I walk into the dust.
It melts around me. I expect grit in my eyes, but I don’t feel any. The air feels soft on my skin. It’s like diving into water, except it’s neither hot nor cold. I don’t remember it feeling like this when I drove into it. It had felt like dust then, hadn’t it? I look behind me, but the dust has closed around me. It looks the same in every direction. Everything has blurred into reddish-beige. “Sean? Sean, can you hear me?” My words don’t echo. They’re absorbed by the void as if it’s a sponge. It deadens sound.
I continue to walk, though I have no sense of direction in this soup. Even up and down feel arbitrary. It’s more opaque than night because even though it isn’t black, there’s no light to cast any shadows or create any depth. It’s like soaking underwater with my eyes closed. It reminds me of how I used to spend hours every summer immersed in the ocean. I’d swim out beyond the white-crested breakers, I’d float on my back, my ears underwater, and I’d look up at the crystal-blue sky until I fuzzily heard my mom calling me from shore. She’d slather me with sunscreen every time I returned, and then I’d wriggle away and run laughing toward the water again.
In those moments, I felt like I had all the family I needed. It didn’t matter that I’d never known my father or that I had no brothers or sisters like other families on the beach. With my mom, on the beach and in the water, I was complete.
But here in the void I am very incomplete. By now, I’ve probably been fired.
Or pronounced dead.
Or at least missing.
Maybe I am missing. Maybe this won’t end. I won’t escape. I won’t find Sean. I won’t find a way home. The Missing Man is still gone, and there’s no sign that he’ll ever return.
Stop it, I tell myself. I have to think positively. To do otherwise... I can’t do otherwise. I have to believe that I’ll escape someday. But maybe there is no hope.
Maybe it’s over.
Maybe I’m in hell.
Or purgatory.
Maybe I’m dead.
Maybe I can never return.
Maybe this is it.
Slowly, I stop walking.
I don’t see the point in continuing to walk. I’m not walking toward anything. I haven’t seen anyone or anything. The odds of my finding Sean are... Well, I can’t. I’m not a Finder. I can’t find anything. Not Sean. Not Mom. Not myself.
Mom will die without me. Maybe she already has. The test results had to be bad. They asked her to come in; they wouldn’t tell her over the phone. The cancer was back, and worse. I knew it, even if I didn’t let myself think it. Sure, I told myself over and over: think positive. But thinking positive can’t change facts.
Mom is sick.
I am lost.
But I couldn’t face the truth. That’s why I left, why I drove straight, why I left Mom alone to face the news by herself, why I let myself play house with Claire and Peter. What kind of person does that? A person who deserves this. A person who deserves to lose what she treasures. I deserve to be lost, to never see home again, to never swim in the ocean again.
I feel as if the ground is dissolving under me. I look down, and my legs look oddly transparent. At first, I think the dust is merely enveloping me, but then I spread my hands in front of my face. I can see through them.
Oh, God, what’s happening to me now?
This isn’t what’s supposed to happen! I’m supposed to find Sean, wait for Peter, and prove to Victoria that I can be trusted, maybe earn a little good will to help me survive longer until the Missing Man returns so I can return to Mom and tell her that I’m sorry that I left her when she needed me most and I won’t ever leave again. I picture Claire waiting for me in the desert, and Victoria beside her, waiting for her Sean...
My hands waver, and then suddenly they’re solid again. I look down, examining my legs...and I see a glint of silver from near my feet. I bend down and pick it up. It’s a ring. I examine it. A dark blue opaque stone mounted on a silver band.
As I stick it in my pocket, I hear a loud noise. It sounds, oddly, like a train. It chugs louder and louder, and I hear a whistle. I can’t tell what direction it’s coming from—it seems to be from everywhere at once. The dust whips around me, and sand flies in my eyes. Squinting, I block my eyes with my arms. Around me, the dust grows brighter. I peek through and see a light heading straight toward me.
Is that...
Holy shit, it is a train.
I don’t see tracks. I don’t know which way to move. If I move left, will I be hit? If I don’t, will I be hit? I freeze. And the train barrels out of the dust toward me.
I have to move. I can’t not move. Suddenly unfreezing, I lunge to the left. And I feel myself yanked off my feet. Strong hands hold my arms. I’m pulled onto the train. Wind whips past me. The train is screaming, crying, howling, as it thunders through the void. The whistle blares, obliterating the silence.
“Hold on!” Peter shouts in my ear.
He releases me, and I cling to a metal bar. The train is a black steam engine, the kind from an old movie. I see bits and pieces of black iron through the dust. I’m holding on to the side of it, near where the engineer should be but isn’t.
Peter climbs onto the top. He holds his hand out.
He wants me to climb?
No. No, no, no. That’s insane.
He crouches and holds his hand lower. He’s grinning wildly, and I feel my face curl into a smile. I can’t resist the look in his eyes. It’s full of joy, infectious, wild joy. It reminds me of waves crashing onto the beach.
I take his hand, and he pulls me up. I crouch on the top of the engine. He whoops at the top of his lungs, and the whistle blares as if answering him. He’s standing. His feet are firmly planted on the top of the train. Slowly, I stand beside him.
And we ride the train out of the void.
Chapter Thirteen
The train sails out of the dust and lands between the houses. It continues to punch by them, powering through porches, running over junk piles, until it slams into the side of a house...a yellow house with a white porch and a deli sign over the window in the front door.
I scramble over the side of the train and lower myself down. Releasing, I drop. I crunch aluminum cans under my feet as I crash. Beside me, the engine sputters and then lets out a groan as if it were heaving a sigh.
The train is embedded in the side of the living room. My living room.
Peter leaps down from the engine. He lands softly beside me, like a cat, bent knees. He rises smoothly. “I told you I find the kernel of hope. You lose hope and I can’t find you.” His voice is low, intent, as if he’s angry, but I’m staring at the steam engine sticking out of my house, my sanctuary, the only place here that I feel safe.
Or sometimes feel safe.
I circle the engine. The train doesn’t have any cars, just the engine. Smoke is sputtering out of the funnel, curling black against the blueness of the sky. I feel a lump in my throat as if I want to cry, even though this isn’t my home. It’s just...I like this house.
“Little Red, what happened in there? Met a wolf? Failed to meet a wolf? Or were you Gretel, without bread crumbs to guide you through the forest?” He shakes his head. “You weren’t even in there that long! You should have trusted me to find you!”
The train shudders once more and then is still, as if it were a lumbering creature that just expired. Smoke from the funnel trails into a thin streak. I don’t answer Peter. Instead, stepping into the train, I poke my head into the engine cabin.
Behind me, Peter says, “I’ll always find you. But you have to exist to be found!”
Curled in the corner of the cabin is a man with an apron. His hands are balled into fists, and his head is tucked against his chest. He has brilliant red hair, and his bare arms are decorated with tattoos. I rec
ognize him as the cook from the diner. “You found him?”
“You shouldn’t have tried!” Peter shouts. “You aren’t a Finder!” He’s radiating anger. It’s disconcerting. It’s such an ordinary emotion, and he’s never ordinary.
I face him, study his face. He runs his fingers through his hair as if he wants to yank it out. “I didn’t expect to find anyone,” I say levelly. “I expected you to find me, and then I was going to ask you to find him.”
“I nearly didn’t find you! You were fading! Do you have any idea what that means? I almost lost you! You almost disappeared! I thought you were stronger than that!”
I open my mouth to shout back and then I shut it. He cares, I think. His face is flushed red, and he’s flapping his arms as if he wants to hit something but doesn’t know what. I suck in a deep breath. “I like your train.”
He stares at me for an instant, lowers his arms, and I have the sudden, crazy thought that he’s going to kiss me. Then he breaks into a grin. “Yeah, she’s a beaut. Discontinued model. Probably scuttled to some kind of train junkyard and forgotten. Kind of feel bad that I broke her. Also, the house.”
“Maybe we can use parts of her.” I think he’s over being angry. Or he’s faking it. I can’t tell which. And I find I’m staring at his lips, wondering what it would feel like to taste them. “Add a few enhancements. It can be like a gazebo.”
“Or a playground,” Peter says. “Claire will like it.” He waves at someone behind me. I turn and see Victoria and Claire on the bike, coming toward us, steering around the junk pile. Victoria drops the bike as she reaches the yard, and both of them run toward the train.
Waving, Claire calls, “Sean! Hi, Sean!” And then she jumps into my arms. “You saved him! I knew you’d do it!”
“I didn’t. Peter did.”
Clambering out of the engine, Sean runs toward Victoria. They crash into each other’s arms. Victoria is checking him all over, running her hands over his head and down his neck and back. My eyes slide to Peter, and then I force myself to concentrate on Claire. “All I found was this.” I dig my hand into my pocket and pull out the blue ring. I hold it out toward her.
“Ooh, pretty!” Claire claps.
Peter swoops in and plucks it out of my fingers. He holds it up to the light, and a thin white star appears in the center of the blue. “Huh.”
Arms wrapped around Victoria, Sean twists to look at us and say, “Finder, I owe you my...” His voice dies and his eyes widen. “You found that?”
“Actually, Lauren did,” Peter says absently.
I jump. Peter has never called me by my real first name before. It’s usually Little Red or newbie or Goldilocks or some other nickname. I wasn’t entirely sure he even knew my name. I wonder when I became Lauren to him—when I became more than a tool for his vendetta. Just now? Or had it happened sooner, more gradually? He had saved me, even though I’d doubted him. And he’d been so angry, so beautifully angry. Peter studies the ring, turning it in the sunlight so the star brightens.
“Sean?” Victoria asks.
Untangling himself from Victoria, he walks toward us as if the ring is pulling him. His hand trembling, he reaches for the ring and then stops.
Peter twirls it around the tip of his index finger. “Lose this?”
“It’s a star sapphire. It was an engagement ring. I gave it to... Never mind who. She doesn’t matter anymore.” He swallows, and his throat bobs. “She never gave it back. I haven’t seen it in...a long time. Very long time ago.”
Solemnly, Peter hands him the ring.
Sean takes it wonderingly, fearfully, tenderly. He holds it pinched between his thumb and index finger. Victoria comes up behind him. “Sean?” There’s so much anger and pain in her voice that her eyes are nearly sparking.
He turns to face her. He’s still holding the ring gingerly. He tears his gaze up from the ring to her eyes, and I suddenly know what is going to happen next. Claire opens her mouth to speak, and I clap a hand over her mouth. She glares at me, and I wink. I lower my hand. Peter is grinning. He knows, too.
Sean drops to one knee.
Victoria flushes and then pales and then flushes again.
I pluck at Peter’s coat sleeve and draw Claire with me. Claire cooperates, though she’s clearly confused as we retreat around the engine. On the other side of the train, Peter says in a mild voice, “Every time I begin to wonder why I bother with you, you surprise me.”
“Is that a compliment or an insult?” I ask. Beside me, Claire climbs up onto the side of the engine. I rise up on my tiptoes to peek through the engine window, watching as Victoria launches herself into Sean’s arms. They tumble to the ground amid the junk. I assume she said yes.
“Depends. Are you planning to say ‘thank you for rescuing me’?”
“Are you planning to insult me?”
A ghost of a smile passes over his face. “I never plan on insulting you.”
Claire drops upside down, her legs holding on to a bar on the train. Her pigtails dangle. “He teases because he likes you. He thinks you’re beautiful, clever, funny, and beautiful.”
I raise both my eyebrows. That’s not the kind of thing that Peter says.
He executes a flawless bow.
“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
That’s much more like what Peter would say. And even though I know he’s teasing me, my breath hitches in my throat. His eyes, when they lock on mine, are dark and serious.
Tearing my gaze from his, I peek again through the cab of the engine. I can’t see Victoria and Sean. They must still be on the ground. “Claire, come down from there.” If they’re, um, celebrating their engagement, I’d rather she didn’t see. I can talk knives with her, but I’m not volunteering to have that conversation with her. I also carefully don’t look at Peter again, at his intense eyes or softness of his black hair or the strength of his arms and bare tattooed chest. I wonder what it would have felt like if he’d welcomed me back from the void the way Victoria had greeted Sean, and it takes every bit of self-restraint not to look at his lips. “Let’s give them privacy.” I lead her around the house, and Peter follows.
Up ahead, I hear a noise. An unexpected, familiar, beautiful, crazy noise. Like waves, crashing on the shore. Speeding up, I round the corner of the house...and see the ocean.
A quarter mile away, waves lap at the desert. The dust storm swallows the ocean beyond, but the waves crash and crash and crash again on the sage brush and mesquites.
Peter stands next to me. I’m conscious of the warmth of his body near mine, and I think I will always know when he’s nearby. “Yours?”
“I don’t think I lost an ocean.” Except maybe I did, in a way. I had been thinking about the ocean while I was in the void. It can’t be a coincidence.
I’m walking toward it. Shortly, I’m kicking off my shoes and walking over the desert sand. It doesn’t feel the same as beach sand under my feet. It’s drier and hotter, but my eyes are glued on the beautiful, blue-and-white, wild, sparkling-in-the-sun waves. I’m aware of Peter behind me, watching me with his dark, beautiful eyes.
I inhale the smell of sea. It smells right. Salt water permeates my senses, filling my lungs so that I feel as if it’s leeching into my blood. The crash of the waves drowns out all other sound.
I wade in. The cool salty water wraps around my ankles and then withdraws. It hits again with enough force that I wobble. I put my arms out for balance. The horizon is shrouded in dust. But there’s ocean enough.
I wade deeper. Water pulls on my clothes, dragging them down around me, a weight. Soon, I’m up to my knees, my hips, and then I stretch my arms in front of me and glide forward
. I feel the water curl around me.
I twist onto my back and look up at the sky.
It’s empty and blue, and for the barest instant, I feel as though I’m home.
Through the water, I hear splashing. I raise my head, and my legs sink. I tread water. The ocean floor, the desert, is close enough that my toes brush against it as I kick. Peter is wading into the water. He’s shed his trench coat and is shirtless. I stare at his tattoos, black feathers and swirls that curl over his chest muscles and around his biceps. Someday I need to ask him what they mean. He halts a few feet from me, the water halfway up his chest, just under his nipples. He looks like an angel, lost from Heaven, fallen into the sea. He thinks I’m beautiful, I think. I shake my head as if to clear that thought.
“You lost this ocean,” he says.
It’s a statement but I hear the question in it anyway. “Yes. I used to swim all the time as a kid.” There are memories upon memories in that simple sentence, a lifetime of moments drenched in salt water, of dreams and daydreams that I dared imagine while I floated on my back, of afternoons that didn’t end.
“Why did you stop?”
“I grew up.”
Peter quotes softly, “‘Why can’t you fly now, Mother?’ ‘Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way.’”
“I ran out of time. I had to work. You know, those kinds of reasons. Bad reasons. Real reasons. But I did miss it. I don’t think I even knew I missed it. Do you think...it’s really here because of me?”
Instead of answering, he fills his lungs and then ducks underneath the water.
Mimicking him, I duck down, too, and open my eyes underwater. The salt water stings my eyes, but I ignore it. Underwater, the ocean teems with fish that shouldn’t be here: tropical fish of red, blue, and purple, iridescent deep-sea fish that glisten with their own rainbow light, freshwater salmon, dozens of pet-size goldfish... Suddenly, the fish part, startled, as Peter swims through the water toward me. He catches my hand, and we burst out of the water together to breathe. Water droplets bead on his chest and roll off his hair. And he looks so perfect that I want to touch him, to know he’s real.