Sugar Coated

by Shannen Crane Camp

  “No. Actually, they’re never the same. But they always involve the same person,” Brynn said, remembering the Angel’s face even as she described her to Jonah. “It’s this terrifying woman. She has this unnaturally white skin. It’s like paper white, not peach,” Brynn explained. “And her hair is the same color. Plus she wears all white, so she’s pretty much this vast expanse of white with these scary purple eyes.”

  “Well, if you’re always having nightmares about a woman with purple eyes, I can see why you’d be scared of Workers,” Jonah offered, showing his support for her as she continued.

  “Exactly,” Brynn agreed. “What’s weird is in every dream this woman is trying to extract some information from me. Something I did that she’s upset about. And she keeps calling me Rachel,” Brynn said, her confusion manifesting itself in her shaky voice.

  Looking up at Jonah, she saw a look of shock on his face. Genuine shock. It was a look she’d never seen him wear before and it took him a moment to recover from his unexpected response.

  “That sounds terrifying,” he said, explaining his reaction to a very puzzled Brynn. “I can’t imagine how awful it must be to be afraid to go to sleep.”

  “It honestly wasn’t too bad until recently,” she said.

  “What changed?” Jonah asked intently.

  “The woman is getting more…aggressive. Like tonight,” Brynn began, but stopped abruptly, not sure she was ready to relive the macabre story the Angel had told her.

  “It’s okay,” Jonah said soothingly, scooting his chair over to Brynn in the darkness and putting his arm around her. He pulled her close so that her head could rest easily on his shoulder and stroked her hair. “You can tell me.”

  Brynn took a deep breath to steady her voice, grateful that with her head resting on Jonah’s shoulder he couldn’t see the pained expression she wore.

  “She told me about how she had killed all of Rachel’s friends. About how she poisoned them and watched them all die,” Brynn finally managed, remembering how happy the story had made the Angel in her dream. She gave a shudder and Jonah pulled her closer.

  “You just have to remember that these are dreams, Brynn,” he said logically, his voice soothing and careful. “They aren’t memories. None of that really happened.”

  Though she wanted desperately to believe what Jonah was telling her, she couldn’t stop the nagging feeling that there was more to her dreams than that. There was some unspoken importance to them.

  “I know you don’t believe me,” he finally said with a laugh, making her wonder, yet again, if he could somehow read her mind. “But trust me. You’re safe. I’ll make sure of it,” he said.

  Even with the constant fear of her dreams hanging over her head, Brynn had to admit that those few words from Jonah did make her feel exponentially better.

  “Thank you,” she said into the folds of his soft grey T-shirt, burying her face in the clean smelling fabric and shutting out the outside world for just a moment.

  Jonah’s body seemed to radiate warmth like a space heater, which she was grateful for in the chilly night air.

  “So what are you doing up?” she asked, not bothering to pull away from him now that he didn’t need to comfort her anymore. Instead she let her head rest comfortably on his shoulder while he continued to run his fingers through her long dark hair.

  “Well, I don’t have nightmares or anything, but I have trouble sleeping most nights. I just wake up a lot, so I thought I’d take advantage of the new view and sit outside for a while,” he explained. “You can see a lot more stars here.”

  “I love it,” Brynn agreed, looking up at the inky black sky that seemed alive with sparkling stars.

  “Plus I was trying to figure out a way to not die when jumping off of a speeding train,” he added as an afterthought, giving a soft laugh at the situation that was anything but funny.

  “I think the best way to avoid death in that situation is to not jump off the train in the first place,” Brynn countered.

  “There you go, backing out again,” Jonah teased.

  “Oh, I’m not backing out. I’ve firmly set my resolve and I’m not changing my mind anymore. I don’t care how scared I am,” she said resolutely. “Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion there’s some correlation between the woman in my dreams and that place,” Brynn admitted.

  “Could it be the fact that you think Aywon is some sort of Worker manufacturing plant and your little dream devil happens to have violet eyes?” Jonah asked.

  “Okay, fine, so it’s pretty obvious why I think they’re linked. But it doesn’t mean they aren’t. You wouldn’t say two plus two doesn’t equal four just because it’s the obvious answer,” Brynn said.

  “Except for when two plus two equals ten,” Jonah corrected her, finally giving her a bizarre enough response that she pulled away from her comfortable position to get a good look at him, doubt lining her face. “Base four,” he said simply, by way of explanation.

  Not wanting to make a fool out of herself, she didn’t bother asking what language he was speaking since it sounded like math—the language she was least fluent in.

  “That’s as good a sign as any to call it quits on this conversation,” Brynn said with a smile, untangling herself from the blanket and draping it over Jonah. “Don’t get sick sitting out here in the cold,” she warned. “I’m going to go take a nice warm shower and see if that helps me fall back asleep.”

  “My fingers are crossed for you,” Jonah replied, watching her walk back into their dark room.

  In the granite shower with hot lavender scented water streaming down her body, Brynn tried to clear her mind and put her time awake to good use. She wanted to take their trip to Aywon sooner than they had planned, but in order to do that they’d need to have a way off the train. She tried to visualize what lay beyond the door at the back of the train.

  “Probably just the back of the train,” she thought aloud before remembering she wasn’t alone in her hotel room this trip.

  She tried to imagine the endless tracks rushing below her at a pace that was sure to kill anyone who came into contact with it. If she could find a way to get off of the train without ever touching the deadly tracks, that would be ideal. Though, of course, that would require the gift of flight, which was completely impossible for anyone who wasn’t a bird.

  Brynn was reminded of the time she sat with Ty in the grass, looking up at the sky and wondering if there was some way humans could fly like birds. The thought had seemed completely crazy at the time, but now she wondered if there really was some way to pull it off. It was just like she had thought when she was nine; if they could make humans speed across the ground in metal trains why couldn’t they make humans fly through the air in metal birds?

  Lathering some mint sage shampoo into her black hair, Brynn used one of her soapy fingers to draw a bird on the granite walls of the shower. Her scalp tingled where the mint shampoo was reaching her skin, but she ignored the sensation and stared at her picture, which was quickly melting down the wall.

  “Brynn?” came Jonah’s muffled voice from the other side of the bathroom door, causing her to jump and completely forget all thoughts of humans flying in metal birds.

  “Yeah?” she called back through the heavy blanket of steam in the room and the sound of running water.

  “I’m going to bed now, but wake me up if you have any more nightmares,” Jonah called, making her smile in the steaming water.

  She was glad that he hadn’t thought she was crazy. He had not only listened to her, but he had treated her concerns as valid. It seemed like every time she brought up a point everyone else thought was crazy, Jonah was right there with her every step of the way. Completely on board for whatever insane scheme she came up with.

  “Thanks, Jonah,” she called back before turning her attention back to her now nonexistent picture.

  In the streams of soap that traveled down the walls of the shower, Brynn saw a possibility that she hadn’t seen befor
e. Even if no one else thought human flight was possible, Jonah was the one person who might listen to her. Maybe Aywon wasn’t as unattainable as she had first thought.

  Chapter 18: Flight

  It had been a few days since Brynn and Jonah’s return from Central Wildwood, and already the preparations for their next trip were in full swing. They had set up a daily chart of supplies to ask their houses for, with the intention of stockpiling all of the dehydrated food bars, water bottles, and other survival equipment.

  The way they figured it, if they asked their houses for a little every day rather than the entire list of what they’d need at once, it wouldn’t look as suspicious to whoever might be keeping track of house manufacturing. Jonah pointed out that they didn’t have any proof that someone was keeping tabs on them, but agreed that it was better to be safe than sorry.

  Brynn hadn’t seen her friends since her return trip, which she knew made Ty very upset, but all of her free time had been spent with Jonah in the library, researching locks and birds. Though Jonah was much more skeptical of this idea than any of her other crazy ideas, he didn’t discourage her from trying to figure out how birds flew to see if there was some way she’d be able to replicate that action.

  After almost a week of searching in vain for an answer to their abrupt train departure, Brynn finally decided to take a break and visit with her friends. Jonah opted to stay behind, his eyes flying over the pages of a book about pin tumbler locks as he waved her away.

  It wasn’t too difficult for Brynn to find her friends, as they were almost always in one of four places: Brynn’s house, Amber’s house, Bennett’s house, or Ty’s house.

  “Look who finally decided to grace us with her presence,” Amber said as Brynn walked into her living room, which was illuminated by the sun streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “Don’t waste time teasing her—we need to get right down to the good stuff,” Bennett said with a grin, pulling Brynn down onto the couch with her. Brynn noted with a smile that Bennett had gotten a green streak dyed into her long, dark brown hair to match Amber’s pink one. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?” Brynn asked, playing dumb to avoid as long as possible what was sure to be an awkward conversation.

  Amber and Bennett exchanged looks at this sad attempt to beat around the bush.

  “You go on a trip with some gorgeous boy, then come back and spend every waking minute with him, completely ignoring your friends. Something had to have happened,” Amber stated, sounding annoyed that Brynn wasn’t sharing the details of her trip right away.

  Ty sat on the love seat beside Amber, looking at Brynn as intently as everyone else in the room, which surprised her. She didn’t think he’d care about girl gossip, but it looked as if he was trying to exercise some self-restraint by not forcing her to divulge every moment of her trip right then and there.

  “What were your sleeping arrangements?” Bennett asked with a waggle of her eyebrows, trying to give Brynn some direction for her retelling of the trip.

  “Honestly, we didn’t do much sleeping,” Brynn said with a shrug, not realizing until she looked at the shocked faces of her friends how that sentence had sounded. Ty looked particularly upset. “Not like that!” she quickly corrected.

  “How else could we possibly take that?” Ty asked incredulously.

  “We spent most of our time—” Brynn began, but quickly stopped mid-sentence.

  She couldn’t very well say they had spent most of their time planning how to jump off of a speeding train without dying so that they could find a city that might not exist. Something told her that that explanation wouldn’t go over particularly well, so she quickly scrambled, trying to come up with some other reason they weren’t sleeping. She was very aware of the fact that the longer she took to fabricate an explanation, the more it seemed like she was lying and her friend’s first instinct was exactly right.

  “Climbing,” she finished lamely, knowing it was an odd thing to say.

  “Climbing?” Ty repeated, while Bennett and Amber stared at her in confusion.

  “You can see the stars really well in Central Wildwood, so we went on some night climbs to get a better look,” Brynn explained, completely making the whole thing up as she went. “It’s kind of a tourist attraction there. People do it all the time.”

  “Well that’s disappointing,” Bennett said with a sigh, leaning back against the couch and turning her attention back to the wall screen which was playing a movie, as usual.

  “Did you at least kiss him?” Amber asked, trying to salvage their excitement over Brynn’s supposed love affair.

  “No, I didn’t kiss him,” Brynn said emphatically. “Jonah and I don’t have a relationship like that. We’re just friends with a common interest,” she stated, trying to be as believable as possible, since Amber seemed to always be suspicious that Brynn was holding out on her.

  “What common interest might that be?” Ty asked, his eyes still trained on her in intense concentration.

  Brynn thought about it for a moment, trying to decide the best way to word the fact that she and Jonah both suspected the city was up to no good, and that something dark was going on behind the scenes that none of them knew about.

  “Trains,” she finally said elusively, deciding she didn’t want to get into a long explanation of everything they’d discovered.

  “I knew it!” Ty exclaimed suddenly, causing everyone in the room to jump.

  “Knew what?” Amber asked. “That those two are completely boring and all of our ideas about what was going on were much more exciting than the truth?”

  “No. That you guys are both trying to test your crazy conspiracy theories!” he said with complete conviction.

  “How did you get all of that out of ‘trains’?” Brynn asked, forgetting how well Ty knew her. She should have known he would figure out exactly what she meant by that one word.

  “I actually listen to you, Brynn. You’ve told me what your monthly train trips are all about,” he said, sounding hurt that she didn’t think he would understand her clue. “Plus, you nearly got us killed investigating that train tunnel. Give me some credit.”

  “I guess you do listen to me,” she admitted sheepishly.

  “But why does Jonah need to come with you on your trip? What are you guys up to?” Ty asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

  Now they were treading on dangerous territory. If Ty knew the extent to which they were going to find out the truth, he’d tie her up in her house and never let her leave, fearing that she’d get herself killed.

  “I just wanted an objective third party opinion on the matter and thought he would be perfect,” she lied easily, looking down at her teal fingernails in a disinterested way.

  “I’m sure the fact that he has a face like an angel doesn’t hurt either,” Amber chimed in from beside Ty, though her attention was turned back to the wall screen.

  “Yeah, come on Brynn, you can’t tell us you don’t find him attractive. That would be like saying you don’t really care for breathing,” Bennett added with a conspiratorial grin at Amber.

  “Those big blue eyes and his tan skin,” Amber said with relish.

  “And his black hair that always looks perfectly disheveled,” Bennett sighed.

  “Okay, fine. He’s a good-looking guy. Are you happy?” Brynn relented.

  “Very,” Amber stated. “How old is he anyway? He looks older than us.”

  “Only by one year. He’s Ty’s age; nineteen,” Brynn answered as she pulled out her tablet to check the time.

  She hadn’t told Jonah she would be back at the library to help him research that day, but she felt bad making him do all of the work when this whole thing had been her crazy idea. She had to admit though, being outside of the stuffy library felt nice. She had enjoyed the time spent there, but after days of looking through dusty volumes with absolutely no luck, she was beginning to feel frustrated with the whole thing. Now she knew why no one had ever in
vestigated human flight before. She was pretty sure the whole idea was impossible.

  “We should get out of the house and do something,” Brynn finally said, the thoughts of the confining library making her long to be in the sun.

  “Good idea,” Amber replied happily. “Want to go shopping?”

  Brynn thought about this for a moment. She did need to get some black clothing for her and Jonah, and she didn’t really want to ask Charlie for it. Her house was such a gossip sometimes. Asking her would incite a whole list of questions, and every answer would probably be relayed in perfect detail to every house on the block.

  “Sounds good to me,” Brynn answered, already trying to remember Jonah’s measurements for their incognito nighttime clothing.

  * * *

  The sun was out in full force that day, making Seaside seem even busier than usual. The sidewalks were packed with people shopping, eating, and walking between rec buildings to take part in the activities there while wearing their “sports” clothing. Usually these consisted of black spandex outfits with interwoven colors that seemed too tight and ill-fitting to really be flattering.

  Brynn and her friends had walked straight to the shopping district and all four of them stood at wall screens in the store, creating the clothing they wanted. Bennett and Amber had immediately gone to a kiosk near the dressing rooms and were huddled over the screen, whispering excitedly over their new creation.

  The clothing stores always had walls to match the latest trends, as if reminding people what they were aiming for as they worked away on their screens. Today the walls displayed black and white stripes that wrapped around the entire store, with the clothing creation screen kiosks giving off bright splashes of color with their neon green, blue, and pink bases that were continually changing shades.

  In her mind, Brynn was trying to figure out some way to get around showing her friends what she was creating, though she wasn’t quite sure it was possible. One of the main reasons you went shopping rather than requesting the clothes from your house was to model your new outfit for your friends and get their opinion on it.