by Jude Watson
“Could be trouble,” he said softly to Jules. “This car is kinda crowded. Let’s migrate.”
They casually walked down the aisle and into the next car.
“The next stop is 125th Street,” Darius said. “They could have cops waiting at the station. I know that station — all the platforms dump you at one main staircase. They could trap us, easy.”
“We can’t give up now,” Izzy said. “We only have tonight.”
“There’s another way,” Darius said. “But you have to trust me.” He hesitated. “It’s about my old man.”
“The Somali pirate?” March asked. “Or the nuclear scientist working on the secret government project? We don’t have time for this, D!”
“The real one,” Darius said. His face was red. “The messed-up dude who took off to buy orange juice and never came back. He was a sandhog.”
“Sandhog?”
“He dug tunnels. Worked on the big water tunnel in the Bronx. Worked for the subway. Before he got fired. Before he started leaving all the time. Not my point. He used to take me into the tunnels. Freaked out my mom. But he taught me tunnels, man. You think New York City is sitting on a rock? Nope. It’s sitting on top of a honeycomb. So I propose we drop off the back side of the platform right onto the tracks. They won’t be looking. If you follow me, you can’t get hurt.”
“What about that third rail?” Izzy asked.
“If we travel alongside the wall, there’s a space to hide when the train goes by, if we move fast. Then we walk to the tunnel before the next train comes. In the tunnel there’s an abandoned platform at Ninety-Sixth Street. It has access to the street. You game?”
March looked back through the rectangle of window at the end of the car. Cops were moving down the aisle, weaving with the jerking of the train, their hands on their thick belts.
“We’d better be,” he said.
The train crossed the Harlem River, dark below the tracks, strings of headlights along the streets, rectangles of yellow in the buildings where normal people were watching TV or eating dinner. March watched it all pass by, his heart thumping.
The train slowed as it approached the station. The police were halfway down the car. March was afraid to attract attention by moving, but they had to.
“We’re not going to make it,” he said in a low tone. “Next car.”
They passed through the next door. They were now on the last car. Jules’s face was tight. She’d said nothing since the conductor passed them.
“You okay?” March murmured.
“Sure.”
The door slammed. Two cops stood, their gaze sweeping the car. It stopped on the small clot of people standing at the door. One of them nudged the other. They headed down the aisle.
The train slowed and lurched. People stood up to gather their jackets and tote bags and suitcases. The cops tried to push through the bottleneck to get to them. They had seconds.
The platform held people dressed for a night out in the city. It also held two more police officers, standing by the stairs, their eyes moving, sweeping along the windows. Darius pressed himself back against the plastic divider.
“Not good,” he said.
Suddenly Izzy let out an ear-piercing scream. “RAT!” she cried.
“EEEWWWWW!” a woman next to them screamed. “I think I saw it.”
People began to press behind them as the train slowed. When the doors opened, they were pushed out like a champagne cork.
“Rat!” the woman shouted to the people waiting, who, understandably, hesitated to enter. Darius pushed through the crowd. The police officers were jogging toward the clump of passengers, their hands holding their batons still against their sides.
Darius threaded through the crowd as the officers on the train muscled their way out. They moved behind him as he used the people as a screen to drop over the edge of the platform on the other side.
Jules slipped down easily and held up her hands for Izzy. Izzy dropped down.
March gave a look backward. The police officers were looking over people’s heads, down the platform toward the stairs. One spoke into a walkie-talkie.
He jumped off the platform onto the tracks.
* * *
In the tunnel they had a couple of small, powerful flashlights and the lights from their phones. Izzy came behind Darius, hanging on to his shirt. Jules brought up the rear.
“Best-case scenario, we make it to the platform before the train comes,” Darius said. “The main thing here is not to get killed.”
“Sounds reasonable,” March said.
“Just don’t step on the third rail.”
“Which is that?” Izzy asked.
“There. Don’t worry … Southbound trains don’t enter the tunnel on the right-side track. They take the center or the left. Once, my pops had a party on the Fifty-Ninth Street platform. Got him fired, but it was a party.”
“How much longer?” Jules asked.
“I think I just really saw a rat,” Izzy said.
The ground rumbled under March’s feet. “Darius …”
“I know. Relax. It will be on the other track.”
March twisted around. The light was far in the distance. It was hard to tell. But …
“They must have changed the routing since I did this,” Darius said, squinting into the darkness. “I think it’s on this track.”
“What do we do?” Jules asked.
The train’s roar thundered, the light suddenly illuminating the gray.
“Run!”
The ground was pitted and uneven. So easy to trip and fall, March thought, his foot sliding on gravel. Their flashlights swung crazily. The train’s hot breath filled the tunnel, pressing against his back, pushing him into darkness. He could now feel the shuddering vibration of tons of moving steel on the tracks. He stopped to look behind him, hypnotized by the power.
Darius took hold of his shirt collar and yanked him. “You want to be track jam?” he yelled. “Come on!”
The roar was now deafening, but March couldn’t plug his ears. He needed his hands to keep his balance as he followed Darius down the dull gleam of the tracks. He stumbled in a rut and almost fell, and the terror that shot through him almost knocked him down again.
Darius pulled him forward toward the platform ahead. He boosted Izzy up in one strong move, then leaped up so that he could extend a hand to Jules. She used it to vault herself up, hitting the platform and rolling.
March could feel the moonstones in his pocket dragging him off balance. How was that possible? They were suddenly so … heavy. His pack slid, pitching him to one side. He stumbled and fell to his knees.
A horn blasted against his ears. The hot air pressed against his back. He saw Jules’s hand, reaching for him. He rose, but he couldn’t get to her. The stones in his pocket kept him slow and clumsy. He wasn’t going to make it.
It’s not a cliff in the dream. It’s this.
This is where I’m going to die.
“DARIUS!” Jules screamed. “HELP!”
March could feel the rush of hot air and the weight of all that steel pressing against his shoulder blades. The conductor hit the horn, and the sound was so loud that it shuddered through his bones.
Darius reached down with both hands, grabbed him under the armpits, and yanked. March landed face-first on the platform as the train roared by.
He rolled over on his back, gasping. His heart thudded against his ribs. He felt his whole body shaking.
Jules sat, her head between her knees. “That was … scary.”
Darius looked shaken. “My fault.”
Izzy crawled on her hands and knees to sit near them. Her face was a pale blur. “We made it, okay? We’re safe.”
Is this worth it? March wondered. He felt the stones, the burden in his pocket.
“It’s the stones,” he said. “They almost killed me.”
Jules lifted her head.
“It’s like they’re getting heavier. It’s like they ha
ve a will. An intent.”
Izzy sucked in her breath.
“That’s harsh, Marcellus,” Darius said, shifting uncomfortably. “Are you sure?”
Jules lifted her head. “The moon is rising,” she said. “The blue moon. That’s where they get their power, right?”
March reached into the secret pocket. The stones were stuffed in there now. There wouldn’t be room for a seventh. They clicked in his fingers. They gleamed like the moon.
They stared at them, at their glow, at the shifting blue, silver, white luminescence, the floating color that they could not name.
Darius swallowed. “Okay. Now even I’m spooked. They just look so … strange.”
“And beautiful,” Izzy said.
“You can’t carry them in your pocket anymore,” Jules said. “Put them in your pack.” She nodded at him. “We can take turns carrying it.”
March felt a kind of freedom as he poured the moonstones into the front pocket. When he zipped it closed, he felt better.
Darius led them up a narrow flight of stairs and through an unmarked door. Another corridor, another turning, and then another door. There was faint light coming from a street above. They looked up through the grating.
Darius leaned his shoulder against it. With a screech, it popped out of the crumbling concrete. He found a plastic bucket and overturned it, then placed it under the opening.
Jules flipped herself up easily. She reached down for Izzy, and Darius boosted her up. A couple of moments went by before Jules stuck her head back down.
“Coast is clear,” she said. “Come on up. Toss me your backpack, March.”
March tossed the backpack up to her. She held his gaze for a moment.
“I’ll be careful with it,” she said.
Darius boosted March. He landed in the middle of the Park Avenue median. Grunting, Darius pulled himself up and out.
Cabs whizzed by. The squares of light in the buildings marched upward toward the just-winking stars.
“Where’s Jules?” March asked.
The median was empty of everything except banks of azaleas. A few pedestrians strolled down Park in the evening light. Someone on Eighty-Fifth Street laughed to their companion as they headed east toward Lexington.
“Izzy?”
“She was just here …” Izzy said.
March looked around wildly. “Where’s my backpack?”
Dread and panic danced a frantic duet. His head swiveled in a desperate 360 view. Down the avenue, the cross street, turning, eyes straining, searching for a slender girl with dark spiky hair and an athletic stride.
Disbelief changed to anguish.
He turned to the others.
“She’s gone! And she took the moonstones!”
“She stole the moonstones?” Darius looked as though someone had just batted a line drive directly to his skull. “Jules?”
“She didn’t,” Izzy said. “No way. She’ll come back.”
March gazed down the street. He had given up looking. He knew how fast she could run. Bitterness twisted his mouth. “You so sure about that, Izzy?”
“She couldn’t!”
“But she did! She’s the one who said, ‘You can’t carry them in your pocket anymore. Put them in your pack.’ And stupid me did what she said! Stupid me trusted her! Just when …” The awfulness of the betrayal felt like a searing brand on his heart. Just when we were feeling like family.
“She’s not getting away with this,” he vowed.
“She only has six,” Darius pointed out. “It’s not like she can do much with ’em.”
And then the realization flooded through March. He gave a harsh bark of a laugh. “No,” he said. “She has the last moonstone. She just didn’t tell us she did.”
“How do you know?”
March thought of Jules on the train, how she grew more silent as the miles passed. “She thought of something on the train. Think about it — it makes sense. Alfie gave me one. I think he gave her one, too. The one he stole in Barcelona. Somehow she realized it. She knows where it is. Or maybe she knew it all along.” He whirled to face Izzy. “Tell me what happened when she came up. Did she say anything?”
Izzy screwed up her face. “She just stood there for a second, staring at the moon.”
“The moon?”
“Yeah. There.” Izzy pointed to where a fat yellow moon was rising from behind the tall buildings that marched down Park Avenue.
But March didn’t see the moon. He saw a poster on a lamppost. He walked closer.
UNDERGROUND URBAN FOLKLORE SPECTACULAR!
JOIN US IF YOU DARE
CHECK UNDERCITYCENTRAL.COM FOR THE PASSWORD
FOLLOW THE STEPS TO THE DREAM VAULT
W SPECIAL GUEST
BLUE
A photo of Blue in her top hat, looking fierce.
IN HER NEW SHOW,
PARTICLE ZOO
“Particle zoo!” March said. “The first heist. Whatever it was, Alfie gave Jules the stone. And maybe it’s still with the Stick and Rag Players. Because she wasn’t looking at the moon,” he added. He stabbed the poster. “She was looking at Blue!”
* * *
March strode down the street, his steps quickened by fury. Darius kept pace with him while Izzy tried to walk and use her phone at the same time.
“Slow down, man,” Darius said. “I’m thinking that Jules must have had a reason to take off without telling us.”
“She had seven million reasons!” March spit out. “They must have been working on the Particle Zoo show when Alfie saw them back in Amsterdam. Why didn’t Jules tell us she knew what it meant?”
Izzy tugged on his arm. “March, on the train — remember when she got quiet? It was right after I talked about Oscar. And the circus camp —”
“I don’t care!”
She jumped in front of him. “Wait! You need to see this.”
She held out her phone. On it was an image.
Two teenage girls, dressed in leotards and tights. A handsome boy between them.
His mother. Oscar. And Blue.
“It’s from the circus camp website,” Izzy said. “It’s been in front of our eyes all this time! Look at the names!”
March focused on the phone. Maggie and Becky Barnes celebrate a smooth catch with Robbie O. Ford.
Izzy jogged next to him, trying to keep up. “Don’t you see? They all went to circus camp together for three years while they were in high school.”
“That means that Blue knows Oscar,” March said. “That’s why her favorite champagne was in his apartment! So Jules knew Oscar, too. She only pretended to be kidnapped!”
“No! This is proof that Oscar knew Blue, not Jules!”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do!” Izzy said defiantly. “Because I know Jules!”
“Iz, you gotta say this looks bad,” Darius said. “I know you like Jules — me, too — but …”
“For once you’re going to listen to me, Darius P. Fray,” Izzy said, narrowing her eyes at him. “And you, too, March. Maybe she remembered something. Maybe she took off.” She stamped her foot. “But she is not double-crossing us!”
March shook his head. He couldn’t think. He didn’t know what to believe.
“It’s what trust is,” Izzy said. “Isn’t that what we’re about?”
Bitterness was acid in his mouth. “Trust is for chumps,” March said. “All I know is, I’m getting those moonstones back!”
A man in a fedora with a large daisy on his lapel stood on the corner. It was now close to ten at night, and the usually busy street was quiet except for a group of about fifty young people lingering near a construction shed on the Upper East Side.
The man in the hat had a wire trailing from his ear to his lapel. March heard him mutter into the mic. “No cops around. Ready to roll.” He waved an arm at the group. “We’re ready. Single file. No photos allowed. Some of you have been on our underground adventures before. You know the drill.”
He led them to a huge wire cage.
“Down we go,” Hat Boy said. “I promise you, it’s worth the trip.”
They crowded onto the huge elevator. He hit the button, and they lurched down. Down, down, down …
“How many stories?” someone asked in a hushed voice.
“We’ll be about eighty feet down,” Hat Boy said.
One of the young women giggled nervously. “The center of the Earth,” she said giddily.
They heard the thump of music as they descended through what they realized was a huge space carved out of rock. It soared like a cathedral around them. Down below, heavy equipment, like huge prehistoric creatures, sat waiting to come to life. Large klieg lights illuminated the space, throwing dramatic shadows.
“Welcome to the Second Avenue Subway Tunnel Theater,” Hat Boy said. “Subway scheduled to open three years from now, give or take. We get to party tonight.”
March guessed that about two hundred people were milling below them. The freight elevator came to a jarring stop. They filed off, and Hat Boy pressed the Up button and disappeared into the darkness above.
People gathered around a far platform, where a band played loud, undanceable music that some of them were trying to dance to. Others just walked around, marveling at the space.
“Jules would say this was one amazing pitch,” Darius said.
March scanned the crowd for Jules. She had ripped off the stones, but she had ripped something else, too, some fabric that connected him to the world.
His eye followed the tall scaffolding surrounding the stage. He had mistaken it for the tunneling equipment. Now he recognized it. Rigging for the cloud swing.