Mayhem

by Jeffrey Salane

  “I never lost you.” The moonlight cast over Zara’s face and M could see where the paint was smudged from her sweat. Zara pulled off the ridiculous red nose she’d worn the entire time and began wiping off what was left of the paint with her oversize tie. “You ran away.”

  “Fort Harmon. My fake parents. My fake friends. That was you?” asked M as she clenched her fists and gritted her teeth.

  “Well, me and, like, twenty other people,” corrected Zara. “And it would have worked if it weren’t for this pesky kid.”

  Evel smiled. “Isn’t that the kettle calling the pot pesky?”

  “Don’t be witty,” snapped Zara. “That’s my thing. You stick to getting sick in the back of clown cars. I think that’s more your speed.”

  “Why did you turn me into a prisoner?” M broke in.

  “Listen, Harmon wasn’t my idea. I was following orders.” Zara leaned over to check on the other clown. “And before you go all twenty-questions on me, maybe you should wait until you can talk to the real ringleader.”

  M stood up and started walking back toward the circus tent. “No, thanks.”

  “Come on, don’t be a sore Freeman,” begged Zara. “Where are you going? If the Fulbrights don’t get you, the Lawless crew will.”

  “I’m going back to find Jules,” confessed M. “She’s back there … back at that circus freakshow. She could be trapped by the Fulbrights, or stuffed into Terry’s Lawless van by now! I have to find her.”

  “Freeman, you can be the most inspirational and ignorant person in the world sometimes,” said Zara. “And FYI, you’re heading in the wrong direction. Byrd’s been with us the whole time.”

  The second clown sat up, took off her wig, and wiped her face. “Long time no see, M.”

  The clouds above them passed, letting the moon peek through and cast its glow over the forest floor. Juliandra Byrd was sitting next to Zara, dressed in a costume with juggling balls for buttons and shoes twelve sizes too big. M’s heart stopped for a moment as their eyes met.

  “Jules,” M whispered. She had been so pumped full of adrenaline, so ready to storm the circus and save her friend, that now, suddenly without a mission to complete, M was lost. Lost for words, lost for actions, and lost in the woods. She walked slowly over to Jules, who stood as M came closer. This wasn’t a phony or an apparition or a memory. Jules was here and she was alive.

  The corners of M’s mouth pulled up into an uneven smile. She put her arms around Jules and squeezed her tight. M held her friend like a life preserver in an endless ocean. But Jules did not hug her back. Instead she remained as still as stone.

  “Jules?” M asked again. She pulled away to face her friend. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  SLAP!

  Jules smacked M across her cheek, hard. Hard enough to snap M’s head to the side and leave a mark from the clown paint she’d gotten on her hands.

  M slowly turned her head back. Jules was breathing rigidly, as if every breath conjured dark thoughts — dark thoughts about M.

  “You don’t get to ask,” Jules started, “if I’m okay. Or if I’m hurt. You don’t get to ask me anything anymore.”

  “But the tent …” M’s cheek stung viciously. “The Fulbrights, Lawless, I … we … saved you.”

  SLAP!

  M was briefly thankful that this time Jules had struck her other cheek.

  “You didn’t save me at all, don’t you understand that? That ‘circus freakshow,’ as you so childishly put it, is where I come from. It’s where I belong. It was the only safe place in the world I had after you left me — after you left all of us for dead months ago. And then just when I think I’m finally done, when I’ve finally come to terms with everything that happened, you came back. You came back to save me. But who do you think those soldiers were really here for?”

  Suddenly the world melted away. M couldn’t feel anything, not even the ground underneath her feet. This shame wasn’t a new feeling. Over the last year she’d endangered everyone she’d considered a friend. She’d failed everyone who’d depended on her. M had left a wake of death and destruction behind her, sacrificing too much in the name of a mission she didn’t even fully understand.

  Jules had barely gotten out alive. And now M had pulled her right back into the fight.

  The two girls stood facing each other in the night. Jules’s shoulders were flexed, her fists clenched and ready to battle. M, on the other hand, hung like a ghost, like the slightest wind could sweep her away into the sky.

  “While I hate to interrupt this overjoyous reunion of BFFs,” said Zara as she waved an arm between them. “And believe me, I really do hate to interrupt your special moment, but we’ve got Lawless and the Fulbrights on our trail now. Our clown car is toast, so it’s on to our next option: running for our lives. Sound good to everyone?”

  “There’s a train,” Jules said without taking her eyes off of M. “Back near the tent. We always made sure we had several escape routes in case … in case of emergencies.”

  “Well, this certainly qualifies as an emergency,” admitted Zara. “It seems like our spirits are broken, but does your pointing finger still work, Byrd? Which way to the train tracks?”

  Jules cut her stare and focused on Zara, who actually stepped back. “It should be west of here. Follow me.”

  Jules headed away from the others without looking back.

  “Um, Jules,” said M. “You’re heading south.”

  Jules abruptly stopped. Her whole body tightened and strained. Then she turned right and waved everyone on. They walked carefully into the forest. Evel and M kept to the rear.

  “I thought you said she was your best friend?” Evel asked M.

  “She is,” answered M.

  “Are sure you understand the definition?” Evel stepped on a stick and it snapped loudly. The entire crew froze and held their breath. The crack was exactly the kind of slight sound that could be picked up by the Fulbrights from a mile away.

  A minute passed, and Zara signaled that it was okay to continue. “Watch your step next time, Bigfoot. And let’s all keep quiet. It’s not a great time to chat.”

  They hiked in darkness for another hour before reaching a small clearing that cut across the forest like a tunnel through the trees. The dirt ground became a mound of small rocks surrounding train tracks. Zara held up her fist as she checked the path to the left and right of them. It was clear.

  “Now we wait until a train comes,” she whispered to the others. “Byrd, don’t suppose you know the schedule?”

  “Nope. Left it back at my burning home.” Jules went to sit down on the ground and lost her balance. She landed hard on her rear end.

  “Whoa, are you okay?” asked Evel.

  “I’m fine!” snapped Jules. “Just worry about your own back. I’ve got mine covered.”

  But M wasn’t so sure about that. Why hadn’t Jules been swinging through the air on the flying trapeze or death-defying on the high-wire act? Sure, it took skills to be a clown, maybe, but that wasn’t the role she’d expected her friend to play. Not after everything she’d seen Jules do. Something was wrong.

  After they had been waiting for a while, Evel broke the silence. “How do we, um, get on the train?”

  “We give the conductor our tickets and then find our seats in first class,” said Zara carelessly. “Where did you find this jokester, M?”

  “Ignore her,” M told Evel. “We’re going to hop the train.”

  “But don’t trains travel at, like, a hundred miles per hour?” Evel pointed out.

  “Not this train.” Jules’s voice was low and distant. “It’s a freight train, so the top speed is around sixty miles per hour.”

  “That’s still faster than I can run,” said Evel.

  “There’s a series of curves in this pass,” Jules continued. “The train has to slow down. We’ll probably be looking at a ten- to twenty-mile-an-hour hop.”

  Evel’s face went white as the ground around them started
to shake slightly. M leapt to her feet, ready to fight for her life, but she quickly realized that the disturbance didn’t mean they were under attack. It was their ticket to freedom.

  A lone light floated in the sky, moving toward them with great speed. The train was moving fast. Really fast. Maybe too fast for them to jump aboard.

  “Okay, kids, don’t try this at home.” Zara smiled with a wicked excitement. “M’s new weirdo pal, I want you to go first. I’m not sure what you’re capable of, so it’s going to be Freeman’s duty to make sure you get on that train.”

  “What do I do?” Evel asked M. He was suddenly covered in sweat.

  “It’s easy, just follow my lead. Let’s start running now.” M pulled Evel along, darting down the path just beside the tree line. With a tremendous noise, the train burst forth through the night and appeared alongside them. The wind pushed at their backs and seemed to increase their speed, but the train was still much faster. As soon as the lead car pulled ahead of them, M reached up and grabbed hold of an empty flatbed. She was tugged off the ground immediately and felt her legs fly into the air. She used her momentum to whip herself up onto the car and leaned over the edge, reaching out for Evel. He grasped at her hand a few times before she was finally able to get a grip. Unfortunately, his feet didn’t clear the ground in the same way. They dragged, kicking up a maelstrom of rocks and dust. M’s arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets, but she held tight as Evel’s eyes grew wide and frightened.

  “PUSH OFF THE GROUND!” she screamed.

  Clumsily, Evel skipped into the air, barely clearing the ground. M rolled backward and flung him around as hard she could. It was enough to get him on board with a thud.

  Zara was next, and she slid on board like a snake moving across the desert: effortlessly. Jules, on the other hand, was struggling. The train had quickly outpaced her and she was falling behind. M leapt into action, hopping from train car to train car, chasing Jules until they were even with each other, close to the rear of the train.

  “Now, Jules! It’s now or never!” M called.

  Jules finally took hold of a hanging ladder, but her strength had been wiped out from the run. She dangled dangerously close to the powerful wheels that drove unrelentingly against the tracks, her legs flapping lifelessly as the train made its turn and began to speed up again.

  M clasped Jules’s wrists.

  “It’s no good,” shouted Jules. “I can’t feel my arms. Let me go, M. Let me go!”

  Jules was barely holding on by her fingertips, and her grip was slipping. M could feel her friend being pulled back down to the rolling earth by gravity, sliding from her grip, but she couldn’t let go.

  “No!” she yelled back. “Hold! On! That’s the first thing you ever told me in the Box. So hold on, you idiot. We’ll make it through this together.”

  She reached down in a jolt and grabbed a fistful of Jules’s clown costume. Then she pulled on the oversize suspenders just as the train hit a bump that bounced Jules and M into the air. M lost her balance and began to fall forward, but Zara snatched her from behind and pulled both girls to safety.

  “No one’s dying on my watch,” Zara said in a huff.

  Jules lay facedown in the boxcar, wheezing. She couldn’t catch her breath. M scurried back, the horrible truth dawning on her at last. The Jules who used to scale walls and leap off of Siberian trains in the Box was gone.

  “It worked,” M gasped. “Doe’s machine worked on you. It … it ate you alive.”

  “No,” wheezed Jules. “It didn’t eat all of me, just the best of me. Just what made me special. And it left behind everything else. I’m … I’m just a kid now. A regular, ordinary, uncoordinated kid. And I have you to thank for it.”

  With that, Jules turned her head in the other direction and curled into a ball.

  Evel finally reached the boxcar. He was also breathing heavily, and leaned against a stack of crates. “Wow, what did I miss?”

  “Just M realizing that she’s ruined her best friend’s life,” said Zara. “Oh, and it looks like we landed in the sweet motherland of Honeycrisp apples.” She muscled open one of the crates to reveal scores of the fruit. “Eat up.” Zara took a hefty bite of one apple and tossed another to M. “An apple today means that we got away.”

  By the time morning light beamed through the small holes in the boxcar’s rusted walls, everyone was sick of Honeycrisp apples.

  A set of dull thuds jolted M into sentry mode. “Everyone down — they found us!”

  “Relax, it’s just Jules,” said Zara lazily as the train clacked along the rails.

  Jules bent over and picked up the two apples that were rolling across the floor. They were beaten and bruised just as badly as the kids on the train.

  “What did those apples ever do to you?” asked M.

  Jules ignored her and tried to juggle the apples again. And again the apples plunked onto the floor.

  “She’s been doing that all night,” said Evel with a yawn. “The apples go up, the apples fall down.”

  Jules was sweating with concentration as she tossed another apple into the air. “I can get it back. That part of me that was taken, I can get it back. I am going to get it back.”

  Still the apples fell.

  There had been little conversation after they’d boarded the train, and if anyone claimed to be sleeping, they were liars. The travelers were tired, sore, and angry, but most of all they were ready to get off this train. Zara lifted the latch and slid open the door. A blur of trees flew by and the clacking of the train that had rattled their nerves all night suddenly became louder. M hadn’t even thought that was possible given the echo factor inside the boxcar.

  “Evel, you ever practice jumping off a moving train at the academy?” asked Zara.

  “No.” Evel gulped and turned to M. “How about at Lawless?”

  M, Jules, and Zara all nodded without looking at one another, because yes, as a matter of fact, they had. “More times than I’d like to remember.”

  Jules cut in. “First, we’ll wait for a turn, sometime when the train has to slow down. Jumping from a speeding train is a bad idea.”

  “But jumping from a speeding train that has slowed down slightly is a good idea?” asked Evel.

  “No one wants to jump from a train, dummy,” said Zara. “It’s always a bad idea. But when the only options you have are bad ideas, you go with the least horrible choice.”

  “When you jump,” Jules continued, “jump forward, alongside the train, but also away from it. Then roll over one shoulder and pull yourself into a ball. Let yourself keep rolling until you come to a natural stop, and then stay still until you catch your breath. Get up slowly afterward, too. You don’t want to jump up and stand on a broken leg.”

  Evel stared at Jules. “Aren’t you the one who’s just a kid now?”

  “A kid who paid attention in school,” said Jules. “The Fulbrights stole my soul, not my brain.”

  “Turn’s coming,” announced Zara.

  M felt the train lurch to the right, which shifted everyone toward the open door on the left side of the car. A field of wildflowers opened up as the edge of the forest moved away from the train tracks. They couldn’t ask for a nicer landing spot.

  “New kids go first,” said Zara as she grabbed Evel and pulled him over to the door. “Oh, and don’t bite your tongue off.”

  “What?!” But before Evel could finish his thought, Zara shoved him out of the train. M watched as he landed awkwardly and disappeared into the waist-high weeds.

  “Jules, go!” directed Zara.

  Jules at least jumped with determination, but her body sprawled unnaturally in the air. She looked like a free-falling octopus, limbs flopping around bonelessly.

  M turned back to see Zara smiling. “Just like the good old days … or the bad old days, aye, M? I’ll see you on steady ground.” And with that, Zara leapt and rolled into the tall grass.

  The train began to straighten out of its
turn and was picking up speed. The wind strengthened suddenly and M felt her legs give just the slightest bit of pause. She knew she’d missed the best window of opportunity to jump, but that wasn’t going to stop her. She pushed out of the boxcar and tossed herself toward the field. The crush of her full body weight landed on top of her left side as she started rolling. The quickness of the train had acted like a slingshot, throwing M faster and harder than the others. Uncontrollably, she flipped side over side, crunching against the rocky ground over and over. She was rolling downhill, but downhill toward what? She knew that if she tried to straighten out her arms, she risked breaking them, so she stayed tucked into a ball. She bounced once, bounced twice, and bounced a third and fourth time. Each landing knocked the wind out of her and sent jolts of pain rippling through her body. This was how tenderized meat must feel. Or maybe how nails feel as they were hammered into the wall. Or cars in a multi-car pileup. The aching list went on and on through M’s mind until the rolling was replaced by another sensation: falling.

  M had reached the edge of her destination — a steep cliff at the end of the field — and kept going.

  She quickly unrolled herself and reached out, grabbing blindly for anything within grasp. Luckily she seized hold of some stray roots growing out of the dirt of the overhang. Her legs dangled beneath her. She whipped around to see the train they’d been riding continue on safely across a bridge. Then she looked down to see a mile-long drop straight down, with nothing to catch her if she fell. M clung to the roots, but these roots weren’t strong. They were frayed, brittle, and exposed. Slowly, with soft pops of dirt, the roots tore out of the earth, dropping her an inch lower at a time.

  “M?” she heard in the distance. “Come out, come out wherever you are!”

  She tried to scream, but her voice had been pounded down into a whisper. “Here! Over the cliff!” She coughed a hollow cough and attempted again to scream, but there wasn’t enough air in her lungs.

  So M started kicking the side of the drop-off. She kicked dirt clods away from the earth and sent up dirt clouds like smoke signals, hoping that someone would see her SOS. The dust floated all around her and slipped its way into her nose, her mouth, and her eyes. It felt like she was being buried alive, but she kept kicking up the dirt.