Page 85 of Our Last Resort

The ground rumbled under our feet. There was a roar like a volcanic eruption.

Our first train. So massive, so fast, smelling of diesel and piss.

We stepped into the last car. At four thirty-six in the morning, Gabriel and I were almost the only passengers.

Suddenly, the ground shifted under our feet. We were jerked forward.

Our train was moving.

We were leaving. For real.

In another life, this was the time for our great liberation. This was when we would have looked out the window, scared but exalted:We did it!

But we’d just killed a man. We held on to the luggage rack above our heads and crashed into the nearest seats.

“Tickets, please!”

I handed our tickets to a young man with curly black hair that flopped out of an interesting hat. He punched holes in them using a little tool. This is what I’d learned about the world so far: that it was full of men and tools.

Gabriel put his head on my shoulder. His hair tickled my cheek. A brittle kind of sleep found us.

Whenever the train stopped, I woke up. For a second, the recent past was erased from my mind, and I had to learn our circumstances all over again: the fire, our departure, the train.

Every time the doors opened, I waited for someone to come for us. Not the police. I didn’t know enough about the police to fear them. It was the mothers I imagined, a whole army of them swarming the train, ready to mete out our punishment.

I didn’t know about the law, about prison, or about the death penalty. But there’s a gut feeling that comes with killing someone. You don’t need to be threatened with consequences for it to feel terrible.

“Look,” Gabriel said, pointing at the window.

It was pitch-black outside. Months later, I realized thedarkness had been a tunnel. A disembodied voice said the words “New York, Grand Central.” We got off the train. The crowd threatened to pull us away, as though we held no more weight than crumbs in dishwater swirling toward the drain. There was a ceiling above us as tall as the sky.

Gabriel grabbed my hand.

“Let’s go this way.”

He followed the crowd. Where was he finding it, the ability to orient himself, to do what needed to be done? Why wasn’t he rattled? Why didn’t he seem even a little bit upset?

The world outside the train was tunnels. We heard more train sounds; we saw some maps, but we weren’t ready to figure out a whole new system. We walked around until we felt a gust of wind. Wind, in this underground world, meant stairs, and stairs meant outside.

We eschewed the escalators. Instead, we climbed the nearest stairwell, and climbed some more, and there it was.

New York City.

It was still dark out. Around us, the city rose in a great whirlwind of artificial lights and sounds. Sirens, shouts, the rumble of hot dog carts setting up for the day. Before you could wrap your head around any of these concepts (sirens for what, hot dogs for whom), the city turned your head to yet another sight: someone whose path you were blocking on the sidewalk, a man in a suit swearing as his paper cup of coffee emptied itself on his shiny shoes, steam coming out of the ground for absolutely no reason.

It was more people, moreworld,in an instant than we’d seen combined in our eighteen years.

And it was soloud.After a few seconds, it wasn’t sound anymore. Just noise.

The man in the suit walked right into me. I stumbled backward; Gabriel caught me. There was no time to be afraid, or angry, or even insulted. There was the cold touch of the man’s sleek suit, the wet coffee stain on his sleeve, the prickly smell of his cologne. Tears sprang to my eyes. For a second, there was no room inside of me for Émile or the flames. In all its tumult, thecity promised me something: One day, I would not think about the fire at all. I would be rid of my ghosts.

Gabriel grabbed my hand. Together, we started walking.

I reached in my coat pocket. Found something in there, exactly where I expected it.

My fingers closed around it. It had followed me into this new world.

A single dollar bill, the shape of a mouth smeared in lipstick.

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