Fortune Falls

by Jenny Goebel

  I knew what he wanted more than anything in the world, and I felt like I owed it to him. Just because I was Unlucky didn’t mean he had to be. I’d cost him a lot in his short life. I couldn’t bring back Dad, but maybe it wasn’t too late to bring back Wink.

  I closed my eyes, sucked in the deepest breath I could manage, praying that my short stint as a jogger had paid off, and thought, I wish for Wink to come home.

  Just as I was about to let it rip, expelling all the air from my lips in one gigantic puff, a gust of wind tore the plastic sheet off the window, and an icy blast of air whooshed in through the blinds. My own wind withered in one small, pathetic gasp, and I opened my eyes.

  Twelve puny wisps of smoke were curling in the air. My stomach sunk like an anchor with the certainty that it had been the gust of air that had blown out all the candles—not me.

  Petey beat me three times at Chutes and Ladders before we switched to Candy Land, and then he beat me three times more. When I drew a sugar plum and slid almost the entire way back to the beginning, Petey began to yawn, and I scolded him, probably a little too harshly. “Cover your mouth!” I chided.

  “Sorry,” Petey squeaked, scared right out of his yawning.

  “The Devil!” Yawning without covering your mouth was like breathing inside the cemetery, only worse. Opening your mouth to yawn gave the Devil a gaping hole to slip into and, unlike the wraiths, his strength didn’t wane outside the parameters of the cemetery.

  “I know, Sadie. I just forgot.”

  “You can’t forget, Petey. Not today!” I said, still with a sharp edge to my voice. Then under my breath, I whispered, “And soon I won’t be around to remind you.”

  “Sorry,” Petey said a second time, and his eyes teemed with tears. My failed birthday wish had been devastating for him. He’d only stopped crying when I’d pulled out the board games, and here I was making him start up again.

  First I’d snapped at Cooper and now my little brother. What was I doing? Trying to make sure they wouldn’t miss me when I was gone? I gave Petey’s curls a soft tousle. “No. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten upset.”

  Petey sniffled. “Can we do something else?”

  “Anything.”

  “Can’t we go for a walk, Sadie, please? Just a short one. We’ll stay off the sidewalks. I’m sick of being inside.”

  “Um …” I’d been expecting him to say something along the lines of building a castle out of blocks or turning the kitchen table into a fort with blankets and pillows. Mom had grabbed a half hour’s worth of sleep and then left to take her nursing exam. She hadn’t said not to go anywhere, but she probably would’ve if she’d known about our trouble the night before.

  “Please,” Petey begged.

  I ran through a quick mental checklist: short walk behind the neighborhood = no sidewalks, no ladders, no umbrellas, no birds tapping at windows or landing on rooftops, no mirrors, no salt to be spilled … black cat? Maybe. But overall it seemed no more threatening than staying here, attempting to ward off a case of persistent yawning. Plus, how could I not give in to Petey’s request? This was probably one of our last opportunities to do something like this together.

  What other “lasts” were coming? I’d have to make sure he was prepared to get his own snacks when he came home from school and Mom wasn’t here. I’d need to be certain that he knew the safest routes around the neighborhood and that he’d always lock the door behind him. I wondered if Mom would be able to take more time off from work to be with him, but I couldn’t imagine that she’d be able to. Perhaps Mrs. Morton from next door could watch him. He was too young to be left alone.

  “Okay, but promise you’ll stay close to me.”

  A few minutes later, we exited the front door, watching the sky for flocks of birds as we went. The wind had stopped. Outside was a clear, dull gray—not overcast exactly but not bright blue, either. I nodded to Petey, and we slipped down the porch and around the house.

  We took a few steps in the direction that led to Cooper’s tree house. Petey bumped right into my back when I made a sudden halt. I didn’t want to go by Cooper’s, even if he was at school. I turned around and spun Petey by his shoulders, and we both began walking in the opposite direction.

  “Sadie, look,” Petey whispered as he glanced over his shoulder, “the cat.”

  Sure enough, the cat was trotting after us.

  I gawked at the cursed thing, but she just kept bobbing right along behind us, swinging her nearly tailless backside to and fro as she went. It almost seemed like she was giving Petey a wide berth, as if trying to keep him safe.

  “She’s kind of like Wink,” Petey said. “I mean because they’re both missing something. You know, Wink’s missing an eye and she’s missing a ta—”

  “I know what you mean, Petey,” I said, cutting my little brother off. “But she’s nothing like Wink.” Just because I had a soft spot for the cat now didn’t mean she wasn’t still dangerous. “Ignore her.”

  I did my best to take my own advice for the next ten minutes, until she snuck up behind me and rubbed against my leg. I nearly tripped over her. “Argh! What are you doing, you dumb cat?” I scolded.

  But she stared back at me with big, cavernous eyes and mewed softly. Then with what seemed to be the entirety of her scrawny frame, she rumbled out a sweet low purr that melted the last bit of frost off my heart.

  “Well, it’s not like my luck can get any worse,” I said, and reached down to pet her. The cat arched her spine beneath my hand, rising on her tiptoes as if to soak up every last drop of my touch, and her purr deepened. It was full and steady like a motorboat. Petey giggled, and I couldn’t keep my lips from quirking upward. “There. Satisfied?” I asked teasingly, and at the same time thought to myself that it was almost nice having the cat around.

  But then she darted in front of us and stopped abruptly in the middle of our route. At first, I thought she was just playing. That she would dash to the side, as she’d done in the past, when we drew near. Yet as we moved forward, the cat held her ground.

  “What now, Sadie?” Petey asked. “We can’t cross her path.”

  I was confused. She’d seemed so friendly just a few seconds ago, but now alarms were sounding in my head. “What are you doing?” I asked, half expecting the cat to break into a purr again and demand more petting, but she didn’t. She just held our stares with an intense, almost threatening gaze of her own.

  “Okay, well, we’ll just turn around and go back, then,” I said, trying not to let my voice give away how nervous I felt. I didn’t want to frighten Petey.

  When we turned, the cat darted in front of us again and plopped her backside down in the middle of our path.

  “Why does she keep blocking us?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t understand why she’d help me find my little brother and trot along after us like we were her favorite people in the world, only to then turn around and curse us both the second she had the chance. Even if I couldn’t wrap my head around it, that seemed to be exactly what she had in mind.

  Well, not if I can help it, I thought resolutely. If she was some sort of henchman sent by Fate to draw me in close before striking, I was prepared to keep dodging.

  I searched for a way around the dastardly thing. Wanting to avoid the Fiddlemans’ house, the sidewalks, and everything else, we’d gone down a path I wasn’t quite familiar with. We were standing on a high point of land that dropped down on one side and was sheltered by an embankment on the other.

  If I had to guess, I’d say it was part of the same bluff I’d found Petey in and that we were on the opposite side of the cemetery from Rispin Field. That meant we weren’t far from the tracks that ran past the falls and the wood mill on the outskirts of town.

  “It doesn’t matter. We’ll work our way around her,” I replied at last. I led Petey away from the dirt path, and we started making our way down the drop-off. It was steep and covered with tall grass and rocks. “Just watch your
footing,” I said as we turned our steps sideways to keep from slipping.

  We somehow reached the bottom without tumbling to get there, and I was more than a little relieved to set foot on flat land. That was until I saw the tunnel just ahead. “Noooo,” I groaned. Tunnels were nearly as bad as cemeteries, and it was still Friday the thirteenth after all.

  Then I noticed that Petey had suddenly gone completely still.

  “It’s okay,” I reassured him. “It’s not that big a deal. We can walk around it. We just have to remember to hold our breath as we pass by.”

  “Shhh!” my little brother said. “I hear something.”

  I strained my ears to listen, but the only thing I could hear was the swooshing of grass as the black cat leisurely strolled up behind us. I half expected her to pull her little trick again, blocking our escape until we had nowhere else to retreat but into the tunnel. Instead, she just continued sauntering right around us and headed straight in.

  Petey’s jaw dropped.

  “Don’t worry, only humans are in danger.” I don’t know why I said it. It wasn’t like I was concerned for the cat, especially after she’d just forced us off the path. “Let’s get moving before she comes back,” I said.

  Petey shook his head. “No. Listen!”

  This time, all I heard was the cat mewing, her cries echoing eerily from deep inside the dark tunnel.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said. “Let’s just go.”

  “But it’s Wink!” Petey said. “I know it’s her. She’s whimpering just like when she hides in the bathtub. I swear, Sadie. I can hear her.”

  “Can’t be,” I said, and shook my head stubbornly. “You just hear the cat.”

  “No, Sadie! It’s Wink. We have to help her.” Petey puffed up his chest and then used every earnest drop in his sweet little soul to plead with his eyes. “Please, Sadie. Trust me. We can’t leave her here.”

  It hadn’t been that long since I’d asked him to trust me, and the tunnel actually wasn’t that far from the cemetery. What if Wink had come out the back side? Did the cat mean us harm or was she helping out again? “Okay,” I said at last. “Okay. I’ll go look. Just promise that no matter what, you won’t come in after me. If I don’t make it out, just find your way back to the path and go home and wait for Mom. Do you understand?”

  Petey nodded his head solemnly.

  What was with me lately? The cemetery. Rispin Field. Chasing a black cat into a tunnel on Friday the thirteenth. For luck’s sake. How did I keep finding myself in these situations when my luck was totally shot? Or was it because my luck was shot that I kept finding myself in these situations? Probably the latter.

  I counted to three, sucked in my breath, and dashed into the tunnel before I lost my nerve.

  The air was crisp and cool. It smelled like earth and coal and long-forgotten things. The ground was equal parts hard-packed dirt and ramshackle railroad tracks—there probably wasn’t a soul in Fortune Falls who wanted to come in here to repair them. With the mill being almost entirely shut down, the trains ran infrequently these days. But the threat of one coming, pulling train cars stacked with logs, hung over me as heavy as the gravity of holding my breath.

  My eyes were adjusting to the darkness. I could see deeper within the tunnel, up until a nearby bend. The cat’s shrieking had stopped, and I heard nothing but the sound of my own heart pounding in my ears. I decided to press on. My head felt clear, so I thought I’d give it a few more steps. I wanted to be able to say I’d tried my best before turning back. Then I’d have to tell Petey what I already knew—that he’d been mistaken.

  As I rounded the corner, I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not one, but two forms lay huddled together close to the rails, one decidedly larger than the other. The small, darkly colored one was purring.

  I rushed to my dog and ran my fingers down her back. She stared at me with her one good eye and let out an eager, little yap. Other than being a hair slimmer, she seemed no worse for the wear. But if I didn’t get out of there soon, I wasn’t sure I could say the same about me. I was running out of air.

  Tapping my thigh, I tried to convince her to follow. Wink struggled forward but couldn’t rise to her feet. It was then that I noticed that the tags on her collar were stuck on one of the railroad ties. It was also then that the tracks began to vibrate and rumble.

  My chest was tightening and my head was starting to hurt and now a train was coming. Seriously—a train. I nearly came undone. Every last unlucky cell in my body screamed at me to get out. Now. But I couldn’t leave Wink. I couldn’t lose her for good, not after I’d just found her. I couldn’t return to Petey empty-handed.

  Reaching down, I fumbled to find where the ring on her tags was wedged beneath a nail on the tracks. Come on, come on, come on, I chanted silently, feeling more woolly-headed than ever. Just a little longer, I told myself, but the ring was lodged tightly. No wonder Wink hadn’t been able to escape. No matter how much pressure I applied, it wouldn’t budge. I tried the release on Wink’s collar, but it was broken, just like everything else in my life. The train whistle blew in the distance.

  Being struck down by a train, in a tunnel, on Friday the thirteenth, days after breaking a mirror, seemed a fitting end for someone with my luck.

  The ground beneath me shook. It traveled up my legs. My toes, the soles of my feet, my calves, and my hamstrings vibrated along with it. Then my torso quivered and finally, my arms, until I couldn’t tell where the rumble of the train stopped and my quakes of fear began.

  My life was doomed beyond any shred of hope. Even if I tried to run, I knew my legs would give out beneath me. I just hoped the end would be swift.

  I closed my eyes and saw my mother’s face and little Petey’s sweet smile, and heard Cooper’s infectious laughter in my ears, drowning out the thunder of the train.

  Then my father’s voice came to me in the darkness: “Even if you aren’t lucky, you’re smart, and that’s far more important.”

  Something hardened inside me then, or maybe patched itself is a better way to describe it. I willed myself to believe him—the way I had when I was younger. I was devastatingly unlucky, but I’d survived. I’d made it this far.

  My fingers stopped shaking and the rest of me did, too.

  I opened my eyes and took in my surroundings while the cat bounded over to a second set of tracks inside the tunnel. I followed her and pressed my palm against one of the rails. No vibration.

  There hadn’t been a railroad switch on the way in. Perhaps there was one on the other side. Fuzzy light broke through the darkness near the far end of the tunnel. Without hesitation, I sprinted in that direction, heading straight for the oncoming train.

  The sunlight nearly blinded me when I reached the opening. I gulped in fresh air and spotted a switch stand a short distance from the mouth of the tunnel. By then I could see the train engine speeding toward me down the track. I didn’t have a single second to waste.

  I made a mad dash for the spot where one set of rails diverged into the two tracks that ran through the tunnel. Beside the switch was a long lever and a red-and-green target supported by a stand. The target was made of thin metal plates that split apart like the feathers on the tail end of an arrow—green visible from one direction, red from the other. The target was turned so that the green plates were facing the tracks.

  I wasn’t sure how to operate the switch, and the train was almost there, not slowing down. I had precious little time to figure it out …

  Just as I took another deep breath, this time to calm myself, I caught sight of a weathered sign screwed on to the stand. Part of the print had rubbed away so that only meaningless letters were left.

  A N TR CK - G EN PL TE

  SI E RA K - ED LA E

  My mind rapidly worked to fill in the empty spaces.

  MAIN TRACK - GREEN PLATE

  SIDE TRACK - RED PLATE

  The plates were turned on green, so the train was headed down the main tr
ack. I had to toggle the lever on the stand. I had to turn the plates to red before it was too late.

  Gripping the bar, I tugged with all my might. Something clicked loudly, and the target rotated to red the very instant a giant whoosh of air swept me off my feet. My eardrums nearly burst as the train whizzed by and then veered off toward the right.

  I’d done it!

  I’d actually switched the train to the other track.

  My body heaved. Shivers and quakes coursed through me, but not from fear this time, from relief. Once I’d picked myself up off the ground and pulled myself back together, I sucked in my breath and raced back into the tunnel.

  Wink was trembling and whimpering softly, but she was safe. The train had passed her by.

  I didn’t try to force the ring out from under the nail again. Without the train breathing down our necks, and with the air in my lungs replenished, I was able to think it through. The tags would never budge, but I could take them apart. I carefully twisted and slid the larger ring around and around a separate one attached to Wink’s collar until, miraculously, it came free.

  Leaving the tags and the larger ring still wedged beneath the nail, Wink immediately bolted to her feet. Her tail thumped against my leg, and I felt a jolt of energy with her beside me.

  I wanted to squeeze her to me and never let go, but first we had to get out of the tunnel. I was feeling light-headed again.

  The train was merely a rumble in the distance when we charged into the open. The instant Petey laid eyes on us, his face went from a deathly shade of white to being bright enough to cut through any flock of crows.

  It was hard to breathe because I was laughing and whooping with joy, but somehow I managed. I also managed to wrap both Petey and Wink, my one-eyed wonder dog, in a gigantic hug.

  I was bursting with happiness.

  “I thought you were dead,” Petey croaked when we finally broke apart. Then his eyes widened again with worry. “What about the cat?”