wonderful people in my life, even if both of them sometimes got on my nerves.

The remaining cars were also quiet, packed full of people sprawled in various stages of sleep, reading, or playing on mobile devices, or engaging in soft conversations. Even so, it was a relief to reach Sleeper Car 11—no mass of carbon-dioxide producing bodies, no one to accidentally trip into as the train unexpectedly rocked left or right, bright lighting.

“It's nice to live large,” Mrs. Bern said, echoing my thoughts.

I nodded in agreement. “Do you think it's weird that our doors don't have locks on the outside? Like, you can't lock your room unless you're in it.”

She slid open our door. Our tiny room appeared just as we'd left it. “I suppose they don't want to deal with keys, what with people getting on and off every stop and forgetting their keys or whatever. Besides, who's going to commit a crime on a train? They'd be stuck there. It's like peeing in your own bed.”

The hiss of the door to my left caught my attention. I glanced over, and my heart jumped. It was Noel, or the girl I'd come to think of as Noel. Just like that, I was brought back to that big silver car and Noel's wide, terrified eyes before the door closed and that man drove off with her. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and I tried to steady myself so I didn't come across as a creeper. This girl was not Noel, even if I'd connected the two in my mind and subsequently developed an affinity for her.

“Hey,” I said to her mom. If possible, the woman looked even more tired than she had back in the viewing car. “You guys get your warm milk?”

What little color she had drained from her face. I wasn't doing a bang-up job of not being weird.

“Sorry. I was in the viewing car when you guys ordered it,” I added.

The little girl held up her milk carton, a sleepy grin on her face. Her hair was snarly, as if she'd been sleeping earlier.

I smiled back and held out my hand. “My name is Mira.”

She tucked her rabbit under the arm holding the milk and offered me her left hand as I held out my right. I ended up giving her a strange, upside down shake so our hands fit, and both of us giggled.

“How do you like the train?”

“Good,” she said shyly.

“Me too. Are you guys in one of the sleepers?”

She pointed to the door she was standing in front of, Cabin 1.

“I'm right here!” I pointed to my open door. “We're neighbors. You guys going to Portland too?”

She nodded. “We're from New York. That's where I live.”

She ran forward then and hugged me. It was unexpected, and one of the sweetest things I've ever experienced. My heart warmed, and I was leaning forward to put an arm around here when the door to Cabin 1 slid open.

A man loomed in the doorway, his hair black and curly, his eyes scared. He was slender, wiry, around my age. He appeared to be Hispanic. “Aimee?” he asked the little girl, his alarmed glance shooting down the hall. He relaxed slightly when he spotted Aimee's mom next to us.

“Hi,” I said, extending my left hand because Aimee was still holding my right with a child's lack of self-consciousness. He took my palm. A wedding ring glinted on his ring finger. His fingers were long and smooth, his hands surprisingly soft. A quick shake, and he released me.

He reached forward and gently pried Aimee off of me. “Sorry if she's bothering you. She's friendly. She shouldn't be out this late”—here he flashed the woman a pained expression—“but she couldn't fall asleep, and her mom thought some exercise and warm milk would help.”

“I hope it does.”

He nodded, pushed Aimee gently into the cabin, then stepped aside so her mom could enter. He gave me one last look before sliding the door closed and locking it from the inside. Aimee pulled aside the curtain over the door's window to peek out at me and wave before the cloth was forcibly pushed back and she disappeared from view.

The door of Cabin 3 slid open. It was a busy night on the bridge of the
Enterprise
.

“Hello, Ms. Wrenshall,” I said even before she poked her head out.

I could almost feel the pause, and then only her head appeared. “I heard a noise out here.”

In our cabin, out of view, Mrs. Berns made the “cuckoo” rolling finger motion before disappearing into our tiny bathroom.

“Sorry,” I said. “It was me talking. I'll be quieter.”

“I certainly hope so. I mean it. I hope you're not going to be loud.”

I thought I caught a faint whiff of tobacco. If she was smoking in her cabin, she was going to get in troooouuuble. “I think we're all going to bed.”

“So you won't be loud?”

I felt like I had been patient and generous up to this point. I also felt like she was pushing it too far by making me assure her using her exact words:
we won't be loud
. I don't play that game. In fact, it was a hill I was willing to die on. “Pretty sure we're going to bed.”

She scrunched up her face. “So, loud. You won't be that?”

“I'm a quiet sleeper.”

She stepped a little farther into the hall. “You're saying that you won't be loud, then?”

I could play this all night. There should be awards for this. They'd be called The Pettys, and I'd win them. “I sleep deeply.”

“Not loudly?”

“I bet I'll sleep even more intensely on a train. It's like a big rocking baby bed.”

“You won't be—”

“Oh, for Chrissakes!” Mrs. Berns yelled from inside our bathroom. “We won't be loud!”

Note to self: bathrooms on trains are poorly sound-proofed.

Ms. Wrenshall's lips pursed before she scuttled back into her room, slamming the door behind her. I did the same, minus the slam. Mrs. Berns finished up in the bathroom, and when she came out, she surprised me by tossing our luggage to the floor and choosing the top bunk.

“Less stuff will fall on me if the train crashes,” she said.

Made sense to me.

I finished my evening toiletries and crawled into bed. True to my prediction, I fell asleep immediately. It had been a long day. Forget that—it had been a long year. My subconscious reveled in the rhythm of the train, the muffled
clackety-clack
of the rails underneath us, the metallic shiver as the cars shifted. It was like traveling deep in the belly of a dragon, only safer. I would have happily slept through the night, and thought I had until I was awoken suddenly.

“Hunh?”

Darkness. Random flashes of light outside. The digital clock read 2:34 AM.

I blinked, shapes coming into focus.
I'm in a train car.

Once I had myself placed, I backtracked to figure out what woke me. I sat up, the top of my head grazing Mrs. Berns's bunk. She was snoring softly. Everything else was quiet except for the
rumble rumble click, rumble rumble click
of the train sliding through the night.

But there it came again, making me jump. A noise like a door being slammed, but not quite that. It was both tighter and more hollow. The sound turned my blood icy.

A gunshot?

It still was February, after all, even if we were on a train.

I was past due to uncover a corpse.

Sixteen

My heartbeat was so
loud that it sounded like someone was pounding on my head. I tried to steady my breathing so I could hear everywhere at once. My eyes went to the door of our cabin. Had we locked it?

When the next hollow sound rang out, I rolled out of bed and laid flat on the floor, my heart galloping. We were under attack from all sides, and I couldn't catch my breath. How could I get Mrs. Berns to safety without drawing attention to us? How close were the gunshots? Were they coming nearer?

The noise repeated four more times, mimicking the backfiring of a car, before I realized it must be some function of the train—some normal sound that I hadn't noticed when I was falling asleep, or maybe some maintenance that was only performed at night. I forced my breathing to calm, feeling like a fool.

Stumbling across a corpse a month every month for nearly a year makes a person jump at shadows, it turns out. I crawled back onto my bed and reached for the curtain, pausing as I thought of that
Twilight Zone
episode where William Shatner spots an apey creature outside his airplane window. I pushed through the fear and slid open the curtain, observing nothing but the snow-dusted Dakotas slipping past under the brightness of a million stars. Or maybe we were on the moon, so vast was the sense of an empty wide world. In either case, the train was on its tracks. We were not in danger. I forcibly calmed myself, concentrating on slowing my heartbeat.

My emotions finally under control, I realized I needed to use the bathroom, and urgently. Maybe that's what had woken me? The lemon dill cod, tapping Morse code signals on the inside of my stomach?
You shouldn't have eaten me. Stop. I'm crawling back up your throat to discuss exactly why not. Stop. I don't think you're going to like this conversation. Stop.

I was almost relieved. My corpse-finding affliction hadn't awoken me. Eating train fish had, and I had just stretched my neurosis across that. It was a fine point, but when you don't have a lot, you tend to cling.

Out of respect to Mrs. Berns and our small space, I chose to use the Car 11 public bathroom rather than our private one. My jammies were decent, and who cared what my hair looked like? I glided the door open and almost ran into Reed.

“Sorry!” I said. Dang social conditioning.

He stepped aside, ducking his face so I couldn't read his expression. “You're up late.”

A sound down the hall and to the right pulled my attention. Was that a person stepping into the shadows? I hesitated, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I started to walk in that direction before Reed gently grabbed my wrist. “Can I help you with something?”

My head was full of cobwebs. I'd gone from an imaginary threatening situation to one that felt genuinely uncomfortable. “Were you standing outside my door this whole time?”

He finally looked me head on. His face appeared tense and tired, and then, like water running out of a cracked jar, the tension melted away and he relaxed. “Naw, I'm happy to report that I have better things to do, though not much. Ms. Wrenshall called for a porter, and I said I'd take care of it. Can I get you something while I'm here?”

“No.” I was now zero for two on reacting appropriately to stuff. I needed to dial down the paranoia, ASAP.

“What're you doing up at this hour, anyhow?”

The fish burbled in my stomach, as if to get his attention.
Help me! I want to get out of here. It's so lonely.
I placed my hand over my stomach to muffle the pleas and tried to think of a suitable lie. I certainly couldn't reveal that I had the bad poops coming on and didn't want to inflict them on my roommate. Unfortunately, my liar likes to sleep in. “I was just going to stretch my legs.”
In front of me, while I sit on the toilet
.

Reed had the decency to let that go. “All right. Well, if you need anything, just flip on your light.” He pointed into my room, at a green light glowing softly in our wall. “That'll call your porter—probably me, the way tonight is going.”

“Will do.”

“I'm heading this way.” He pointed toward the rear of the train and Car 12.

“Me this way.” I stepped around him and took the short steps to the Car 11 public bathroom, just then noticing I was barefoot. I did not have the luxury of time in which to address this, and so I entered anyway. It was small and neat with the sort of lighting you'd expected in a Panamanian jail, which suited my situation just fine. I locked the door, double-checked the lock, and got down to business.

I knew I was going to be a while, so I settled into my thoughts. The pros so far of train travel: it's magical. It really is. A big silver dragon takes you on an adventure across the country. People feed you, they offer entertainment of sorts, you can be alone or in a group at the snap of a finger, and nighttime is like the world's biggest slumber party. Plus, you can do absolutely nothing and still be going somewhere, so it's like evolution for lazy people.

Cons: the lemon dill cod was to the bad poops like tinder is to fire. Another point: the staff was at turns helpful and odd. Also, specific to this train, there was:

1. The oddly sensitive Ms. Wrenshall next door.
   
2. The exhausted-looking Aimee and crew on the other side of us (though I would put Aimee herself in the pro column).
   
3. The as-yet anonymous couple who'd been arguing about bullets earlier, using peculiar phrases like “chugged full” and “aim to.”
   
4. Me giving a face job to Chad at the dance (I blushed all over again at the memory).
   
5. And the army fatigues guy who looked ready to unleash something wicked on all of us.
   

It was a peculiar potpourri, but so was life, right? Maybe it felt a little stranger because we were a de facto community, all forced together, but I bet these people were no weirder than the average supermarket crowd. In any case, I was going to make the best of it and focus on Johnny at the end of the trip, and on the fact that I was getting away from Battle Lake and (please, oh please) away from the dead bodies.

I finished my business, washed my hands for the full alphabet, quietly apologized to the other people of Car 11 for fouling their atmosphere, and snuck back to my room. It was cozy. It was safe. It was an adventure. I fell gratefully into my bed like you only can when you've been completely emptied out, and I tumbled into the deepest sleep I'd had in months.

I bet I would have slept until noon the next day if not for the blood-freezing scream.