I knew I needed to move, and fast, but I was still dizzy from rolling. As a little kid, I used to face the sky, stick my arms out, and twirl and twirl and twirl until I was dizzy enough to fall over. The lightheadedness always made me feel out of control, and it was a rush, seeing as life back then had been anything but. I didn’t know it then, but I knew it now. Control always came back once the dizzies dissipated. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and used the same boulder that had sideswiped me to steady my body. A forever second later, I was ready to move on again.
The light from the train played along the edges of the track, and my eyes quickly found my pack. It was a shadowed-lump among the jetties, and I was relieved the boulders were so light-colored in comparison. Had they been darker, I may have lost the pack forever since time wasn’t exactly on my side. I scrambled over the distance between myself and my belongs and shivered adrenaline as I pulled it on my back.
I looked around. I only had one option in terms of direction, but there was a meadow between the jetties and the tree-line. The moon hovered just above the arrow-tipped tops of trees to cast an eerie glow on the world around me. I hiked the pack up and made sure it was secure on two shoulders and buckled at the waist before darting towards the forest. Whatever the boy had done, I did not want to be associated with it. I didn’t bother to look for him or check on him. I just sprinted.
The grass was high— knee deep, and I prayed there were no animals hiding in it. If Xavi was there, he’d say, “A snakebite is better than a bullet-bite.” I knew it was too cold for snakes, although there were other things biting. Horse-flies lodged themselves between my hoodie and my hairline. They buzzed around my ears and left welts where my neck was exposed.
I knew the searchlights would be coming soon, and I was surprised they hadn’t come yet. Luckily, the meadow was out of time and space just as the train stopped screeching. I dove into the darkness of the trees where the ground was soft and springy. It made me think of all the times I jumped on Mama and Daddy’s bed. When they’d catch me at it, they’d join in, and we’d bounce until laughter made us nauseous. That was before, when I was a Colony-kid. This bouncing was different.
The moment I thought I was nearly safe, something yanked me back, and there was a vice-tight grip on my pack. I unclipped the clasp around my waist and tried to wiggle my way out of it.
I could live without my pack.
I could if I had to.
I was almost free when a voice held me tighter than the grip. “Wait. Wait. Please. Help me.”
The grip became less rigid after he threw out the plea to let him follow. I didn’t have time to argue, so I said, “Fine.” I knew I’d have to lose him later, but, for the moment, I was stuck with him. We stumbled over broken trees and anxious roots, and a different kind of darkness tugged at my vision, so I just pushed forward. The boy hindered my progress in some ways, but helped me in others. For every moment I wanted to move faster, his grip on my pack slowed me, but for each dark step I took down a steepening bank, he anchored me from slipping.
We picked up a rhythm through the trees quick enough, and, when I reminded myself to open up my ears and listen, I noticed another sound.
“You have to be aware. All the time… aware. You never know when nature will put an obstacle in front of you or offer a solution. This just happens to be both.” Xavi stood on the boulder. No. The word boulder was too kind. It was it’s very own mountain in the middle of the river, and climbing up it had been enough of an obstacle. The water trickled over, around, and, seemingly through it. We’d already hiked for hours with the water pushing and our feet slipping, and I’d been waist deep the entire morning, attempting to keep my balance between the current and the weight of my pack. “But, can’t we just—“
“Backpedal? It’d take us half a day to get out of this.” He looked up at the walls of the mountains edging up along the sides. The canyon was too steep and offered insecure handholds: trees in soft dirt, rocks that fell with too much applied weight, roots that came apart at the slightest tug.
He was right. He was always, annoyingly right. I looked down at the space between me and the water below, and I couldn’t tell how deep it was. We could jump only to land in three feet of water with broken limbs dangling like broken tree branches.
He tugged at my pack so that I took it off, then tossed both our packs on the boulder just past the watering hole before I could protest. I envisioned them landing in the water and floating away without us, but his aim was perfect. His aim always was. “Together? Okay? Count of—,” but before he finished, I felt a shove from behind.
It was a quick betrayal.
Flying. Falling. Weightless. All of it only lasted a few seconds, but my scream lasted forever. My mouth was open when I hit, and I kicked and flailed to claw back up to the surface. I spat out the water that my lungs had tried to swallow, and when my ears rose above the water, they were greeted with Xavi’s howling laugher. “You should have seen your face!” he yelled.
“You could have killed me!”
“I couldn’t kill you if I tried. You’re indestructible!” he screamed as he leapt and balled up his knees into his chest.
Xavi. He was always in my ear. Even now.
When we stepped onto the bank, my sight adjusted again. I could make out the moon overhead, and the river sliced through the trees to make a road of stars in the sky.
The water was going to be cold. There are certain things I’ve learned to know out here, and mentally preparing for temperature was one of them. “We need to make obvious tracks going that way, then we’ll double back in the water,” I told the boy. There was more to the logic than I let on. The train stopped somewhere left, and I knew the river went right under the track a few miles up. It was a bridge Xavi and I’d camped at a few times in the past. We’d wash up in the river before we made our way into the Colony to snag supplies. Whoever’d be looking for us would expect us to go away from the train, rather than towards it.
“You’re going towards the train?”
“Yes.” I pushed past him to break a few lower branches near the water.
“Um. Did you forget something? They’ll be looking for us—“
There was a noise in the distance; not even the trees could block it. The loudness was like a gun shot amplified by thousands upon millions of decibels. Boooooom. Boooooom. Boooooom. Each explosion was equal in distance, timing, and sound, and it stunned me that this boy could be the cause of it. “What did you do?” I asked.
“Escaped.”
The sounds of the explosion, at least, let me know where the train stopped, and the distance the noise had to travel told me that it wasn’t on the part of the tracks I needed to go— that danger was still a good distance from the bridge I was headed towards. It was another lucky occurrence, and my plan remained in-tact. I ignored the panic that wanted to pull me into different reactions and kept breaking branches. I tugged so the break-lines faced the direction I wasn’t planning on going, and I tried to grind divots into the moist earth. It was too spongy and not much stuck, so I gave up on it.
“What are you doing?” The nuisance asked again.
“Making a false-trail.”
“But that’s where—“
“Look. Go where you like. I need to get this done. If you want to go that way, it’ll help me out, actually. It’ll divide their attention if they have two people to chase after. I plan on going under that bridge. So, if you don’t mind. Go your way. Or go mine. Just. Shut. Up.” I didn’t wait for his reply. Instead, I looked down at my shoes. It’d be easier to make it through the rocks in the water with them on, but the boots wouldn’t dry easily. I could freeze my toes off all night or for the time being, so I unlaced the intricate knots to pull them off. I yanked off my pants and stripped down to my first layer, then to my underwear and the thin t-shirt. I didn’t know this boy to strip down any further. Had it just been Xavi, I’d have been brave enough to get all the way to the bra and I’d be one laye
r drier when all was said and done. As it stood, I chose modesty around the stranger.
“Imagine hiking before this technology.” Xavi grinned. He rolled up the jacket and tucked it into the pouch designated for clothing. “See this? Synth-e-dry. I could throw this bag into the river, and as long as it’s zipped, everything in it stays dry.”
“What happens if you don’t zip it?”
“Soggy clothes. They dry though. Not the end of the world. My— my friend once told me that in the past, these were less durable. They’d leak, and you needed extra bags made of something called plastic.”
“Plas-sic?”
“Plastic. Tic. With a T.”
“Oh.”
“They called them dry-bags. Now the entire pack is a dry-bag. Thank the Stars for the Scientists of the Republic.” He smiled as he said the prayer that ran wild in the Colonies. I couldn’t tell if it was a prayer that mocked or one that was sincere. I for one was thankful as the river water rose up around my pack, that the technology would keep my belongings dry.
I shoved all the clothes into the pack, making sure to zip it up. I knew my pack better than I knew myself, so the clothes went right where I needed them to go. The boots wouldn’t fit, so I tied them to the top of the pack and hoped they would remain dry there. The wind bit into my bare skin and sent shivers into every crevice of my body.
The boy had stopped questioning my motives and followed suit. He was smart, I’d give him that. He didn’t have a pack, so he tied his clothes into a makeshift pouch with his jacket.
Eyes have a way of adjusting to darkness. In the absence of light, they pull color from the strangest of places: from the stars bouncing off the water or from the clouds soaking up parts of the moon. Eyes are stronger than we give them credit for, and they sometimes find ways to see more than we can handle. I knew my face was swimming in colors that could only exist in my cheeks when I glanced his way. Near naked men were not exactly something I saw everyday, and, although it was dark, I saw more than I felt comfortable with.
I looked away and focused on the task at hand. I focused on my clattering teeth and my shivering skin.
The rocks were slippery and slimy on my toes, and the water bit into my waist and hovered just above my navel. I hated being short. Xavi never had the problems I did, and he’d splash water into my face to taunt me since less of his surface area was submerged. This boy, too, did not have my problem. He was tall in ways that made my stumpy legs jealous.
“Here?” I asked.
“It’s one of my favorites,” Xavi said.
It was my first trip, and I’d spent the summer training for it. He said I was ready, but I knew he was only being encouraging. I knew that the weather was changing, and so must we. I was nowhere near ready, but time was not on my side.
I definitely didn’t feel ready as I saw the bridge come up.
“They always slow just before this particular bridge. It’s around that bend in the trees, and they want to make sure the Rebels hadn’t blown it up,” Xavi explained. “Especially on a freight, it’s better to jump directly on this bridge.”
“But we’re going too fast.”
“They’ll slow. They always slow here. They never know if the bridge’ll be gone or not because there are too many trees, and they won’t pull their speed up fast enough once they see it.”
“Are you sure?”
Xavi laughed as he remembered a tidbit of track knowledge. “If the Rebels didn’t rely on the tracks so much for sneaking in and out of the Colonies, they’d have already set explosives on every bridge. As it is, they only do it every so often to remind the Republic to slow down and make sure. They’ve found the balance. They blow up just enough to make the Republic cautious, but never enough to hinder the movements of the trains.”
“They don’t want to shoot themselves in their own feet?”
“Exactly.” He tapped my nose with his forefinger. “Look at you, smarty pants.”
The freight felt like it was going entirely too fast to be thinking about hopping off on a bridge, even though the wheels slowed and chug-chugged along with caution. “In the past, we’d jump before the bridge, but now, they have the train jetties for a mile out before and after. So we jump there,” Xavi explained.
“Into the water?”
“Sometimes. If it’s hot. Want to try?”
I shook my head. I could see where the bridge towered over the river at a height I couldn’t fathom jumping from. “How do we jump on the bridge?”
“Just like we talked about.”
He was right. We talked about it over and over again. The rusted beams were bloodstains in the sky. They arched over the bridge in criss-crossed pillars that extended even higher than the train. The beams reached out to hold hands, like trees connecting limbs on opposite sides of a trail.
As the wheels moved from a tha-tha-thump to a cha-cha-chunk, he leapt at one of the pillars, wrapped his arms around the beam, and pulled his body in. His body was thick, and his pack was slung on one shoulder, giving him more room. When all was said and done, he still had about a foot of air between himself and the train.
But I was thick in a different way, and I still had my doubts. It took all my courage to pull up the topic the day before. “What about my chest?” I finally asked. It was no small question, and it took all sorts of efforts to push it out. My body wasn’t something I wanted to draw attention to out on the Tracks, but, since I was twelve, the monstrosities got in my way. I remember overhearing comments from the other girls such as: “She’s like a cantaloupe carrying watermelons. They look ridiculous on her.” I remember the boys’ comments more though. I think out of everyone in my Institute year, I was the most thankful for the Propriety Lessons that came that next semester. The comments about my body ceased, and I found a small ounce of peace. But thoughts were still visible in eyes, even when words and actions did not exist. I never liked to bring up any unnecessary attention to the topic, but I legitimately worried if they’d cause me to not have enough space between myself and the train when I hopped.
Xavi’s laughter was unstoppable. “Death by boobs! That’s a new one!”
He was right. I’d asked the embarrassing question for nothing. Even with Xavi’s pack on, he had plenty of room, and I ended up having feet upon feet between my body and the train.
I almost didn’t follow him, but in the split second between Xavi and the next beam, I realized that if I didn’t, I’d be stuck on the train without him. I wouldn’t know how to get off, or how to survive if Xavi wasn’t with me. He’d gone first, leaving me no choice but to follow. So I leapt. I wrapped my arms around the beam, and I hugged it tighter than I’d ever hugged anything in my life. Adrenaline coursed through every ounce of me as I waited for the long freight to move past. My eyelids squeezed out all the fear of getting yanked off by the train, and after a minute or two, I was able to listen to the momentum of the metallic beast behind me. It was going by so much slower now that I was no longer on it. It rambled on as the sun began to slip from the sky, and, eventually, it was gone.
We climbed down so that our feet hit the planks. “Whooooooahhhh!” Xavi yelled after the train, laughing out his pent up energy. All the months he’d been teaching me, I’d never seen his brown eyes so bright. It was a softer Xavi. The kind of Xavi that wasn’t worrying or preparing or thinking ahead. The kind of Xavi that healed my heart before he broke it.
He turned to me and winked. “Want to see something really cool now?”
The boy and I waded through the water for what felt like forever, and my legs screamed as they punched against the current and the sharp, sharp cold. About a mile before the bridge, as the river began to expand and deepen to cut a wider stretch of sky through the trees, I motioned for the boy to keep to the left bank, since the train— and the explosion— was somewhere parallel to the right bank. It was where the river stretched the widest that the tracks passed over it. I thought it was odd that somewhere in the distant-distant past, someone engine
ered it that way, and I always wondered why they didn’t use a different path— an easier one. When I brought it up, Xavi theorized that it had something to do with pride. Humans liked to show off what they could do. Morph nature. Mold it. Control it. Make it theirs.
The bridge was rust-red, even in the moonlight, and the pillars that held it up were concrete and smooth. It was my first bridge— a bridge Xavi and I had camped at several times, and, like everything along the tracks, it brought him to the forefront of my mind. I tried to shake him away because I couldn’t let him take hold of every thought. I knew I’d never escape him if I let him exist in everything. Instead, I let the cold water wake me up from him. It bit in places that only cold can bite, and I breathed in the shudders and shivers. I looked ahead, since that was all that was left.
Around each concrete pillar that held the bridge up were little islands of dense brush. If the leaf-brained boy following me hadn’t blown up the train, and I wasn’t currently on the run, I’d be camping there right now. As it was, I needed to go further than that for the night.
I pulled myself out of the water as we neared the bridge, and my teeth chattered as I yanked off the thin shirt. I scolded myself for not having just gone in my underwear in the first place. The boy was too bashful to even pay attention to my modesty. I kept sneaking glances his way to make sure he wasn’t watching, but he remained facing away from me. He averted his eyes as much as I averted mine. His form blocked out the river as he dressed, and layer by layer, his muscled back disappeared. His reaction was a tell tale sign, and I knew what he was, if not who. He was a Colony-kid, through and through.
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