“I mean, there are a lot of little things to work out, like what material is lightweight and sturdy at the same time, and what shape to make our little wind catcher,” he said, already making a mental list of problems to sort through.
“We need to figure out how to attach ourselves to the wind catcher,” Brynn pointed out.
“And how to keep it from pulling us off the train the second that door at the back opens,” he added. “We’re going to need to make some small scale models. Test out different shapes and things.”
“So why are we sitting around in a dark library surrounded by dusty books still?” Brynn asked with a grin.
* * *
Brynn didn’t realize that Jonah had never been to her house before until he was standing at the front door. She also didn’t realize until it was too late that Ty could easily look out his window to enjoy the sunset and see Brynn bringing Jonah home. Somehow she didn’t think that would sit well with his overprotective side, but she had more important things to worry about at the moment, so Ty’s odd behavior had to take a back seat.
Leading him through the long hallway that led to her bedroom, Brynn was suddenly grateful that Charlie was always cleaning up behind her. Brynn wasn’t a very good housekeeper. Her bright room that smelled strongly of sugar was practically spotless when they entered, and her black and neon blue bed was actually made. It was something that even Charlie often neglected, adopting Brynn’s reasoning that she was simply going to sleep in it again that night so why bother making it?
Jonah sat on Brynn’s bed next to her while she ordered the needed materials from her house.
“Going camping?” Charlie asked when Brynn requested tarp.
“Maybe,” she shot back, like an older sister being annoyed by her bratty younger sibling.
“You and your house seem to get along well,” Jonah said with a laugh.
“Oh yeah, she’s like the sister I never had,” Brynn answered, shaking her head and mouthing “no” right after she said it.
“I can hear you,” Charlie countered, dispensing the tarp with a bit more force than she normally would.
“Thank you,” Brynn sing-songed sweetly.
It didn’t take long for Brynn and Jonah to cut out various shapes in the tarp, tie strings to them, and attach whatever objects they found lying around Brynn’s room.
“Okay, so pretend I’m this tube of lipstick,” Brynn said, tying the string around the lipstick and wadding up the ellipses-shaped tarp in her fist. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Jonah said seriously, as if they were about to make a life-changing discovery.
Brynn brought her arm back behind her head and threw the tarp forward into the air, waiting for her plan to take shape. Instead, as the tarp opened up, the lipstick tube brought it straight to the ground. Falling like a stone. Brynn looked at the lipstick top that had popped off upon impact and bounced across the room.
“If you’re the lipstick, I think your head just came off,” Jonah said, trying to suppress his delight at the situation.
“Let’s see yours work, then,” Brynn countered in annoyance, picking up the pieces of the lipstick tube and putting them back together defensively.
Without a word Jonah let his circular shaped tarp fly across the room. The tarp unfolded mid-air, the perfume bottle that represented him unwound from the string, and the whole thing floated gently down to the ground, landing on the carpet with a soft thud. He looked over at Brynn with a raised eyebrow, a cocky smile on his face.
“Oh, get over yourself,” Brynn shot back at him, quickly snatching up the perfume bottle and round tarp. “At least we know which shape to use.”
“And whose shape was that?” Jonah asked, cupping a hand to his ear and turning toward Brynn, still smiling.
“You’re so full of yourself Mr. ‘I don’t have anything better to do than read about everything in the world all day’,” she said, completely aware that she sounded like a child.
“True, but look where it’s gotten us,” he countered playfully.
“So I’m guessing that means you’re volunteering to make our wind catchers then?” Brynn said with mock sweetness.
“I’d be delighted,” he replied, snatching the tarp and perfume bottle from Brynn’s outstretched hand. He pulled the lid from the bottle and took a sniff, looking up at her with a smile. “What is it with you and sugar?” he asked.
“I like the smell,” Brynn said self-consciously. “And the taste,” she added.
“Oh, can you eat it?” he asked sarcastically, as he leaned over and placed his lips against her neck, though even as a joke it sent shivers down Brynn’s spine.
She could feel goose bumps rise all over her arms and hoped Jonah didn’t notice as he pulled away from her with a grin on his face. “It probably doesn’t taste very good,” she managed to say in an odd voice that didn’t sound like her own.
He licked his lips quizzically then pulled a face. “Definitely doesn’t taste like sugar, that’s for sure,” he said.
Brynn rubbed her arms in an attempt to make the still-present goose bumps go away and tried to act as natural as possible in light of the fact that she hadn’t expected to react that way to Jonah’s touch.
“Do you know how to sew?” she asked out of nowhere, desperate for a subject change.
“Sew?” Jonah asked, confused by the question.
“Sew the wind catchers,” Brynn clarified, still trying to ignore the spot on her neck where she could still feel Jonah’s lips.
“I can sew well enough to make them,” he assured her.
“Let me guess,” she said, “you learned it in a book.”
“Maybe,” he answered with a rakish grin. “I guess you’ll never know since you apparently don’t read books.”
“Hey, I have more important things to do,” she countered.
“Like riding around in trains and designing clothes?”
“Exactly,” she answered, pulling Jonah’s new outfit from her shopping bag after having completely forgotten about it for so long.
“You shouldn’t have,” he deadpanned, holding the all black garment up and inspecting it closely. “Night cover?” he asked, taking in the monochromatic apparel.
“I don’t have to read a million books to know it’s best to wear black at night,” she said, raising her nose into the air in a superior way. “Oh, and there are these too,” she added as she passed him the black gloves and scarf she had created. “In case it gets cold.”
“It would be nice if we knew where we were landing wouldn’t it?” he asked with a sigh. “I guess it’s all part of the adventure.”
“I knew you and I were the same person,” she said happily. “Does it look like it’s going to fit?”
“Well, it’s stretchy so I can tell you it’s definitely not going to be flattering, but it should fit. Just try not to get distracted by my manly physique when we’re about to jump off the speeding train,” he said with an arrogant look.
“It’ll be difficult,” Brynn replied while shaking her head.
“I’m sure you’ll manage. You are a professional after all.”
Brynn and Jonah both laughed, grateful for a topic that didn’t completely involve their imminent demise. Thinking about the daunting task of getting off of the train in one piece had hijacked Brynn’s thoughts for the past few weeks and she was nothing if not grateful for Jonah’s inability to be serious about anything.
“Well, since it looks like we’re actually doing this, I guess I’ll go home and work on the wind catchers,” he finally said before leaning in to whisper in Brynn's ear. “You should spend tomorrow getting all of the supplies packed away and drop by my house in a few days to make sure I’m still on task.”
At first Brynn wasn’t sure why he had needed to whisper that bit of information to her, not that she was complaining, having recently realized how lightheaded their close proximity made her. As soon as he pulled away though, he looked up at the ceiling, indicating that he did
n’t want Charlie to hear their plan.
“I can do that,” Brynn said hoarsely, instantly making her blush that Jonah could affect her so much all of a sudden.
They had slept in the same room in Central Wildwood and she didn’t so much as bat an eye, but now if he whispered to her she suddenly got all warm and flustered.
“I’ll message you with my address in a few days. I probably won’t be in the library for a while since these blessed things will take up all my time, so don’t go trying to make friends with the Worker there in my absence,” he said as he stood from her bed and grabbed the tarp creation he had made.
“Hey, unlike you, I have other friends to hang out with,” she countered.
“Yeah, friends who are afraid to walk through a train tunnel,” he shot back with a scoff.
Brynn felt suddenly odd having Jonah make fun of Ty so blatantly, but she wasn’t sure how to counter the insult without turning serious so instead she just gave a weak laugh at his joke.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” he said, winking at her before he slipped out of the room.
Chapter 20: Distractions
After her last encounter with her friends, Brynn doubted if they’d care that she hadn’t seen them in the past few days. She made a mental note to make up for her horrible behavior if she lived through this trip.
She had spent several days strategically packing all of their survival supplies into two black backpacks. Jonah had brought over all of his stockpiled food bars, water bottles, and camping equipment for Brynn to pack. He had looked tired and stressed when she saw him, but simply told her it was because he had been staying up late into the night working on their wind catchers.
“They’re going to be perfect,” he assured her before he left.
Once all of the supplies were finally packed and Brynn didn’t have anything left to distract her, her thoughts became like poison. Her mind was constantly plagued by visions of her and Jonah jumping off of the train, fully expecting their wind catchers to pull them up into the air, but finding that they actually got caught in the train wheels instead. Imagining the feeling of the burning hot metal against her face was enough to force her out of her house and over to Ty’s.
She actually knocked on the door this time, causing some confusion when Ty came to answer and found Brynn standing there.
“I didn’t think it would be you. Why did you knock?” he asked, puzzled.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, feeling too worn out by her overactive imagination to concentrate on thinking up a good lie. Ty searched her face and was apparently worried by what he saw there.
“Brynn what’s wrong? You look really…upset,” he said, tactfully not using some of the words he could have used: haggard, tired, awful.
“I’ve just been having bad dreams lately. Can’t sleep,” she said, which was technically true, even though she’d let Ty assume she was having dreams about the Angel and not about her death by train.
“Oh Brynn, I’m so sorry,” he said while pulling her into a hug. She nestled into the soft material of his off-white T-shirt and wrapped her arms around his waist, closing her eyes to shut out the outside world.
“I’m fine really. It just stresses me out,” she said, her words getting muffled by his chest, which she refused to pull away from.
He rubbed small gentle circles on the back of her neck with his thumb, something he had always done when she got into one of her moods, and tried to make soothing sounds to calm her down. Though the many different ways she could die on this trip were still vying for her attention, she found that for just a moment, this was a good distraction.
“Want to go to the park?” he asked, trying to find something to keep her calm and preoccupied.
“I think that would be perfect.”
* * *
The cool grass felt good against Brynn’s skin as she lay beside Ty, her fingers running up and down the inside of his bare arm.
“That tickles,” he told her, turning his head so that he could look over at her and shielding his eyes from the sun with his free hand.
“That’s the point,” she explained with a laugh as she continued to gently drag her fingertips across his soft skin.
Brynn attempted to completely override any of her worries with exactly what was happening at that moment. Whenever she thought of her wind catcher harness digging into her skin as it pulled her under the train, she’d try to memorize every dip and curve in Ty’s face. When she swore she could taste the metallic tang of blood in her mouth from her cheek grazing the metal track, she’d take a deep breath and try to pinpoint exactly what Ty’s cologne smelled like.
“You’re pretty quiet today,” Ty finally said, breaking the silence between them and pulling Brynn away from her thoughts; the good and the bad.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” she said with a sigh, letting her fingers stop their path along his arm to rest in the palm of his hand.
“Like what?” he asked. She knew he would ask that question since he’d want to find some way to fix her problems, but she hadn’t prepared a good answer for him.
Brynn had already planned the way she would tell Ty about the trip. The night before she and Jonah left, when she knew Ty would already be asleep, she would sneak over to his house and leave a bundle of letters for him in his bathroom. One letter would be for him. She’d explain the nature of their trip in every detail so that’d he’d know exactly what she was about to do. She’d also explain to him that the other letters in the bundle were for him, Amber, Bennett, and her parents, but he was only allowed to read and distribute them if he didn’t see her in a week or two. If she came back, she’d be expecting him to give the unopened letters to her so that she could burn them.
She knew it was a cowardly way to tell him the truth about what she was up to, but it was the only plan she could come up with where he wouldn’t be able to try to stop her. This way, by the time he read the letter she’d already be far away from Seaside, sitting nervously in a train compartment with Jonah and probably second-guessing every decision that had led her to that point.
“Brynn?” Ty said tentatively. She hadn’t realized that she had completely ignored his question, having gotten lost in her own thoughts.
“Ty, do you think I’m crazy? Not in a joking way, but being completely serious. Do you think I’m unstable?” she asked, turning to look at him with her brow furrowed.
He hadn’t stopped looking at her since they’d first gotten to the park, but now his gaze shifted as his eyes roamed over her features. He had a habit of trying to read her face before he answered any of her questions and it always made her wonder how much of her thoughts he could read in the subtle change of her expression.
“I think you’ve got a lot of knowledge, and a lot of ideas in your head that seem to make sense when you put them together,” he said carefully. Almost too carefully. “And I think a lot of your theories could be very practical and maybe even true.”
“But?” she asked, trying not to sound annoyed.
“But you’re reckless,” he admitted with a deep sigh, as if her recklessness had been plaguing him for years. Which, she reminded herself, it probably had been. How many times had he saved her life now? “You want answers so badly that you don’t really take reality into account. You think you’re unstoppable and it puts you in danger’s path far more often than I’d like,” he finished, closing his fingers around hers protectively.
“Fair enough,” she said evenly. “But taking my recklessness out of the equation…do you think I’m making all of this stuff up?” She knew she didn’t have to clarify to Ty what the ‘stuff’ she referred to was. He knew. The nightmares, the Workers, the wall surrounding the city.
“I think you definitely believe it’s true,” he answered, turning away from her and looking up into the sky.
“That’s not good enough Ty,” she replied, pulling her hand away from his.
“What do you want me to say, Brynn? That I think you’r
e right about everything?”
“That’s exactly what I want you to say,” she shot at him, wondering when their relaxing afternoon out had turned into an argument.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he told her. “I think you’ve found some pretty amazing coincidences and maybe there’s some merit to all of your theories, but until there’s more proof, they’re just coincidences.”
“Well, that’s exactly why I’m going on this trip,” she told him.
That got his attention and he turned to look at her once more, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at her suspiciously.
“What trip?”
“The one I’m about to take with Jonah,” she said icily, refusing to meet his eyes and pretending to be fascinated by a cloud formation overhead.
“You’re going on another trip with him?” Ty asked, obviously upset that he hadn’t been informed about this. “When?”
“That’s not really any of your business is it?” she asked, sitting up now and brushing the grass from her back. “Who knows, maybe I’m making the whole thing up because I’m so unstable.”
“I never called you that,” Ty practically shouted. “You said that.”
Brynn blushed as she realized the truth of his accusation, angry that he was right.
"You might as well have said it. You practically said I was making everything up,” she spat, standing up and glaring down at her friend who looked like he wanted to kill her for being so irrational.
“I didn’t say anything like that!” he said loudly, actually shouting now as he stood to face her.
“It’s not like I ever asked you to come along with me and put yourself in danger,” she said.
“Yeah, I got the message that you don’t want me to come with you loud and clear,” he shot back.
“Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you with the danger of the trip, after all.”
“Well good. Have fun with Jonah then. Maybe he’ll accidentally throw himself off the train,” Ty yelled, turning on his heel and practically running down the grassy slope away from her.
Sugar Coated Page 19
