Sugar Coated

  Brynn could feel a hot tear sliding down her cheek and immediately wiped it away in embarrassment.

  She and Ty fought. That’s what they did. Mostly because she was acting like a child and he wanted to keep her safe, but it had always been how they operated. It wasn’t necessarily the fight that was bothering her at the moment. It was the fact that she wasn’t going to see Ty again before her trip, and she wasn’t sure that she’d ever see him again once she got on that train.

  Chapter 21: Countdown

  “You have one new message,” Charlie said in an attempt to rouse Brynn from her bed where she had been hiding for the past few days.

  Ever since her fight with Ty she’d completely lost her backbone. She knew she should just go over to his house and apologize, especially since she didn’t want her last words with him to be angry ones. No matter how she tried, however, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to face him. Not only would she probably just end up fighting with him again, but she also knew he’d try to stop her from going on her trip.

  Instead, she spent the next days after their fight writing out her letters to her parents, Amber, Bennett, and Ty. She made sure to include a special apology for Ty, not only for their recent fight, but for all the fights they seemed to have on a daily basis. She told him that she knew he acted the way he did because he cared about her and she appreciated him for it. She only wished they weren’t both so hotheaded and opinionated. Maybe they were more alike than she had originally thought.

  The problem with taking several days to write out goodbye letters to everyone you loved was the negative effect it had on your mood. After sealing the last letter, Brynn had crawled into her bed, sobbed loudly for a few hours, and then stayed in that same spot all night and day, only moving to ask Charlie for food or sugar water.

  “I don’t care,” Brynn said into her pillow at Charlie’s news.

  “You still have one new message,” Charlie insisted.

  She wasn’t sure there was any house protocol for having a depressed resident, but Charlie definitely wasn’t following it by being sweet and encouraging.

  “You want to know what you can do with your message?” Brynn asked angrily, wondering why she was being so irrational and rude.

  “Playing message,” Charlie simply said, completely ignoring Brynn’s unacceptable behavior.

  After a moment of silence Jonah’s voice materialized in her room.

  “Only two more days until the big trip, boss!” he said happily, not sounding as if he were even remotely nervous about their possible death. “You’d better not back out now because I have the most amazing wind catchers to show you. Honestly, I’ve even impressed myself this time. Although I think we need a cooler name than ‘wind catchers’. Sounds kind of like a child’s toy, don’t you think? Especially considering how amazing we’re about to be. Anyways, that’s completely off topic. The point of this little message I’m sending your delightful house is to tell you to get your skinny butt over here to see my creation! I’ll leave directions with Charlie.”

  With that the message cut out, leaving Brynn’s room silent again. Hearing Jonah’s voice had roused her slightly and she now poked her head out from under her blanket, squinting at the bright sunlight that streamed in through her window. She grumbled at the cheery sun and threw her blankets off, rising unsteadily to her feet. She hadn’t eaten nearly enough the day before and she could feel the room spin as she stood completely still.

  “It’s about time,” Charlie said, clearly annoyed at her for being such lousy company the past few days.

  “Why are you so obnoxious all the time?” Brynn asked.

  “You programmed me. Blame yourself,” she answered, showing no sympathy for Brynn’s delicate emotional state. “Besides, Jonah likes me.”

  “You’re using the word ‘like’ loosely here,” Brynn retorted. “Can you get me the directions to his house?”

  “Right away,” Charlie replied with mock enthusiasm. “They’ve been uploaded to your tablet,” she informed her with all the excitement of a coma patient.

  “You’re the best,” Brynn deadpanned as she pulled her default outfit on, not in the mood for being creative with her clothing.

  * * *

  It took Brynn a while to find Jonah’s house on foot in the endless maze of identical buildings. He lived in the city near Amber and Bennett in one of the top floors of a tall glass structure. When he ushered her into his house, she couldn’t help but notice how plain it was. There was no artwork on the walls, no decorations on end tables, and no books, which surprised her the most. It almost looked as if no one lived there. When he caught her glancing around confusedly he spoke up.

  “I spend most of my time in the library so I haven’t really…personalized this place,” he said sheepishly, as if embarrassed by his lack of decorating ability.

  “Works for me,” she said as she followed him into the living room. Or at least, what she was assuming used to be the living room before it was taken over by yards of tarp, rope, and odd, thick straps she had never seen before. “Interesting choice for the one room you did decorate,” she joked, picking up a rope and examining it.

  “I was going for sociopath-chic,” he answered seriously.

  “Mission accomplished.”

  “Thank you. Now are you ready for my brilliance?” he asked, holding something bulky behind his back.

  “Is anyone ever really ready for your brilliance?” she responded.

  “Good point. Just brace yourself, then,” he said theatrically as he pulled the bunch of wadded up tarp from behind his back. He let it unroll to reveal long ropes attached to the tarp, which eventually attached to a harness made of thick straps.

  “What is it supposed to be exactly?” she asked, looking at the mess skeptically. “Because I don’t really know if I trust that to save my life.”

  “You will soon enough,” he said as he laid it out on the floor in front of them. “So the round tarp will catch the wind right?”

  “Hopefully,” she said grimly.

  “But then what’s to stop us from getting pulled under the train?” he asked.

  “Have you been watching my dreams lately?” she asked, though he completely ignored her question as he went on like a man possessed.

  “So I’ve sewn this hard ridge into the front side of the tarp. It’s like a lip that bends upward so that the wind will catch and pull us up rather than down,” he explained as Brynn ran her fingers along the hard ridge he spoke of.

  “How did you figure that out?” she asked, genuinely impressed that he had thought to solve the problem that had been plaguing Brynn’s nightmares.

  “Do you have to ask? I’m a genius, remember?” he said with the same smug smile that she loved.

  “How could I forget?”

  “It’s my fault. I’ll try to be better about reminding you,” he promised as he went on. “Now, we’ve got the ropes attached to the tarp on one end, and our harness on the other end. Here, step into it,” he instructed Brynn, pointing out where each of her legs should go, in what looked to her like a complicated mess of knotted straps.

  Jonah pulled the straps up once she had stepped into their jumble and secured them around her stomach and over her shoulders so that it fit around her nicely.

  “And it’s even adjustable in case you put on a few pounds in the next two days,” he said with a grin as Brynn shoved him away from her. “What? I didn’t say when I said if. Big difference.”

  “How do we carry these to the back of the train?” she asked, ignoring his attempt at humor.

  “Since I’ve decided to remind you of my brilliance more often, let me take this opportunity to keep my promise.” Brynn just sighed in exasperation at this comment, loving how sarcastic and cocky Jonah got when he was really excited about something he had done. “I’ve figured out a way to fold these so that when we let them go, they won’t get all tangled up in the ropes.”

  “You did not,” Brynn said, not quite able to b
elieve that he could really be that smart just from reading so many books.

  “I’m not joking! I told you I even impressed myself this time!” he exclaimed excitedly.

  “How did you even figure this stuff out?”

  “Well, I can tell you I haven’t slept once since I last saw you, so that might have something to do with it. Also, I think there used to be a bottle of caffeine pills somewhere around here that’s now empty. So they get some of the credit as well,” he joked, though once Brynn heard this she did notice how shaky he seemed.

  “Uh, Jonah, I’m really grateful you figured this all out, but I think maybe you should sleep all day tomorrow since our train leaves pretty early the next morning. Don’t want you dying because you fell asleep on the job,” she said with a laugh.

  She wasn’t quite sure how she had missed the signs before, but now they seemed so obvious; the messy hair, the dark circles under his eyes, and his shaking hands all suggested way too much caffeine and too little sleep.

  “I feel pretty good actually,” he said with a too bright smile.

  Brynn unhooked the harness and let it fall to the ground before grabbing Jonah’s hand and leading him down the hallway. She opened a door that she thought would lead to his room but found a bathroom. The second door she tried had a bed in it so she took that as a good sign that it was probably where he slept.

  “That’s called a bed,” she said, pointing to the large black bed. “Go lay in it and close your eyes. That’s what normal people do.”

  “Do normal people invent a completely brilliant flying machine in only a week?” he asked, looking at her with his tired, glassy eyes.

  “No, they don’t. You’re amazing,” she told him with a smile. “Just fold the tarps up and bring them with you when you meet me at the train station,” she instructed, hoping that her words were getting through to him in his state of sleep deprivation.

  “I can do that,” he assured her. “I think we’ve established that I can pretty much do anything.”

  “We have,” she agreed as she tried to suppress a laugh.

  She thought of exactly how she’d relive this scene to him when she saw him the day after tomorrow to see if he remembered any of it. While she walked down his hallway toward the front door, having left him in his bedroom, she shook her head in amusement and said, “I created a monster.”

  * * *

  The night before their big trip Brynn suited up in her black camouflage, deciding this would be the perfect time to try it out. She grabbed the bundle of letters from her nightstand and stole away to Ty’s house next door. Because it was almost two in the morning she knew he’d be asleep, just like she should be.

  Her heart pounded as she stood outside of his front door, her hand pressed against the cool metal of the doorknob. This could possibly be the last time she let herself into Ty’s house.

  Though actually seeing Jonah’s creations in person helped her to feel better about the trip, she still couldn’t stop the slight panic attacks she had every now and then at the thought of actually leaping from a high-speed train, hoping that the quickly slapped together invention of a boy loaded with caffeine and completely sleep deprived actually worked.

  Shaking the thoughts of loosely sewn seams and ripping material from her mind, she entered Ty’s house, careful to be light on her feet and not wake him. She snuck past his open door, feeling a pang of sadness as she glanced at his sleeping form in the blue light he always kept on when he slept. Taking a steadying breath, she made her way to his bathroom and placed the letters near the sink. She knew the first thing he’d do that morning would be to come into his bathroom and brush his teeth, so there would be no way he’d miss the letters.

  As she walked back through his house she wished she were brave enough to say she was sorry in person. She stood in his doorway for a moment, wanting to snuggle into his chest and fall asleep with him so that she could breathe in his scent all night. Instead, she got startled when he rolled over in his sleep and she quickly ran on silent feet down the hall and out the front door, scared that she had accidentally woken him.

  When she entered her own room once more, changed into her pajamas, and plopped down onto her bed, one thought kept streaming through her mind.

  I wish I had apologized in person.

  * * *

  Brynn couldn’t sleep that night. The thoughts of her potentially deadly trip ran through her mind relentlessly, plaguing her with visions of every way things could go wrong. She thought of her parents who had adopted her as a baby. Of the selfless love they had always shown for her, and of the fact that ever since she had moved into her own house she rarely saw them. A pang of guilt manifested in her gut over the notes she had left at Ty’s house for every person she loved. If things worked out, at least her parents wouldn’t ever need to read theirs. She was especially hoping Ty would never need to read his. He had been her best friend for as long as she could remember. They had been fighting more often lately, but if anything ever happened to him she knew she’d be heartbroken just as he would be over Brynn’s death.

  “Brynn?” a familiar voice said in her bedroom doorway. She looked up quickly, startled by Ty’s sudden appearance. It was as if she had conjured him into being simply by thinking of him.

  But this was all wrong. He wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to see the notes until the next morning when she was already gone, because she knew he’d then try to stop her from going. Of course, she could always work on the assumption that he hadn’t seen the notes and was simply stopping by because he couldn’t sleep, just as she often stopped by his house during sleepless nights.

  “Ty, what are you doing here?” she asked, sitting up in her bed and propping a pillow behind her.

  Ty crossed the room on silent feet in the darkness and sat on the bed in front of her, his knees pulled up to his chest and the soft material of his brown pajama bottoms and cream-colored T-shirt looking very inviting just as she was thinking she needed a hug.

  “I got your notes,” he said quietly, instantly dashing what hopes Brynn had that he hadn’t seen them.

  “Oh,” she replied simply.

  Suddenly Ty was sitting on his knees on the bed, looking intently into her eyes in the dimly lit room.

  “Please don’t go Brynn,” he pleaded with her. “I know you. You’re going to do something crazy and get yourself killed. And you’ll do it thinking you’re completely safe because Jonah is too reckless to tell you how dangerous your plan is,” he said in a rush, his eyes tormented by the thought of losing her.

  “Ty, we’ll be fine. We’ve made so many preparations that it’s impossible for anything to go wrong,” she assured him, trying to keep her voice from shaking as she replayed the many ways things could actually go wrong. Ty saw through her instantly.

  “Just please tell me what I have to do to get you to stay,” he begged, leaning forward on his knees and cupping her face in his large hands.

  “It’s not a matter of talking me out of it,” she finally said after a moment’s distraction by the genuine worry she saw in her friend’s eyes. “I have to do this to figure out the truth.”

  “Fine!” Ty said enthusiastically, bringing his hands down to her arms and holding tightly to her as if at any moment she might suddenly dart from the room and out of his life forever. “I’ll go through the train tunnels with you. I’ll research things in the library. I’ll go into the ocean even, just please don’t go,” he begged in a voice so pained it tugged at Brynn’s heart.

  Even in the darkness she could see the tears pooling in Ty’s chocolate brown eyes as he tried to keep a grip on himself.

  “Ty, I have to go,” she said again, sounding much less convincing than she would have liked.

  “Why?” he asked as his voice cracked. “Why do you have to go right now? Why can’t you wait a little longer? Make sure you’ve really thought of every possible way to do this? There has to be a less dangerous way.”

  Brynn broke Ty’
s gaze, finding it much too difficult to keep saying "no" when she was looking at him and all of his sincerity. She thought of the preparations she and Jonah had made. Their plan was definitely reckless and it wasn’t foolproof, but she had thought of different ways of finding answers her whole life and had never come this close before.

  She raised her gaze back to Ty to tell him this reasoning, but was cut off by the pressure of his lips against hers. For a moment the only emotion she could register was complete shock and she vaguely wondered if this was a trick of Ty’s to get her to stay. But as his kiss deepened, she did the exact thing she knew she shouldn’t do. She kissed him back.

  She could smell the familiar scent of his cologne and closed her eyes, allowing herself one moment of being completely reckless in a way she had never been before. Ty brought his hands back up to her face, cradling her cheeks and gently tracing her cheekbones with his thumbs. Though she wanted to deny it, she couldn’t help but notice the warmth that seemed to start in her stomach and spread through her whole body as she kissed him.

  The kiss only lasted a minute, but by the time Ty pulled away from her, looking as if a million emotions were passing through his mind, Brynn had forgotten her reasons for leaving in the first place. Her thoughts were a jumble in her head and her cheeks felt as if they were on fire where Ty’s thumbs still traced gentle lines on them.

  “Please don’t go,” he whispered again with his face close to hers, his voice so full of emotion, that it broke Brynn’s heart to let him down.

  “Ty, I have to,” she said almost inaudibly as a tear rolled down her cheek.

  He looked at her for a moment longer in complete silence, his face a mixture of anger, distress, and pure sadness before he let his hands drop from her cheeks and hurried out of the room without so much as a backward glance in her direction.

  Chapter 22: Complications