by Sagine Jean
I try to hold myself together, even as the lights flutter around me. Even as a steady stream of water flows down my neck. I stay tough, not for my dad, not for me, but for Sammy. I gotta stay tough for Sammy.
As if someone out there has read my thoughts, I see it again. That flash of purple material running across the tracks.
“Sammy?” I whisper in disbelief, my heart hammering. This time it’s no longer a flash: a figure pops out from behind a rail post and begins to run. Not just a figure. A boy. A boy in a purple raincoat.
I HEAR SYDNEY SCREAM AND I RUN AS FAST AS I can, my breath hitching in my throat as I assume the worst. It’s not because she’s seen a rat or something. We’ve seen about thirty of those down here and not once have I seen that girl flinch. She reminds me of Captain Gerri in the way that she doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything. But something, or maybe someone, has made her scream.
I think back to the baseball. Back to the sneaking suspicion I had of someone else being down here with us. Sydney had called me crazy and maybe I was—but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering from place to place. And now she is screaming and that was the only thought that went through my mind. Finally I see her and she’s running. And I’m right—and yet I’m so very wrong.
There is someone else down here. Someone in a purple rain jacket.
“Sammy!” Sydney screams again. She found him. She found her little brother. The one I’d so callously tried to pretend that I understood. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. No wonder she ran away from me—I was an idiot.
But now Sammy was here and the only thing we had to worry about was finding a way home.
“Sammy!” I scream with her and run faster, finally catching up to her. Together we run toward the little boy in the purple raincoat, our breaths coming out hard and fast and in unison.
The boy keeps running though, and even I can see the confusion on her face. This must not be like him. He wouldn’t have come when a stranger like me called him but he’s used to her. He knows her. He should come when she calls. Yet he’s not stopping, he’s moving almost faster, taking the curves of the tunnels like he’s done it a hundred times before.
“Sammy?” Sydney questions and I hear her voice break. The last thing I want is to see her cry, I realize, this brave girl who carried her brother and all his complexities on her thin shoulders. So I run even faster, faster than I think I’ve run in my entire life, and hook my arm around the boy’s shoulders. The boy and I tumble to the ground. Sydney catches up with me and helps me and the boy up. Together we stare down at a boy with brown hair, large, dark eyes, and rich, tawny skin.
“That’s not him. That’s not Sammy,” she says, and the boy looks up at her in fear and awe. But on the left breast of his jacket in small black lettering is the name “Sammy.”
“That’s his jacket,” she says, the tears spilling down her cheeks, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
I turn to the boy in Sammy’s jacket and glower at him. My police officer mask is affixing itself onto my face, turning me stern and serious.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? Why do you have this jacket? What happened to the boy who was wearing it?”
Sydney doesn’t say a word; the tears falling down her face silently, her eyes blank.
The young boy looks between the two of us, his eyes wide and scared.
“I-I-I’m Jaime,” he says after a moment. “This is my jacket.”
“Listen, kid. I’m a cop, you don’t want to lie to me,” I say, trying my best to sound intimidating yet kind at the same time. I mean he’s just a kid. He’s what, maybe nine years old? What’s he doing down here in the middle of a storm in a place as hard to get to as this? Where are his parents?
“Don’t lie,” I repeat. “You don’t want to find out what happens if you do,” I say, and the kid looks so scared I almost feel guilty, but Sydney needs to find Sammy. I’m afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t.
“I found it,” he says. “On the ghost tracks.”
“The what?”
“The Fifty-Seventh Street stop,” the little boy—Jaime—says.
This time, Sydney cuts in. “You’re lying. We were just there. It’s completely submerged under water.” We’d barely escaped with our lives.
“Not that one. That’s the one everyone uses. I’m talking about the one no one knows about. The ghost tracks.”
There was that term again. The ghost tracks—as if there were such thing.
“And what were you doing down by these ghost tracks? What are you doing here?”
Jaime shrugs. “I live here.”
I want to laugh at the impossibility of it all. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Yet there’s something about the earnest way he talks that tells me he’s serious. That he actually believes he lives underground here in the subway.
I pull out the baseball from my pocket and show it to him. “And this—is this yours?” Before I can even think to ask him any more questions, he grabs it from my hands with a bright, childlike eagerness. He smiles, his fingers turning the ball over in his hand toward an exact location. Under the red stitching is his name etched out in blue ink, “Jaime.” I’d missed that. I’d missed that completely. I was trained to catch details like this. Grueling months at the academy taught me better than that, and yet I’d still missed it.
It must have been Sydney—her sneaking up on me this morning, completely disarming me with her caustic smile and ready laugh. The strange mention of that random guy Ezra, who was supposed to take her out to a Mets game. “Just some guy” who was probably, maybe, her boyfriend. I shake the thought of them together, and the strange emotion it provokes, out of my head. This girl is going to drive me insane.
“Hey, kiddo,” Sydney leans down next to the kid, her tears no longer flowing but still wet on her cheeks. “My friend Will and I have been looking everywhere for the boy who owns this jacket. His name is Sammy. Purple is his favorite color.”
“Mine, too!” The boy gives Sydney a soft smile and she beams back at him, radiant. She’s great at talking to kids. I, on the other hand, apparently suck at it.
“You should help us find him. You could be part of our team. It could be like an adventure. Then afterward, we can get you back to your mom and dad.” She smiles again, and it’s the brightest thing in this tunnel.
“Mom and Dad?” Jaime asks, tilting his head upward in confusion.
“Yeah,” I say. “Aren’t you lost? Don’t you want to find them?”
Jaime lets out a snicker. “I’m not lost. I told you, I live here. With both of them—my mom and my dad.”
Sydney and I share a look. This little kid is obviously not all together, but we don’t let our confusion show. This time we both smile at him, and I try to look as welcoming as possible.
“So what do you say, Jaime? Do you want to help find Sammy? My little brother?”
“Sure, but first I think I should take you to see my parents. They’re the ones who could probably help. I don’t know much about the ghost tracks.”
His parents? Ghost tracks? How long has this kid been trapped down here?
Before we can question him, a violent tremor rocks us backward and Sydney stumbles into me. I keep her steady and place her back on her feet. Jaime looks back and forth between the two of us.
“What’s going on up there?” he asks. His dark eyes question us, his eyebrow raised and his face a mask of confusion.
“What do you mean, hon?” asks Sydney.
“There’s been a lot of shaking and the lights keep going off. There’s water, too. So much water. It’s everywhere.”
He doesn’t know. How it is possible that this kid doesn’t know about the biggest hurricane to hit New York in more than a century? Sydney and I share another look before she leans down to talk to Jaime.
“Don’t worry about what’s up there. As long as you’re here with us, nothing can hurt you. My friend Will here is a cop and he’s basically my own personal
bodyguard. So if you come with us and help us find Sammy, he can protect you too.”
Protect. The one thing I’d sworn to do since I finished the academy. Even before then. But could I? Yesterday was my first day on the job and I’d barely managed to protect Sydney.
Jaime considers this. His big eyes seem to take in everything about us, from our clothes to our hair and the tiredness on our faces. Eventually he gestures for us to follow him.
“Come on,” he says. “There’s a lot to show you.”
We follow him as he scurries ahead, just slightly out of earshot, giving us time to speak without him listening.
“What are we doing?”
“Is it not obvious?” Sydney responds, a smile bright on her lips. “Following some strange kid on some subway tracks to find another strange kid.”
I roll my eyes. “Let’s be serious,” I say, even though part of me wants to indulge in her giddiness and laugh too. How happy she must be, to be this close to finding her brother. Still, this is too strange. Something is not right.
“But why is he here? How can we trust him?” I ask.
“I don’t know, Will. But this is the only chance we have. Plus, aren’t you worried about this kid? I mean, he thinks he lives down here in the subway. You’re a cop. Isn’t it, like, your job to do something about this? Protect him?”
There’s that word again—protect. It’s like a hot knife to my stomach. I wince and Sydney raises an eyebrow, worry seeming to cloud her features.
“Will?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
I don’t know what to tell her. I’m not okay. I’m trapped here underground in this uniform and I feel powerless. Being down here makes me feel like I’ve failed to do the one thing I swore to do. A feeling that’s not at all unfamiliar.
“Will,” she says again as we continue to follow Jaime. “You know, you never finished telling me why you became a cop.”
I didn’t? I thought I had, but as I think back on it, I hadn’t. Just part of the story.
“I became an officer because of my dad,” I reiterate, not sure if I can let myself tell her as much as I did last time, or even the rest of it. But Sydney’s more intuitive than I’ve given her credit for.
“I know that’s not all. Your dad getting shot, it’s not the only reason why you’re a cop. If it was, when you spoke about him there’d be a sense of respect in your voice. Pride that you were following in his footsteps. Not this . . . ” She searches for a word.
“What? Not this what?” I dare her to say something. Anything.
Her honey-colored eyes meet mine, fierce and unyielding.
“Anguish,” she finishes and I release a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I should feel exposed, uncomfortable . . . afraid, even. Instead, quiet relief begins to fill my chest and I find myself moving my lips to speak.
“My dad, after he got shot, he wasn’t just lazy and not there, he was scary. He wouldn’t hit my mom, he wouldn’t hit us. But there was something in his eyes—this glint. As if any minute he could have done it. Any minute he could have let his self-loathing and anger take over and hurt us. He’d break chairs around the house, press cigarette butts into the walls, throw things around his room, almost as if he was getting ready to strike. And that’s why I became a cop, so if he ever did try anything, I’d be ready. So I’d be strong enough to handle it.”
I don’t know why I’m telling her all this—we just met. There’s just something about the darkness of this tunnel and the steadiness of her eyes that makes this feel natural. Safe.
I see her shake her head, her dark hair glittering in the dim light of the few emergency lamps above us. “You don’t need that uniform to make you strong, Will. You don’t.”
I breathe out.
I want to say something back to her—a refusal, a denial, or maybe even an expression of gratitude— but Jaime runs back to us, taking Sydney’s hand in his own, pulling her along.
“Come on, let’s hurry. We’ll be there soon.”
I DON’T REALIZE HOW SCARED I AM UNTIL I hold Jaime’s hand. Until I feel how small it is between my fingers. So much like Sammy’s, except not. Not chubby in the way his are, not fidgety and a little shaky. Not mine.
I swallow my fear and follow Jaime into the darkness with Will close behind, a truckload of confessions in the air between us. Jaime takes us through a path I wouldn’t even have noticed otherwise. It’s a small archway under construction beyond the tracks. He takes us through and I wonder how I’m ever going to find Sammy—how I’ll ever even get home. The mystery of this boy—Jaime—is somehow the answer to all our problems. He has Sammy’s jacket and he seems to know his way around the subway a great deal more than anyone ought to.
And what’s craziest of all is he hasn’t been outside in days—maybe weeks or months. After all, how could he not know about the storm? How could this be news to him? Where has he been hiding all this time?
“It’s just a little farther,” says Jaime in that little kid voice of his that reminds me so much of Sam’s— even though Sammy was never the type of kid people thought of as conventionally adorable.
“You’re going to love my family,” says Jaime, and Will and I share a look. He’s been saying stuff like this since the moment I took his hand and he began leading us closer.
I can’t do anything but give a soft smile. It’s just too hard to imagine what this kid must have gone through to make him believe that his family lives in the subway.
“How do you know where to find them?” asks Will from behind me. I steal a glance at him and catch the look of distrust on his face. He eyes Jaime’s hand in mine as if willing me to step away, but this boy is so young—what’s there to mistrust? If anything, we should be helping him.
Jaime shrugs in response to Will’s question but the officer persists.
“How do you know your way around here?”
“Because I live here, duh.”
“For how long?”
“Always.”
Jaime begins humming a bright tune, swinging our joined hands between us. The sound of his song echoes through the vast tunnels and sends a chill down my spine.
“Are you not scared?” I ask softly. “Living down here in the dark?”
I think of Sammy, huddled in some corner somewhere, humid air and darkness pressing in on him, the sounds of leaks and falling rain too much for him to bear.
“No,” says Jaime. “What’s there to be afraid of?”
And he’s right I guess. The worst that can happen is a rat deciding to crawl on your foot while you’re sleeping. There’s no noise down here, no violence, no crime, no storm. In some ways, being stuck down here is much safer than being on the surface and out in the open.
It almost feels like we’re hiding down here—away from the rest of the world.
“We’re here,” says Jaime suddenly, after we make an abrupt right turn.
I push myself out of my thoughts and look at the space around us. There are no tracks here, just heaps of metal and tools. The space is also wider and taller than any other section we’ve been in. Almost as if someone started to create a tunnel down here, then just got too lazy to finish.
But it’s entirely devoid of people—it’s entirely devoid of Sammy.
Will grabs the boy away from me. “Where’s Sammy? You said he’d be here,” he says sternly in the kind of voice that commands authority. I steal a quick glance at his face. Suddenly, everything he’s told me about his dad fits into this persona he puts on. Will—the cop. I can see just how much it’s shaped him.
He’s not the only one with a messed-up father. For not the first time, I start to wonder just how much my father’s absence has shaped me. I mean, I doubt I’d be some spoiled princess if he was still around. Still, what would change? What would be different?
I push my thoughts away again and quickly step in, putting a gentle hand on Jaime’s shoulder. “No. He didn’t. He said he’d take us to his parents.” And then find Sammy? Hopefull
y, possibly, maybe?
Jaime shrinks toward me, but continues to walk toward the middle of the empty space.
“I’m home!” he screams, but, just as I thought, no one answers him. He yells again that he’s home, and Will and I watch as he’s met again by silence. If I’m honest with myself, I hadn’t really expected any different. This boy has obviously been here for a long time—so long that he’s lost any sense of reality.
I give Will a look as Jaime keeps yelling in the dark. “This feels like a scene in a slasher film, just before the main characters get offed by some lady with a chainsaw. You know, when the theater gets all quiet ’cause something bad’s about to happen.”
Will shrugs, his eyes keenly focused on the room around him, disregarding my joke and surveying the scene around us like a cop. “I don’t really get around to going to the theaters, let alone for horror movies.”
“What?” I try a laugh again, just to lighten the mood. “Even Ezra watches horror films, and the guy’s afraid of everything.” Especially things like leaving his house without properly moisturizing or ripping one of his leather pants. Well, at least the pants fear is legitimate, they really are obscenely tight.
Will turns to look at me, eyes narrowed. “Well, not all of us have time to date.”
Shock widens my eyes and I open my mouth to protest when a loud clamoring fills the space.
“Jaime, how many times do I have to tell you to watch how loud you are? What if father was napping? Come, you must be hungry. I made break—” A woman looks at us in shock, seemingly coming from out of the shadows. Will and I both take a step back, and I look at her hands to see what’s in them. Thankfully, it’s not a chainsaw.
“Jaime,” she starts in a hushed, almost afraid, tone. “Who are these people?”
“They’re my new friends,” Jaime says. The woman continues to scrutinize us and I’m beyond confused—beyond freaked out. She has long, tight curls pushed out of her face and a rag in her hand as if she’s just finished washing the dishes—as if beyond the shadows of this cavern is some kind of loving, white-picket-fence home.