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“Well, I’m not going back.” Bryce grinned, but there was a hardness there, the stubborn tone of a kid who was used to getting his way. “He’s my uncle. I wanna say goodbye, too.”
“Then go back home and ask your mother to take you.”
“Yeah, right. She’d never let me go to a prison.”
“Exactly. What do you think she’s gonna do when you don’t come down for breakfast?”
Bryce shrugged. In the distance, a train whistle sounded, as lonely and sad as the call of a wolf at this late hour.
Lucas turned his back and kept walking. Bryce fell in step beside him. “This’ll be great. We’ll go see Uncle Dan then maybe hitchhike back or something. Maybe we can stop at your old place and hang out.”
For a flash, Lucas could feel how good it would be to punch Bryce. Hard. Hard enough to knock him down. To tell him to get his head out of his ass, to see things from someone else’s point of view, just once, and not be such an idiot. To go home and enjoy his status as Perfect and Adored Son and not co-opt this one thing, this goodbye to his father. To acknowledge that the loss of his mother and fatherhurt,goddamn it. To recognize that this wasn’t some sort ofcousins-ho!adventure. It was Lucas’s chance to say goodbye to his father, who’d worked so hard and been so stupid and wrong and was such a good guy even so.
“This is fun,” Bryce said now. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever been out this late at night.” He smiled.
“Yeah,” Lucas said.
The train whistle sounded again, and Lucas put his foot on the rail. A faint vibration hummed through it.
In a flash, he saw how he could lose Bryce. He could cross the tracks at the last minute; Bryce wouldn’t follow him because he’d be scared of getting hurt. When they were little, he never tried the stunts Lucas could pull on his bike, wheelies and jumps and spins. He wouldn’t even dive off the dock at the lake where Joe had taken them last month.
So Lucas could sprint across the tracks, and Bryce wouldn’t follow. The train would come, and it was a long one from the sound of it; Lucas hadn’t grown up two blocks from the tracks for nothing. Then he’d run ahead as fast and far as he could, hidden by the train, and duck out of sight. Bryce would give up and go home, and Lucas could make it up to him when he got back. He just had to wait until the train got close enough, so Bryce wouldn’t dare follow.
It almost worked.
When he estimated that he had four seconds until the train passed, he bolted onto the tracks.
But instead of being on the other side, he jerked to a stop right in the middle.You’re supposed to be across by now,a quiet part of his brain calmly informed him.
One Mississippi.
His foot was stuck. Wedged tight between two cross ties. He wore Converse high-tops, the kind that went up to the ankle. Laced up tight because Didi had fits if either boy had untied shoes. Which meant he couldn’t just pull his foot out, and wouldn’t have time to untie it. The laces were double-knotted.
Two Mississippi.
He yanked and yanked, and time froze, and thoughts flew through his head, as clear and cold as a January night on the plains.
At least it’ll be fast.
Bryce is gonna freak.
Poor Steph, hope the kids will do okay.
All the while, he lunged with his entire being, but the shoe didn’t budge.
Three Mississippi.
The light washed over him, blinding him, and the train whistle was screaming—sorry, conductor, not your fault—and he looked at it, all that whiteness and noise and figured this was it, it’d be okay, Mom would be there, and—
And then something crashed into him, and he landed hard and was rolling on the gravel and dirt and the train was roaring past, shaking the earth.
Four Mississippi.
When the train finally passed, the quiet took a minute to return. The sound of hard breathing filled the air.
“Jesus,” Bryce said faintly, looking at him. A smile crept on to his face. “Jesus Christ, we’re still alive, thank you, God!”
Bryce had saved him. Bryce had risked his own life to save him, had hurtled across the tracks, tackled him and knocked him free.
