Chapter Forty-Five
FORTY-FIVE
Ted’s head rocks slowly back and forth. Louisa thinks he looks like that author he had told her about, the woman who was overwhelmed with grief. He clears his throat in embarrassment when he notices that she’s staring, then he reaches for his pants, takes something out of the pocket, and holds it out to Louisa. It’s the drawing of the artist that she had left on the train.
“No, don’t give me that, it was a present for you,” she says, wounded.
He nods.
“I know. I want it back, but not until we get where we’re going.”
She hesitates, then reluctantly puts the drawing in her backpack.
“Okay. Until we get there.”
“I’m serious! I want it back. One day it’ll be worth millions!” he insists.
“Sure!” she laughs, as if it were a joke.
Ted looks at his wrist, where his watch should have been, then he looks at the sun instead.
“I think we’ll be in time to catch the next train.”
“How do you know that?” she wonders.
“You can tell from the sun roughly what time it is.”
“No, I mean: How do you know when the next train leaves? Have you learnt the timetable by heart, or what?”
“Yes,” he says, as if this were normal behavior.
“You’re really weird.”
“Thanks. Same to you.”
She snorts and stands up, and he does the same. They go off in different directions and each finds a large tree to get changed behind. When the first drop lands on Ted’s hair, he doesn’t realize what it is because his skin is already so damp, but then he hears the patter on the treetops and Louisa crying out:
“TED! IT’S RAINING! THE PAINTING…”
Ted looks at the box and watches with growing panic as drop after drop falls from the sky, leaving small black marks. For a moment he seeks shelter under the tree, like people do in movies, but that doesn’t help at all. Trees are far less loyal in real life. So he runs, with his suitcase and the box in his arms, slipping and stumbling like a greedy pigeon with a sandwich that’s far too big. Louisa rushes up to his side, throwing her backpack on as she runs, then takes the box from him. By the time they reach the shopping street where they broke into the sporting good shop, their feet are splashing on the ground, soon their breathing is coming in gasps and their rib cages are blast furnaces, but they don’t stop until they reach the train station and have a roof over them.
“Is… it… okay?” Louisa gasps as Ted peers down inside the box.
He nods, exhausted, and slumps down onto a bench.
“I’m really… really… sick of running.”
“It’s crazy… that you’re so bad at it… even though you do it so often,” she gasps back.
They don’t have time to say more before the train arrives. They struggle on board, earning unhappy looks from the other passengers, even though the rain has actually washed the worst of the dirt from their clothes. Ted sinks into the seat and closes his eyes, falls asleep almost at once. When he wakes up, Louisa is asleep on his shoulder. He looks out the window and exclaims:
“Wake up! Louisa, wake up! We’re getting off here!”
She sits up in panic and shouts out loud:
“I WASN’T ASLEEP! I’M READY! WHAT? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?”
She waves her fists at Ted before her brain remembers who he is.
“OW!” Ted hisses when she accidentally pokes him hard in the cheek.
“Sorry, I… What’s happening? Where are we?” she asks in alarm.
He nods at the platform outside the window and suddenly smiles secretively.
“Come on. I’m going to show you something I think you’ll like.”
They get off the train, and she sits on a bench with the painting and their bags while he goes and buys tickets. It takes ages, when he finally comes back it’s already afternoon.
“You’ve been gone forever. Did you have to travel back in time and invent the train or something?” she asks.
Ted lowers his voice, sudden terror in his eyes.
“There are policemen here, checking the identity of all the passengers. I heard them saying that two men were attacked a few stations from here, that they were beaten with an iron pipe so that one of the men had his arm broken…”
“ATTACKED? They were the ones who attacked US!” Louisa shouts.
“Shhhhh!” Ted begs her.
“What are we going to do?” she whispers, panicking when she sees men in uniform approaching.
All her life she’s been taught to run from those men, but now it’s too late, and she should have known better. She’s relaxed too much, tricked herself into thinking she belongs in Ted’s world. She doesn’t, she never will.
“Just act normal! Or, you know, don’t act normal for you. Act normal for normal people,” Ted hisses.
“Sure! It’s not like I’m on the run from a foster home, and carrying a world-famous painting worth a fortune, and traveling with a strange man whose last name I don’t even know, or anything like that! Just act normal!” Louisa hisses back.
“Just be quiet and smile,” he says sternly.
So she does, which is probably the first time in their entire relationship that she has followed instructions, and of course that’s a mistake too. They make it to the train, they’re just on the steps, for a moment they both think they’re safe. But Louisa should have known better.
“YOU THERE! STOP!” a voice behind them yells.
They turn around to meet the eyes of an angry man in uniform.
“Tickets and identification,” he says, like an order, not like a question.
Louisa kneels down and quickly searches her backpack for her passport, panic rushing through her body when she can’t find it.
“It was right here, right here…,” she whispers anxiously on the ground.
She hears the man talking angrily over her head. She can’t even register the words, but she’s heard voices like that thousands of times before, full of promises of violence. She knows he can see the guilt in her darting eyes and trembling fingers. Where IS that damn passport? Her stupid brain should know, but it starts thinking about Fish instead, how she always told Louisa that a passport is proof that you exist, that you’re a somebody. But the backpack is empty now, and Louisa’s face is burning, and Fish was wrong, her brain screams. Louisa has always been a nobody. She will always mess everything up. So she acts on instinct, it’s too late to save herself now, but maybe she can draw the policeman’s attention and give Ted time to get away from here? It’s stupid, instincts often are, society is not built for teenage brains full of fight-or-flight responses. She closes her backpack and clenches her fists and gets herself ready to run.
“Going north? You live there?” she hears the policeman ask just then, and it confuses her, because he sounds like he’s in the middle of a conversation.
“Yes,” she hears Ted answer, with surprising calm.
“Are you and the girl traveling together?” the policeman asks.
“Yes. She’s my daughter.”
It’s the best lie Ted has ever told.
“What happened to your face?” the policeman wants to know.
“I fell down some stairs,” Ted answers.
It would have made Louisa laugh if she weren’t so terrified. But it’s only as she looks up that she realizes the policeman isn’t even looking at her, he’s only looking at Ted. Louisa can’t even hear the rest of the questions over the loudness of her own breathing, but eventually the policeman hands Ted his passport back with a short nod, and leaves. Just like that. Louisa stares at Ted like he’s just performed black magic. He looks scared, but also insulted.
“What happened? What did he say?” Louisa whispers in shock.
“He said the police stopped a drunk driver and his friend a few stations from here. And to get out of being arrested, apparently the drunk driver told them he was driving to the hospital because he and his friend had been attacked and beaten with iron pipes by a… gang.”
“Gang?” Louisa repeats.
“Yes. Because apparently, those men didn’t want to admit even to the police that they’d been beaten by a girl,” Ted sighs.
“So then why did the police stop us?”
“They didn’t. They stopped me. The men claimed that the gang fled on a train going in this direction. So the police are talking to everyone around here who looks… suspicious.”
Louisa’s face lights up like that’s the nicest compliment she’s ever gotten, to not look suspicious.
“So the policeman thought you looked like you could be a gang member, but as soon as he heard your obnoxious way of talking, he understood that you weren’t?” she smiles.
“It’s not funny, Louisa, we could have been arrested,” he insists.
“Maybe you joined a gang while you were in prison?” she laughs.
“Stop it,” he mutters.
“Maybe it was a library gang? Maybe you beat the other gangs with the power of knowledge?”
Ted leans down on the ground and picks up her passport. It had just fallen out of her bag.
“You need to keep hold of this,” he says, like an annoyed dad would, to change the subject.
“I know,” she says, still grinning.
“I mean it! You need to take things seriously!” he snaps.
She falls silent, ashamed.
“I’m sorry. I know. I need to keep hold of the passport. It’s the only proof that I exist,” she hears herself answer, voice suddenly trembling.
He stops and looks at her then, with softer eyes, and shakes his head slowly.
“Is that what you think?”
“Fish always said so.”
He shakes his head again, with greater determination.
“You’re proof enough, Louisa. Every time you draw or paint something, you’re proof enough. Now come on, I’ve got something to show you.”
There’s another train standing at the platform opposite, and when he leads her on board she looks like someone who has just tasted chocolate for the first time.
“Beds? On a train?” she whispers in astonishment.
“It’s a sleeper train,” Ted nods.
But that isn’t the best thing. He shows her their compartment, with a bed for each of them and little curtains to draw, and something absolutely fantastic: a lock on the door.
As soon as Louisa’s head hits the pillow she’s asleep, she hasn’t slept so soundly since she was sleeping next to Fish. Ted falls asleep too, even though Louisa snores. When they wake up again it’s dark, the train is moving, they’ve slept the day away.
“Are you awake?” Louisa wonders in the gloom when she hears his breathing change.
“Yes,” he says, thinking that you never have to wonder if Louisa is awake, because if she isn’t asking questions, she’s asleep.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Can I stop you?”
“It’s been a really long time since you went to the toilet,” she says.
“That isn’t a question,” Ted mutters.
“You peed in the sea, didn’t you?”
“No,” he lies.
She laughs so hard that the bunk creaks.
“Can I ask something else?”
“Preferably not,” he says, but of course that doesn’t make any difference.
“What happened to Joar’s knife?”
Ted is glad the light isn’t on then. The world stands still outside the window, the train thunders through the night as if everyone on board is on the run, his lips chase each other in an effort to stop trembling. Then he replies:
“The knife was in his backpack. Joar had come up with a plan. He was going to wait until his mom wasn’t home, because he knew that she’d try to stop him if she…”
“Wait! Wait!” Louisa suddenly pleads, and changes her mind, muttering: “I shouldn’t have asked. I should have just let you finish the story with you going swimming at the pier and setting the bird free. That was a perfect ending. When you were all still happy.”
“Yes,” she hears Ted reply.
She thinks for a whole minute before she decides:
“Okay… but before you tell the ending, tell me this first: How did you get the money for paint and brushes and everything for the painting?”
The train passes an illuminated platform, and in the cones of light she sees Ted’s teeth glint as he smiles.
“Well, we most certainly didn’t sell any stolen bicycles.”