No Passengers Beyond This Point (18 page)

“Look.” Mouse points to a photo of a kid clipped to the front of one cage. Pictures of one kid, sometimes two or three are attached with metal clips to each crate.

“The owners . . .” I say. “That must be who they’re waiting for.”

Mouse surveys the great stack of dog cages. “War-rantine?” she asks.

“What?”

“What you said Henry would have to do if she flew with us.”

“Oh, quarantine.... Maybe. Maybe they need their owners to release them.”

Mouse walks from one end of the pallet to the other, inspecting the dogs. “Is anybody feeding them?”

“Must be. They seem well cared for.”

Mouse points to a crate on the first tier. “What about this one?” The door is wide open, like the others, but there’s no photo clipped to the front, and the big dog inside has clean bandages—like white high-top booties—on all four feet. The center of each bandage has a strip of tape decorated with a string of pink hearts. The dog—tan and black, a long-haired German shepherd with strange blue eyes and a bitten-up ear—huddles in the corner.

Mouse digs a Milk-Bone out of her pocket and breaks it in two.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask.

“From home.”

“When we were trying to get Henry back in the house?”

She nods.

When was that, I wonder. Two days ago? Three?

Mouse holds up the Milk-Bone, but the blue-eyed dog continues to cower in the back, as if she can’t get far enough away from us.

“How do you think she got hurt?” Mouse asks.

I shake my head.

Mouse takes a step closer. The dog doesn’t move a muscle except for her blue eyes that track every move we make.

Mouse throws half the Milk-Bone into the crate and we walk up and down the pallets, wondering how we can convince a dog to come with us.

The blue-eyed dog waits until Mouse has moved to the other side of the pallet, then she swoops down on the Milk-Bone, and dashes back to the dark corner of her crate. She watches us, her black lips holding the unchewed bone while drips of drool slide out of her mouth.

She keeps waiting, until she can’t stand it anymore and crunches down on the bone. When she has licked up every crumb, she lies down again, her eyes trained on us.

Now Mouse tosses her the other half of the Milk-Bone and the dog goes through the same ritual again.

These
are the tunnel dogs? How are they ever going to help us find the black box? They can’t even leave their crates.

“We’ll never get them to come with us.”

“This one will,” Mouse announces.

“She’s all bandaged up, Mouse.”

Mouse pushes her hair back. Her face is filthy, her hair is wildly uncombed on one side and matted down on the other. She looks even crazier than normal. “So? My arm is hurt and you don’t leave me.”

“The bandages are clean. Somebody’s taking good care of her.” The dog’s ears are cocked forward like she’s listening intently.

Mouse whispers to the blue-eyed dog. She appears to be explaining our situation in detail and then suddenly from the other side of the Franklin door we hear people approaching.

“They couldn’t have made it this far.” Manny’s voice. “We would have seen them.”

Uh-oh. Manny and Francine.

“Mouse,” I whisper, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

“No harm in checking.” Francine booms. “Only costs a dime.”

“We’re not passengers, Francine. We shouldn’t be in here and you know it.”

“C’mon, Mouse!” I half drag her to the doggy door in the back as we hear the
tchk, tchk, tchk
of the Franklin door opening.

T
here isn’t enough air in this room. It’s stuffy and everybody looks grimy and tired and all packed together. God, I hope I don’t look like they do. But you know what? I don’t even care right now. I just want to get out of here and back to the welcomer station. Laird will fix me up.

I hope they come for me soon, I think as I find a spot on the blue linoleum in the corner next to a garbage can that smells like mustard. My back is to the wall. I bury my head in my hands, ignoring everyone. Like I want to talk to any of these people?

I only lift my head when they announce a new set of numbers. Then I pull out my ticket and listen carefully to the long series of digits. Why am I the only person doing this? Do they know their numbers by heart? Even so, they’d have to listen, wouldn’t they? None of these people even stop their conversations. The dude next to me sings softly to himself. He has a clock just like I do. But his doesn’t seem to be moving. I pull mine out. My clock isn’t moving either. It’s stuck at six hours and thirteen minutes.

A little kid of six or seven is playing with a tiny plastic pig in a Superman suit. The white cat is huddled under a chair, looking hot and unhappy.

“Here kitty.” But when I get close, she hisses at me. She still has my cool mom’s ring around her neck, tied with a lime green bow. I can’t imagine the ring isn’t intended for me. My fake mom knew I liked it. She knew it made me uncomfortable too, but I might as well look at it. What’s the harm of that?

I approach the cat again. This time she lets me, but her eyes are filled with scorn. Is it possible for a cat to roll her eyes? I could swear that’s what she just did. Still, she seems to know I need the ring. She allows me to take it, then trots back under the chairs.

I slip the ring on my hand and admire it as I did in my totally perfect house. My eyes are caught by the light reflecting in the stone and then suddenly I’m seeing images in the crystal. . . . It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I let myself in the back door. My mom is on the phone. She’s begging some guy to let us keep the house. She sounds desperate—not like my mom at all. She has, I suddenly realize, lost her home too.

Now there’s a new image in the crystal. It’s December, and Maddy and I are staying up all night watching our favorite dinosaur cartoons
.
We are too old for this stuff, but we loved them when we were little, and now we watch when Maddy is depressed. We don’t watch when I’m depressed. I’m not allowed to get depressed when Maddy’s happy.

And then it’s January, and Maddy is coming into the multi-purpose room when I’m rehearsing for the talent show. I’m going to sing a solo, but Maddy doesn’t like this. She motions for me to come over. I excuse myself and go talk to her. She says Brendan is playing lacrosse and I need to go watch him practice because all her friends are there.

A tiny voice inside me says no. I’m not sure I even like Brendan. I always know what he’s going to say and it’s never very interesting. I want to be in the talent show. “C’mon, In—what’s important to you? I mean seriously . . .” Maddy says.

The tiny voice inside keeps telling me to say no to Maddy, but I can’t. I go with her, and Mrs. Mahoney cuts me out of the program. She only takes the kids who show up for practice. When the talent show comes, I don’t go.

And then Valentine’s Day and my mom is telling me her ring is missing. Mouse says Maddy took it.

Maddy would never steal anything. Mouse is a big fat liar.

Mom says I have to ask Maddy. I tell her forget it. No way. Mom says either I will ask Maddy or she will.

I won’t. She does.

Maddy practically stops talking to me. She acts as if I stink like three-day-old barf.
How dare you
is all she says to me for one whole week. And then suddenly she’s back acting like nothing ever happened. Later that day, I find an envelope in my backpack. Inside is the ring. Nothing else.

Now I see recent scenes in quick clips. Me being chosen for welcomer because of how well I sing. Me talking to the other welcomer girls—we are giggling and laughing—there’s no one girl who has more friends than anyone else. No one girl who decides what the rest of us will do. We are all friends. It’s so easy—so comfortable. Laird tells us what to do. All that’s missing is Maddy.

I grab that stupid cat and tie the ring right back to her stupid ribbon around her stupid neck.

Then I get up and begin to inspect the room. There are two doors. The big glass doors where the tram deposits people, and a smaller glass door at the back. I peer through the glass in the small door, but it’s smoky and I can’t see through. Of course it’s locked. No surprise there.

A girl who is about Finn’s age is watching me. She has freckles, serious blue eyes, and a head full of curls the color of cut mangos—a more yellowy red than Mouse’s paprika-colored hair. She smiles when she sees me test the door. “New people always do that,” she says.

“How do you get out of here?” I ask.

“I wish I knew. My name’s Skye,” she says, and waits for me to tell her mine, which I don’t feel like doing. But I hear my mom’s voice in my head. Just be polite whether you want to or not. “I’m India,” I say.

“Hi.” She smiles.

“I don’t get this place. How long do you have to stay here?” I ask.

“From what I’ve seen, we’re pretty much stuck. Everything’s stuck. Even my clock has stopped ticking. What about yours?”

“Yep, mine’s stopped too. Why? Why are we here?” I ask.

“We were supposed to make a decision about whether or not to become a citizen of Falling Bird, but we couldn’t, so they stuck us in Passengers Waiting.”

I think about this. Do I want to be a welcomer? Suddenly this seems like a totally new question, something I’ve never really asked myself before.

It might not be too late to change my mind. What are the consequences of my decision, that’s what my mom would ask. My mom is not always wrong. She’s not always right either.

Skye nods as if she understands I need time to think about this. “Just be careful of the lady over there in the yellow hat—Phyllis,” she whispers, and then walks over to talk to the little boy with the superpig.

I go back to my corner, sit on the floor with my back to the wall, and try to turn on my wrist screen. “Maddy, please, I have to talk to you about something,” I whisper.

“Hey!” a woman shouts. “Where’d you get that?”

“What? What?” A man’s booming voice.

“Let me see.” The woman, Phyllis, dives for me, her stale milk breath in my face.

“Hey, let me!”

Other voices chime in. The shouts come from all around, closing in on me.

“You’re not supposed to have that. It creates longing.”

“How’d you get it?”

A bald man puts his greasy hand on my arm.

Even Skye and the singing dude are watching me now, but it isn’t me they’re interested in. It’s the wrist screen.

“It’s broken,” I tell them.

Phyllis’s worn brown eyes light up. “I can fix it,” she announces.

“If it’s broken, it’s no use to you,” the bald man says. “Why not give it to me.”

“They don’t break,” someone else says. “You just don’t know how to use it. I’ll show you.”

“Hey, me! Me!” Another guy pushes forward.

There are no officer dudes in this room. I’m on my own here. These people are going to jump me and take this last thing, this only thing I have left. They’re going to rip it off my arm.

“Maddy,” I whisper to the screen. “I so need you right now.”

But Maddy does not appear. The screen is blank as a closed eye.

Phyllis is now fighting off the others. “She said she’s giving it to me,” she cries.

“No I didn’t.” A voice rises inside me. A loud, sure voice. It’s not me acting like a good student or a cool girl or a good welcomer or the girl Brendan has a crush on or anybody’s sister. It isn’t the voice of my mother or Maddy or Laird either. It isn’t me pretending at all. It’s the voice of India Tompkins, exactly as I am. “Get the heck away from me!”

Instantly, the bickering stops, the room is silent. Everyone watches me.

“This is mine! Leave me alone!” I shove the bald man with the greasy hands back.

That is when the loudspeaker calls another number, another number that no one has, that no one will ever have. No one needs to check their small raffle numbers. The numbers mean nothing.

“Five-four-nine-one-eight-eight-nine-eight-one-six-oh-oh-oh-five-four-one,” the mechanical voice repeats.

“Hey.” Skye is next to me. She whispers in my ear, “That’s you.”

I look down at the ticket in my hand. Five-four-nine-one-eight-eight-nine-eight-one-six-oh-oh-oh-five- four-one, it says.

Skye nods. “Go on,” she tells me.

“Impossible!” a fat man bellows. “One number’s off. They like to fool with us that way.”

“No, it’s her number. I saw,” Skye insists.

“It’s because of the screen,” somebody shouts.

What do you do when your number is called? I stare stupidly at my ticket.

Phyllis’s bulky shoulders shove in front of me. “You won’t need that now.” She grabs my wrist with her large man hands, works her fingers under the strap, and snaps the wrist screen off my arm.