No Passengers Beyond This Point (16 page)

“Good luck,” Chuck shouts. His words sift through the storm to us.

The helicopters have landed again, closer now. They surround the clearing. Men in blue gloves are running toward us. “Bing, get India!” Mouse cries.

Chuck nods as the wind lifts off his cap. He waves Bing’s wallet and slips it into his jacket pocket. “I’ll try!” he calls as he runs back to the feather taxi, the men in blue gloves swarming in on him now.

The last thing we see before we descend into the tunnel is Chuck being led away.

F
rom outside, the tunnel opening looked like an oversized gopher hole. But inside, there’s a wide stairwell that takes us down to an underground passageway. The temperature down here is perfect—warm and cozy after the freezing sleet and battering wind outside, maybe because the walls are made of bits of sticks and feathers and stray fluff like a bird’s nest, insulating us from the outside.

We don’t see anyone now, but clearly people work here. The place looks like the basement floor of an office building for bird people. Cots with bird egg–patterned sheets, tables constructed from egg cartons, feather-covered coat stands, and chairs made of telephone poles with telephone-wire line backs rest against both sides of the passage. Rain gear hangs neatly in a line up ahead; coats with badges that show lightning striking clouds hang on hooks and boots rest in a row on the floor. There’s even a cuckoo clock and egg-shaped lockers painted in colors like robin’s egg blue, speckled brown, and eggshell white.

There are no dogs down here. No dog hair. No dog dishes. No dog leashes and no dog smell.

I don’t bring this up to Mouse, though. I don’t want to worry her. She’s already walking too slow. I check my clock. Seven hours and fifty-three minutes to find the dogs, find the box, and find India.

“Do you think they’ll hurt Bing?” she asks, sitting down on a chair with faded cloud-patterned fabric on the seat by a display of brightly-colored bird houses.

We’re in a weird underground world hoping to get help from a pack of strange dogs. We may never see Mom or India again and Mouse is worried about her imaginary friend? As smart as Mouse is, I don’t think she gets how important this all is.

“They won’t hurt Bing.” That is actually the one thing I’m sure about. How could they hurt him? He’s imaginary.

“But Mouse, we need to keep walking.”

She doesn’t move.

I stare at the scuffed brown bird’s nest pattern on the linoleum. “Bing will be okay. India will take care of him.”

“You don’t believe that,” she says, her chin jutting out, her shoulders slumping down.

I have to admit she’s right, I don’t believe it. I try again. “Maybe Bing doesn’t have to be gone . . . Why don’t you call him back?”

She looks at me incredulously. “He does what he wants, Finn. I can’t
make
him do anything.”

“Yes, you can, Mouse, you made him up.”

She shakes her head emphatically. “I did not. He just came to me. It was
his
idea.”

What do I say to that? I push my hair out of my eyes, and try again. “You told him to go with Chuck to find India. That was the right thing to do.”

She nods. “Finn?”

“Yes, Mouse.”

Her eyes well up with tears. “I miss Mommy and India.”

“If you love India that much, why do you bug her all the time?”

“I have to,” she says, “or she forgets about me.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best strategy.”

Mouse nods as if she’s considering this. “Some things are hard to understand.” She sighs a grown-up sigh. “That’s Bing’s job. He thinks about things that don’t make sense. I think about things that do.”

“Does Bing have a brother? Maybe his brother can come help you, because really, Mouse, we have to keep moving.”

“Bing’s a private person. He doesn’t talk about his person life.”

Just my luck. My sister’s imaginary friend is a hermit.

I’m about to try another tack when a bell rings in the distance and the sound of approaching footsteps echos through the passageway.

“Someone’s coming,” Mouse whispers.

Our eyes skitter around the long twig-covered hallway. The lockers? I try several until I find two that are open.

“Here,” I whisper to Mouse. She slips inside and I close the door as quietly as I can behind her. I slide into the locker next to hers. My locker bangs when it closes. Could they hear? I wait, sweat dripping down my sides.

The voices are closer now. “I still say this is overkill, Francine,” a man’s voice says. “Code seventy-three is very clear. People make their own choices.”

“We lost Chuck. We can’t afford to lose anyone else because of them,” the woman says. Francine?

Uh-oh. Chuck didn’t want to talk to her on the cab radio. I don’t think he trusted her.

“I just don’t understand why you’re devoting so much energy to tracking down a couple of kids . . .” the man says. “I saw what you did with that India. I don’t think she would have made that decision without assistance.”

I can see them through the locker vents now. A short woman wearing a silvery vest that glistens like a hologram. She has brown hair that swings like a pendulum when she walks and bright pink glasses. The man is in the traditional blue security outfit. Oh! It’s Manny, the guy at the border crossing. I thought his voice sounded familiar.

“Don’t be such a purist, Manny. She just needed a little help is all. I want to get these kids settled. The boy worries me. When was the last time Sparky offered anyone a job?”

“He’s twelve, Francine,” Manny says. “I don’t see how he could be a threat.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t ever remember Sparky offering anyone a job.”

“Exactly. And the little one is a loose cannon.”

“C’mon Francine, this is the natural order of things and you know it. This isn’t about you and Sparky not getting along, is it?”

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffs. “Time is on our side, anyway. All we really have to do is throw a few obstacles in front of them.”

“That isn’t honoring the spirit of the law, Francine.”

“You’re going to report me to Headquarters? Please. All they care about is their precious vehicles. Wait, check those lockers.”

Manny walks back to the start of the bank of egg-shaped lockers and begins lifting the handles one by one.
Click-squeak-bang
.
Click-squeak-bang
. The unlocked lockers get opened and banged shut.
Clic-cric
. The locked lockers make a constricted sound.

He’s almost to Mouse’s now. I think I can jam the mechanism on mine, so he won’t be able to open it, but Mouse won’t know to do this, will she? I don’t dare say anything now.

Click-squeak-bang
. Manny opens and shuts the locker next to Mouse on the other side. I hold my breath, my heart beating like a basketball on pavement.

Clic-cric.
Mouse’s doesn’t open.

I hold the lever down hard.
Clic-cric
. Mine doesn’t either.

“Let’s walk to the end.” Francine’s voice again. “Then we’ll double back.”

I wait for their footsteps to recede, for their voices to fade away.

“Good work jamming the locker, Mouse,” I whisper when the passage is silent again except for the low rumble of the heating system.

“Can I come out now?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say, lifting the handle on my locker, only it doesn’t move. I must have jammed it too hard. I wiggle it, knock it, shove my weight against it. But it won’t budge. I can’t get the door open.

“Finn,” Mouse asks. “Can you get me out, Finn? Can you?”

I
try to control the waver in my voice. “There has to be a way to spring it open,” I tell her. It’s dark in the locker and a tight fit. There’s light in the hallway, and some filters through the vents, but not enough to see the mechanism clearly.

The lock mechanism looked like the kind they have at the Y—the ones where you bring your own lock. They shouldn’t have jammed this way.

Are the hinges bent? Did we break the lock somehow? I try to kneel down so I can get a good look, but there’s no room for that. The only way I fit is standing up. I let my hands be my eyes, feeling how the lock works.

My fingers explore the lever to trip the door. Why would Mouse’s locker and my locker get jammed at the same time? What are the odds of that?

“Finn,” Mouse calls. “I found something. It’s a sign!”

“Inside the locker? Can you see what it says?”

“How to open the locker. One: Remember what you want to forget. Two: Ask yourself a question you can’t answer. Three: Remember what you wish more than anything you hadn’t forgotten.”

“What?”

“How to open the locker. That’s what it says, Finn. Right here.”

“No locker opens that way.”

“Yeah, but the sign says it, Finn,” Mouse says emphatically.

“How can you remember what you forgot? It’s impossible. If you’ve forgotten it, then how can you know what it is?”

“If Bing were here, Bing would do that part. He would know what I’d forgotten that I want to remember.”

I’m about to say that’s crazy, but then I realize there’s something to this.

“Hey, I know,” Mouse says, “
you
can do that part. You can think of something that I forgot. And I have to think of something you forgot.”

This is why Mouse is amazing. Just when you think she’s completely Looney Tunes she comes up with something like this. “That’s a good idea, Mouse!”

“Do I just say it out loud, Finn? Will the locker hear?”

“I don’t see how that’s possible, but let’s try it.”

“One: Remember what you want to forget,” Mouse says. “That’s easy. How much I miss Mommy. I try to forget this, but every minute I remember again.”

“Good. That’s good Mouse, keep going.”

“Two: Ask a question you can’t answer. Why doesn’t India play with me anymore?”

“That’ll do,” I say.

“Now you gotta help me with three. Remember what you wish you didn’t forget,” Mouse says.

“You never forget anything, Mouse,” I mutter. But I’m six years older than she is. There has to be something I remember that she doesn’t. Something when she was little maybe. “Where did the name Bing come from?”

“Bing’s mom,” Mouse replies.

“I don’t think so. I think it came from the song India used to sing to you. Man did you love that song. B-I-N-G, B-I-N-G, and Bingo was his name-o. Remember, Mouse? Remember?”

“Finn?”

“Yeah, Mouse.”

“My locker opened.”

Mouse is out now. She puts her eye up close to the locker vent so she can see me inside. Her finger pokes through for a finger wave.

“You do it now,” she says.

“One: Remember what you want to forget.” I take a deep breath. That one isn’t hard to answer. “The day Daddy died.”

“Was I there?”

“You weren’t born yet. Mommy was in the hospital. She was about to have you. I went with Grandma Essie to visit Dad.”

“He was in a car accident taking Mommy to the hospital because I wanted to get out of Mommy’s tummy,” Mouse fills in.

“That wasn’t your fault, Mouse.”

“India thinks it was.”

“No she doesn’t. She just misses Dad like I do. Anyway, he survived the accident. He was going to be fine,” I say.

“But then his heart stopped,” Mouse chimes in. “So he never got to meet me.”

“Grandma Essie stopped at the hospital gift shop to buy candy for the nurse who was taking care of Mommy and you in Mommy’s tummy.”

“Where was India?”

“With Aunt Sammy. I headed up the back stairs to Daddy’s room. Grandma Essie said not to, but I couldn’t wait to see him. I thought he was playing hide-and-seek under the covers. Then I thought he was sleeping. I called to him, ‘Daddy wake up. It’s Finn! Daddy!’”