by Paul Mosier
DEDICATION
For Keri, Eleri, and Harmony.
Home is wherever I find you.
CONTENTS
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
THE TRAIN I ride is sixteen coaches long. It’s got a locomotive, which doesn’t look like the ones in books or movies, and some coaches where the rich people sleep on beds, and coaches where everyone else sleeps on seats. And it has a dining car and a car with windows all around and on the ceiling where happy people on vacations dream about good things that await them, and girls whose lives have been torn apart sit and stare miserably at the countryside rolling past.
I was living in Palm Springs, California, because Gramma lived there. She was the one who got stuck taking care of me.
Palm Springs is a place in the middle of an empty desert with gigantic mountains above it. It’s so hot in the summer I felt like I’d go up in a poof of smoke, and way up in the mountains above it, the snowy peaks would look down at me and laugh. There are mostly old retired people and nothing to do except play bingo and golf.
Gramma lived in what was pretty much the armpit of Palm Springs. Some days I hated it with all my heart.
But in spite of it not being such a wonderful place, and Gramma not being the warmest or the most entertaining person around, I wasn’t happy to leave it behind. It was what I knew—for two years, anyway. It was comfortably dreadful. And now I’m rolling away from it because Gramma can’t take care of me anymore.
The train station in Palm Springs is by a highway overpass. It isn’t so much a train station as a bus stop with train tracks, and there’s sand everywhere. I got on early in the morning with my one big suitcase they checked, and my one bag that I carried, and the one smallish box that is surprisingly heavy for its size. The sheriff or deputy or whatever tipped his hat to me and handed me over to Dorothea.
I’m almost thirteen, but I supposedly need to be watched over by people since I’m traveling alone. And watching over me is Dorothea’s job. Dorothea works for Amtrak, which is the name of the train. She’s as wide as she is short, and I can tell she’s a real stickler for the rules. But she’s not all bad. She gives me a tour of the train, including where I’ll sit next to her in one of the passenger coaches, and the observation lounge upstairs and the bathrooms downstairs.
“Sixteen coaches long,” she says, “counting the locomotives and the luggage car and everything else. You’re lucky to have a seat on the second level. You’ll have the best view.”
Dorothea smiles a lot and asks me how I’m doing and if I need anything. I don’t think she can really get me anything but she asks anyway, which may or may not be nice. I haven’t made up my mind about that.
I have to sit next to her all the way to Los Angeles. I sit at the window and look at everything we pass. We go past a thousand windmills that spin like crazy giants waving their arms, and ugly transmission lines carrying the electricity all the way to Los Angeles. We go through the gap in the big mountains where every day the cool fog from the Pacific Ocean meets the hot air from the desert and fights with it over which direction the wind will blow. Then down into the basin of Los Angeles, where I’d never been, because Gramma couldn’t drive anymore and told me it wasn’t worth seeing anyway.
She was wrong. I see homeless people living in cardboard boxes along the tracks, sleeping in the morning sun, the noise of the train I ride thundering by. They have beat-up couches and recliner chairs facing the tracks. The graffiti on the walls of the businesses and warehouses alongside is their decoration, but more alive than the copies of paintings people buy at the mall, put in their living rooms, and show their friends when they have parties and serve cheese fondue, like Gramma’s neighbors Les and Ray used to make.
Lots of things that are worth seeing aren’t happy things. That’s how I see it, anyway. Gramma doesn’t have to see those things anymore, but I do.
It’s still morning when we pull into Union Station in Los Angeles, and I won’t be leaving again until evening, on a different train headed east. But I’ve been stuck in worse places. It’s a big, ornate station with architecture like a Spanish church, like the centuries-old mission we visited on a field trip from my school in Palm Springs. The ceiling is high, and the tall doors are open to cool breezes coming in from the gardens in the courtyard. But it’s right in the middle of downtown Los Angeles.
It’s busy with people waiting for trains to take them up and down the coast, and across the country like where I am going, and people waiting for local commuter trains to take them to work and then home, or shopping or to beaches or whatever.
I watch the people and try to see if there are any movie stars among them. There are some beautiful people who look like they could be movie stars, but I don’t know if movie stars would take trains.
I sit for a while in the pretty courtyard, which has short trees with thorns and tall trees with purple flowers of a kind that I never saw in Palm Springs or when I lived with my mom in New Orleans.
I sit out there in the courtyard trying to draw a picture of the wind turbines I saw. All I have to draw on is a napkin. I used to draw sketches in my journal, but I don’t look in my journal anymore. I’d rather have real art paper but I don’t, so I pick up extra napkins everywhere I go in case I see something I want to draw.
I try to draw but I can’t concentrate.
I think of Gramma, and what I’ve left behind. I think of the first argument we had after I moved in a couple years ago.
“Gramma, The Chevalier is smoking a cigarette.” The Chevalier was her disgusting little dog. He was a tiny Chihuahua, looking like a poster from science class that shows what happens to people who smoke. He had an eye patch on one eye and the other was goopy, and he was bald in places where he scratched too much. He was so small she’d fit him in her pocket and take him to bingo night.
“Dogs don’t smoke,” she said, and coughed through her menthol cigarette. She was sitting in her bathrobe and slippers on a folding chair on the sad little concrete patio.
“But he is,” I said. And it was true. His habit was as bad as hers. “It’s dangling from his disgusting black lips and it’s still lit.”
“It’s probably just a stick.”
“No. It says ‘Winterfresh.’ And there’s smoke coming from it.”
“Dogs don’t smoke,” she repeated. She threw her cigarette butt onto the blindingly white gravel of the yard and reached for another. “Who would light it for him?”
“He picks up the butts you throw on the gravel.”
She shook her head as she lit up. “Dogs don’t smoke. And if they did, I wouldn’t allow it in the house. You and your asthma.”
“That’s why I’m telling you.”
“Shut up, girl,” she grumbled. “You’re imagining things.”
The Chevalier came through the screen door, hacking. The cigarette in his mouth had burned out. I watched as he chewed and swallowed the filter. Then he sneered at me, and I knew that it was his house, not mine. I knew I’d always feel like an unwelcome guest.
“I like your shirt.” I’m brought back to the present by a hobo, who has sat down beside me on the bench. H
e’s sunburned and dirty with dark, matted hair.
The shirt he’s complimented has a drawing of a piece of toast smiling at a jar of jelly, like they’re friends. It was almost new when I got it from the Salvation Army store. “Thanks.”
“Say, you don’t have a million dollars, do you?”
“No.” I wonder if he really liked my shirt or if he just said it so I’d give him a million dollars. I’m glad for the compliment, in any case.
“I’m waiting for a train,” he says quietly.
“Me too.”
Birds chirp and sing. The sun is warm, the shade is cool.
“I’m going to New York and then riding a paddleboat to Amsterdam.”
“So am I.” I’m not going to Amsterdam and certainly not by paddleboat, but I don’t want him to think he’s alone with his crazy idea.
“Splash-splash-splash, all the way.”
“Yep.” I nod.
He looks over his shoulder. “Aliens are wearing the skins of my friends. They look just like my friends but they’re not. So I have to go to Amsterdam.”
“Me too,” I say, but I don’t think it’s funny anymore. It must be scary to be inside his head.
A security guard appears. “You gotta move along, pal.”
“Okay, pal,” he says brightly. He looks to me. “I’ll meet you in spring on the Kerkstraat.”
It sounds like a real place. It sounds like a place in Amsterdam with flower boxes and cafés on the sidewalks. I wonder if he’s really been to Amsterdam and whether he’s really trying to get back. And though he is friendly and polite, wherever he’s headed, I hope I don’t end up in the same place.
But I don’t want to be going where I’m headed either.
Inside the station there are big black boards with white letters, like scoreboards, that show the status of trains. I watch the boards all day long to see where the trains are coming in from, and where they are going to, and whether they will be on time. I do this because I’m not allowed to go out and explore Los Angeles.
Dorothea isn’t here to watch me. Los Angeles is where she lives, so she gets to go home and play with her dog and sleep. Instead there’s an old guy who stands by the velvet rope surrounding the waiting area. He generally is supposed to make sure that homeless people don’t try to sleep in the comfy old seats meant just for Amtrak riders. Every ten seconds he points to me and then his eyes to let me know he’s watching me. When I want to go to the bathroom or get a breath of fresh air or get something to eat, I have to tell him so he can come along and lurk nearby, watching. But he definitely isn’t going to allow me to explore Los Angeles.
It doesn’t really matter, ’cause I don’t have my skateboard anyway. It got stolen a long time ago.
Instead I explore the Japanese convenience store inside the station. It’s called Hey Jimmee! It’s pretty cute and has healthy foods and strange snacks from Japan, and bottled water. The aisles are probably wide enough to turn around without knocking snacks off the shelves, but they’re not wide enough when everyone inside is carrying suitcases and wearing backpacks.
I squeeze my way to the refrigerated section and find some Yellowberry yogurt that has a cartoon animal with giant eyes on the package. That’s what I get on my first visit. I come back again and again throughout the day.
I eat all the time but I’m still skinny. When we learned about tapeworms in school back in Palm Springs I was sure I had them inside me, eating everything I put in my stomach before I could digest it. It made perfect sense. But the school nurse said that it was normal for a girl my age to be hungry all the time because I’m not done growing and I walk a lot of miles.
The people at social services gave me money that they said would last for the two days it takes to get to Chicago, but I eat and eat, and I spend all of it at Hey Jimmee! before we even leave Union Station.
I bring a California roll with avocado and seaweed and rice onto the train, and a can of almonds. But I eat everything as the train pulls away from Los Angeles.
2
THE SKY IS still light as we roll away. The sun is behind us, bathing the hills of Los Angeles in gold.
On the train, out the windows, you see different things than you see on a highway. You see old things, and sad things, and pretty things, and monstrous things piled alongside the tracks. The old parts of downtowns and their vintage movie theaters with names like The Bijou, and piles of railroad ties and concrete blocks and rusted metal buildings, and rusted cars, and rusted people looking back at you from their dusty yards, and dogs without collars walking nowhere.
I feel like one of the wandering dogs, but I’m on a big train rolling by, and they stop and watch me. I raise my hand to say good-bye.
The sun sets as we pass through a gap in the mountains. I think to myself that it might be my last California sunset, and I wonder if I care. This place never wanted me anyway. It barely tolerated me.
Once it’s dark, staring out the window isn’t much of a way to pass the time. I look at my SpongeBob watch, but it’s been broken for ages. It’s just as well, because it’s gonna be two days before we get to Chicago.
I stand to look in my bag up in the luggage rack, to see if there’s anything in it to provide a distraction. I hear Dorothea behind me.
“What’s in that box?”
I turn to face her. “Jewelry,” I answer quickly, without thinking. “Just some things my dad has given me for my birthdays and Christmases. He’s a movie director and he spends a lot of time in Europe.”
“Oh. Has he done any movies I might know?”
“Probably not. He’s French so he mainly does movies that aren’t in English. And Americans think they’re weird. But they win awards over there.”
“You must be very proud.”
I shrug. “I think he feels bad about being away so he gives me rubies and pearls and emeralds. I don’t really wear them but I guess they’re kind of valuable so I’m bringing them with me.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I’ll be sure to keep an eye on the box for you, honey.”
“Merci,” I say. “That’s French for thanks.”
She smiles and walks down the aisle.
I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me, but it isn’t any of her business what’s in the box or whether or not I have a father.
The night gets dark, but it doesn’t get quiet. A group of five drunk men who got on in Barstow three stops back have been getting drunker and louder, and Dorothea is getting more and more stressed out. She stays by my side, but occasionally stands in the aisle to speak into her walkie-talkie.
I see the men when they pass by on their way to the restroom, faces shiny and crazed and vacant. I see them bouncing off the seats as they careen down the aisle away from us toward the stairs and down to the restroom, and their scary leering faces as they head back to their seats. They smell like alcohol and smoke and no showers. Dorothea says they’ve probably been boozing it up in Las Vegas for the past few days.
One of them passes by, and we hear thumping and shouting as he falls down the stairs. Dorothea groans and follows after him, talking into her walkie-talkie again. Another Amtrak conductor, a short guy who walks like a penguin, hurries down the aisle toward them.
I wish I had a book. All I have is a really short book that I’ve memorized, so it doesn’t really help pass the time or distract me from worrisome things like drunk guys making trouble on the train. I’ve already read the free paper from Los Angeles that I got in Union Station. I’m left to my own thoughts, which tend to take me places I don’t want to go.
Suddenly, I hear Dorothea shouting and my heart starts racing. I lean over to Dorothea’s seat and look up and down the aisle. People are asleep or minding their own business.
Another conductor runs to the stairs. I try to disappear into my seat.
Back in New Orleans, my mom used to have public embarrassments. One time we were at a diner for breakfast on my ninth birthday. It was one of my favorite places to have a special meal, in an ol
d dining car that used to be part of a train. They had little jukeboxes at every table that played happy music from a long time ago.
We had just ordered. A big stack of pancakes for me, and hash browns. Mom just got toast and coffee. I knew it was because she didn’t have enough money for something better, but she pretended she wasn’t very hungry. She looked hungry, though. She always did. Skinny, and ghost-faced.
A guy came up to our table. It was a guy I recognized, and my mom acted surprised to see him. He was always smiling but he was bad news. He was like the man version of her, scrawny and hollow. They talked for a minute while I looked out the window at the rain. Then he left.
My mom said she had to go to the bathroom.
I could tell by her cheery tone that everything was going to get very bad.
She gave me a quarter for the jukebox, and I watched her walk away.
I looked at the songs. I chose “Do It Again” by the Beach Boys ’cause it’s the happiest and the furthest away, like a vacation I’ll never get to take. I chose “Blue Bayou” by Roy Orbison because it’s the saddest.
The food came. The waitress gave me a sympathetic smile, and I hated her for it. I spread the butter on the pancakes and put on as much maple syrup as I wanted. If my mom was at the table, she would have told me to use molasses instead of maple syrup ’cause she said it has more minerals. But she wasn’t at the table so I had the maple syrup. It’s sweeter.
I filled up on the food. My mom filled up on whatever.
I was taking my last bite of the hash browns when I heard the sirens, and the paramedics rushed past my table and into the bathroom. I recognized the paramedics and I could tell they recognized me, so they knew who they’d be finding in the bathroom and rescuing from the clutches of death. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen them and it wouldn’t be the last.
I’m brought back by the shock of a guy plopping down in the seat next to me. He’s one of the drunks. He smells like he’s peed on himself.
“Whaddya doin’?” he slurs.