Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

“I’m going home.”

“You’re not supposed to bike here by yourself. I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t want you to go with me!” I wasn’t crying anymore. I was angry.

Kieren got off his bike. “I’m sorry, M.”

I stayed where I was but flinched away from him, like he was made of acid.

“You just—you can’t hang around the station anymore, okay?”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” I insisted.

“Yes, I can. Your brother hasn’t told you this, because he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, but you—you just need to get your own friends.”

I stood still, wanting to cry again. What was he talking about? He was my friend.

“Friends your age, you know? Like, maybe girlfriends.”

I shook my head. I was being kicked out of the gang. What had I done wrong? “But you’re my friends.”

“We can’t be your only friends, M. You’re a little girl. You need to hang out with other little girls.”

The ground beneath our feet began to tremble. I looked to the horizon and saw the bright headlight of the train growing larger and larger. As the train got closer, the wind picked up. I clutched my jacket tighter around me. I wished more than ever that I could magically appear back at the station, that I could be there when my father stepped onto the platform so I could throw myself into his waiting arms. But it was too late to get back.

Kieren had stopped talking. The approaching train made it impossible to hear anything. The whole earth seemed to be crumbling with its arrival. Kieren and I watched it getting closer and closer.

Suddenly, without warning, Kieren leaped for the tracks. I had no idea what he was doing. I screamed his name, but I knew he couldn’t hear me. He pulled something out of his pocket and quickly placed it on the rail. I don’t know why he thought it was so important to put it there, why he risked his life to do it. But then again, maybe he didn’t think about it too much. Kieren could be impulsive like that. It was impossible to know what he was thinking half the time.

The train whizzed by us, barely missing his hand as he pulled back. He came and stood next to me again as it passed. I looked in the windows for my father’s face, but all I could see was a blur.

Once the train had passed and the vibrations were dying down, it was just Kieren and me again, standing in the eerie quiet and darkness.

He walked up to the track and retrieved what he had put there—a penny, now flattened.

“Here. This is to keep you safe.”

“You’re crazy,” I said. “You’re completely crazy.”

I hopped on my bike and rode home as fast as I could. I was suddenly terrified. Terrified of the train, of Kieren and his dangerous act. Terrified of being out after dark. I pedaled so hard my sides ached. I pedaled and pedaled until I was safe in my kitchen. And it wasn’t until I was standing over the sink, catching my breath, that I took the penny and held it, feeling its sharp edges cut into my palm like a knife.

The accident happened at the end of May. There were two weeks left of school, and I was looking forward to our summer vacation. There’s a little town in Indiana where they have a lot of lakes. My dad was planning for us to take a trip there. We were going to rent a cabin and go fishing. It sounded extraordinarily boring, I have to admit, but I was going to bring a lot of books and sit by the water and read. And my dad said there was a river there where everybody went inner tubing. Hundreds of people went floating down the river, listening to music and talking and laughing.

And then the phone call came.

I was in the kitchen eating a piece of chocolate cake after dinner, thinking about those inner tubes and picturing my body stretched out across that warm dark rubber, gently flowing down a river. The thought made me so happy.

Robbie hadn’t come home that night for dinner, which had become more and more of a common occurrence. My mom was worried. My dad was angry. I was the only one at the table, and I was seriously considering getting a second piece of cake.

At first I didn’t think anything of the phone call. My mom’s voice filtered into the room, a series of tense little vowel sounds. I had become accustomed to hearing her voice grow tense more and more often since Robbie started ditching dinner.

My mother’s voice went silent. Soon there was a strange sound that at first I couldn’t understand. I thought a wild animal had come into the house. But it wasn’t an animal. It was my mother. It was my mother wailing. And I knew immediately that only one thing could be that wrong.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I was afraid I might pass out, but I couldn’t move from the table. Time stood still. I heard a clock ticking. My throat closed around a little lump of chocolate cake, and the overly sweet taste of it dripping down with each gulp nauseated me. I tried to breathe. I was going to be sick. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.

Before I knew it, my mother and father were sitting in front of me. I hadn’t moved from the table. My mother sat, rocking her body. My father put his large hand on her back. I had never seen him cry.

They said there had been an accident. They said Robbie wasn’t coming home.

I tried to breathe.

The train. The accident involved the train. The train came. They were on their skateboards.

“He was with that boy,” I remember my mother saying. She spat out the word like it was poison. “He was with that horrible little boy.” And saying it made