Sugar Coated

  The train compartment didn’t seem as luxurious as Brynn had always remembered. Instead, the deep mahogany wood walls and garish maroon carpet just made her feel like she might vomit at any moment and she kept one hand on her stomach as the train swayed gently back and forth.

  She and Jonah hadn’t talked much since the train departed from the station, unless it had to do with their upcoming mission and possibly violent death. She had confirmed with him that he kept his promise and had slept the whole day before so that he’d be alert when they jumped off of a speeding train and willingly increased the likelihood of their demise.

  They had spent the first two hours of their trip going over their plans and Jonah had shown Brynn the intricate folding he’d come up with for their wind catchers to make sure the ropes didn’t tangle around the tarp and drop them to the ground. Seeing the technique in person helped to assuage her fears over at least one aspect of their trip though theoretically creating a wind catcher that worked and seeing that invention actually carry them safely away were two very different things.

  By the third hour of their expedition, they’d completely exhausted the topic of their plans and exactly how everything would work and were reduced to staring at the wall screen pretending they cared about the movie it played. Brynn kept her eyes locked on the digitally created images as her mind ran rampant with different thoughts.

  Though she was still nervous about everything that could go wrong in their plan, she was almost numb to her feeling of fear by that point. She had so thoroughly worried and stressed about it that she felt it was physically impossible for her to actually worry any more. Instead she focused on Ty and their last meeting together.

  She remembered his chocolate brown eyes and the worry they held. He certainly worried about her more than she had ever worried about herself.

  Then he had kissed her.

  That was territory she wasn’t even sure she wanted to cover right at that moment. The confusion that simple act had brought into her life was only going to jumble her mind and make it difficult for her to concentrate on what she was about to do. It was dangerous to let her mind wander like that, but she couldn’t deny that she had liked it—even wanted him to do it—which only confused her more. So instead she tucked that new development away and promised herself she’d examine it later if she was still alive. Confronting her newfound feelings for Ty would be a reward for going through with the completely reckless thing she was about to do.

  Brynn glanced down at her black watch, which had a timer going, counting down from five and a half hours so they could make sure they jumped early enough. Apparently her time spent thinking about Ty had taken up more of the trip than she thought, because her watch now informed her that they only had one hour until the jump.

  “I think we should change and head to the back of the train when we’ve got about half an hour left,” Jonah said, making Brynn start as she had almost forgotten he was in the compartment with her.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” she agreed, her voice sounding wrong in her too-dry mouth.

  “Here, drink some water,” Jonah said, offering her a glass from the wall.

  When she first swallowed it she thought there was something wrong with the water—that maybe he had given her some sort of alcohol to calm her nerves. Then she realized there was no sugar frozen into the ice cubes. It had been such a long time since she’d had normal water that she had almost forgotten what it tasted like.

  She placed a hand over a small zipper pouch on her backpack guiltily. She knew that space was limited and they were only supposed to bring necessary items to carry with them, but the entire side pouch of her backpack was loaded down with pure white sugar cubes. She felt that Jonah would forgive her for this particular trespass since they were both probably about to die anyway.

  “Are you okay?” Jonah asked after another long stretch of silence between the two.

  Brynn glanced over at the handsome boy she had come to know so well in the past few months.

  “I’m fine. Just nervous,” she said, taking a deep, steadying breath and trying to ignore the fact that it felt like the ocean was raging inside of her stomach.

  “Is that really all?” he asked, seeing through her explanation.

  She took another deep breath and sank down into her soft armchair, closing her eyes and massaging her temples.

  “No,” she admitted finally. “Ty and I had a fight before I left.”

  “About what?” he asked.

  “He found out about the trip and didn’t want me to go. He said it would be too dangerous,” she told him.

  “That sounds about like Ty,” Jonah said with a laugh. “Does he ever do anything risky?”

  “Not really,” she mumbled. “Unless he’s trying to save my life. Then he’s all for being risky.”

  “Brynn, some people are just different. There’s people like us, who want answers and who take risks to learn the truth. And then there’s people like Ty, who are fine with having everything in life given to them, and anything not easy to get they won’t bother going after,” Jonah said matter-of-factly.

  “Oh good. I thought I heard the sound judgment of Jonah ringing like music through the hallway,” Ty said, standing in their compartment doorway with an icy look on his face, wearing all black.

  “Ty?” Brynn practically shouted, her voice a mixture of shock and happiness.

  “What are you doing here?” Jonah asked, actually sounding very unhappy.

  “What, suddenly I’m not allowed to kill myself with you guys? I’m not cool enough for mass suicide?” Ty asked, slipping inside the compartment and taking a seat across from the two of them. “I’m not letting you stand by and watch Brynn die because you think this is a good idea,” he said seriously to Jonah.

  “You can’t stop us from going,” Jonah answered in a threatening voice, making Brynn wonder exactly what he would do to Ty if he did try to stop them.

  Ty shook his head in disbelief and motioned to his black clothing.

  “Do I look like I’m trying to stop you?” he asked. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Oh yeah? How are you going to get off the train, genius? We didn’t make a wind catcher for you,” Jonah said shortly.

  Ty balked for a moment at this; obviously his plan wasn’t well thought out. Brynn could imagine the moment he decided to go. In fact, she was fairly certain he had probably left from their last little encounter, stormed around his room for a while fuming, then went straight to work making black clothes, never really thinking about the logistics of his plan—only thinking about a way to come with them. At least he had the foresight to make black clothing after seeing Brynn’s.

  “He can share mine,” Brynn said impulsively, causing Ty to look up at her with a smile.

  It was the first time he had met her eyes since showing up in their compartment and it made her stomach tighten to see his lips curl up; the lips that had been pressed against hers only a few hours before. She tried to ignore a vivid flashback and cleared her throat.

  “Brynn, they don’t work like that,” Jonah said in annoyance. “I don’t think they can hold the weight of two.”

  “I don’t weigh that much,” Brynn reasoned. “You said so yourself,” she pointed out, smiling at the memory of a very tired and caffeine loaded Jonah.

  He grinned back at her, obviously remembering the same thing.

  “I was inebriated at the time so that might not count,” he answered, still smiling at her.

  “But it’s at least worth a try, right?” she asked, hoping he’d put whatever rivalry he had with Ty aside to make this work.

  “I guess so. You only get one try at it though. Are you sure you want to risk it?” he asked, his blue eyes questioning.

  Brynn looked over at Ty. He hadn’t seen the wind catchers Jonah had made. He didn’t even have the comfort of knowing exactly what they were going to do, and yet he was willing to come along. She couldn’t say no to him.

  “I’ll ri
sk it if you will Ty,” she said, trying to ignore the worry gnawing at her as she calculated their combined weight.

  “I’m in,” he said, his smile looking as unsure as Brynn felt.

  “I thought the point of your grand entrance was to keep Brynn safe. Isn’t this a little counterproductive?” Jonah asked quite reasonably.

  Ty opened his mouth to speak, but quickly shut it, doing the math in his head.

  “I want him to come with me,” Brynn said, trying to defend Ty when he was so obviously struggling to keep up with her and Jonah.

  “That’s fine. I was just asking,” Jonah said, raising his hands in surrender. “I can respect that Ty wants to keep you safe. I’m just a little insulted that he didn’t think I could do it myself.”

  “Says the boy who told Brynn that jumping off a train would be a good way to find answers,” Ty mumbled.

  Everyone was silent for a long moment. Jonah wore the expression he often did when he was thinking. His eyes were locked on the wall, his gaze far away.

  “I really think it’s going to work, Ty. I swear, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Brynn,” he said sincerely. “Why would I come with her if I thought the plan wasn’t going to work?”

  Ty looked like he had a few good answers to that particular question, but kept his mouth shut and simply nodded his head instead, for which Brynn was grateful. She was still trying to regain her footing after seeing Ty again when she thought she had already said her final goodbye, but the fighting was only putting her more off-balance as their watches drew nearer and nearer to their departure.

  “Fair enough,” Ty said to Jonah, coming to some sort of unspoken agreement with him. “By the way, Brynn, writing a letter is little consolation for your death. I’m pretty sure Amber and Bennett would have found a way to bring you back to life just so they could kill you again.”

  “Duly noted,” she answered, feeling much less nervous about the mission now that she had both Ty and Jonah to watch out for her.

  It was like together they made a perfect person. Jonah had the bravery and intelligence to get the job done, but Ty had the sound thinking and maturity to keep them from doing something completely idiotic and getting themselves killed.

  “So Jonah, how is this harness going to work with two of us?” Brynn asked.

  Jonah thought it over for a moment, doing the math in his head and considering his answer before he spoke.

  “You’ll just have to strap it around both of you and hope it has enough slack to fit two people. I don’t think it would be a good idea to test its strength, but if we don’t have any other option…” he trailed off, obviously disapproving of the most recent development in their plan.

  Brynn did have to admit that as relieved as she was to see her friend, it did cause more problems to have him come along when they had only planned for two of them.

  “When are we doing this?” Ty asked, rubbing his hands across his knees as if trying to rid himself of nerves.

  Brynn glanced down at her watch and noticed with mild panic that they only had twenty minutes until they were supposed to be off the train.

  “Jonah, we need to change,” she said urgently, glad that they had at least decided to wear their incognito clothing under their normal clothes.

  She quickly peeled her pants and shirt off to reveal the black ensemble and shoved her default outfit into her backpack. By the time she was done, all three of them were dressed completely in black and ready to go.

  Jonah led the way to the door at the back of the train, which was almost directly outside of their compartment door.

  “Do you know I started at the front of the train looking for you guys? I don’t know what I was doing all the way up there. Took me hours to look through every compartment, and I was starting to wonder if maybe the whole thing was some big prank—that you hadn’t really gone on the trip after all,” Ty said quietly to Brynn while Jonah tried to pick the lock.

  “That would have made what you did last night seem like a pretty bad idea then, huh?” she replied, trying to laugh, but only managing to emit a kind of awkward cough.

  “I wouldn’t have regretted it,” Ty said simply, looking down at the ground, suddenly very interested in his shoes.

  Brynn tried to think of something to say to this statement, but came up short, so instead she turned her attention to Jonah as he knelt in front of the lock.

  He had one small flat piece of metal in his right hand, turning the lock slightly, while the other long thin piece of metal in his left hand moved up and down in diminutive increments. He had his eyes closed and his ear pushed against the door, though Brynn wasn’t sure how he could hear anything with the loud train barreling forward.

  “Is it working?” Brynn asked in a hushed voice, not wanting to disturb Jonah as he worked.

  “It sounded really easy in the book I read,” he replied slowly, sounding like he didn’t want to admit that reading about something and actually applying that knowledge didn’t quite translate as easily as he had always believed. “Apparently it’s a bit harder in practice.”

  He continued to move the metal in his left hand up and down a few more times while Brynn glanced nervously at her watch. They only had five minutes until they were supposed to get off the train, and even then she thought they should have jumped sooner to make absolutely certain they would be headed in the right direction.

  As the minutes on her watch quickly counted down and eventually reached zero, she was almost positive she was about to have a heart attack. Her fingertips tingled and her mouth felt all wrong as she tried to keep calm and breathe evenly.

  “Jonah?” she asked, unable to hide the worry in her voice.

  “I’ve almost got it. Just one more pin to go,” he said, still keeping his eyes closed and his ear pressed against the wood of the door.

  Ty looked over Brynn’s shoulder skeptically, obviously not putting as much faith in his abilities as Brynn did.

  She looked up at the ceiling, trying to keep herself from having a complete breakdown as the minutes ticked by and their window of opportunity to jump got smaller and smaller. She was trying to count how long it had been since the stopwatch reached zero, hoping she could figure out if they would have passed the city already.

  “Got it,” Jonah finally said, standing up and shaking the door handle a few times to make sure it really was unlocked.

  Brynn let out a huge sigh of relief, only to remember that Jonah’s success in picking the lock now meant that she’d actually have to jump off of the train—the thing she had been dreading since they’d come up with the idea.

  “Let’s hope there’s a lot of trees and ground cover wherever we are,” she said nervously. “Just in case someone notices the door before we get a chance to really get away.

  “I think it’ll be a lot like Central Wildwood,” Jonah said. “We shouldn’t have trouble finding a place to hide.”

  Looking around the door that led into the back room, Brynn made sure no one was coming down the hallway while Jonah pulled out their wind catchers. He stepped into his own harness, tightening the straps around his body and double-checking the tarp to make sure it was folded correctly.

  Brynn looked down at her own harness and hoped more than she had ever hoped for anything else that it would support the weight of both her and Ty.

  “You step into it first,” she instructed Ty, pointing out where his feet were supposed to go in the now familiar tangle of straps.

  Once he was in position she stepped in front of him and pulled the harness up around them, making sure she let out all of the slack and hoping it would be enough. Ty was quite a bit taller than her, making the harness fit awkwardly around the two of them. It ended up being quite a bit looser than she would have liked.

  Jonah walked over to the pair of them and pulled on the harness, making a face that put Brynn on edge.

  “What is it?” she asked immediately.

  “These straps just don’t work well with you two being built so
differently,” he said, trying to adjust them so that they’d be snugger. “Honestly, if Ty and I wouldn’t be so heavy together we’d be a better match since we have the same build.”

  “Sorry,” Ty mumbled, fully aware that the problem they were facing with no time left to debate was fully his fault.

  “I think it’ll be fine,” Brynn said unconvincingly. “You’d just better hold on to me,” she said over her shoulder to a very nervous looking Ty.

  “I will,” he assured her.

  “Maybe you two should go first so that I can let your wind catcher go for you,” Jonah suggested.

  “Good idea,” Brynn agreed, trying to get her knees to stop shaking as she felt the speed of the ground rushing under her feet.

  “Okay, so I’ll open the door and hold onto the tarp. Once Ty’s got a secure grip on you, I’m going to throw it out behind you and the force of the wind should do the rest,” Jonah said in a hopeful voice, leaving out the possibility that the ridge he’d installed in the tarp wouldn’t work and the two of them would be immediately pulled under the train and smashed into nothing more than a red line on the tracks.

  “Okay,” was all Brynn could manage to say, her throat feeling like she had a mouthful of sand.

  She was fairly certain she was only a few moments from vomiting, but tried desperately to keep her body in check. She reached for Ty’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze, needing to feel him there to reassure her.

  “I’m opening the door now,” Jonah told them calmly, trying not to rush when they were already so behind schedule.

  As soon as the door opened, the full volume of the outside world rushed in, along with strong wind gusts that almost knocked all three of them over. The walls of the train were instantly flooded with light from a source Brynn couldn’t see as she faced away from the door, blocking her first view of the world outside of a city. The cacophony coming from the outside world was so deafening that she had to resist the urge to clamp her hands over her ears.

  Brynn’s long black hair flew wildly around her, smacking Ty in the face as he tried to yell at her to pull it up. She quickly obliged, wrapping it into a bun on top of her head and apologizing profusely for assaulting him with her hair in the first place.