Sugar Coated (11 page)

“Sorry they talked you into coming to this,” Brynn said apologetically, looking into Jonah’s
sharp blue eyes with her own.

“It’s fine. I just feel bad that I didn’t dress up. I didn’t realize it was a formal party,” he said, pulling at the sleeves of his T-shirt uncomfortably and looking around at the room of well-dressed partygoers.

“Trust me, Amber and Bennett didn’t even notice. All you have to do is wink at them and they’d forgive you for anything,” Brynn reassured him with an attempt to wink like Jonah did.

Jonah looked confused at this explanation
, but didn’t bother asking Brynn to expound. Instead, he looked out the large window behind them in silence, taking in the brilliance of the city, or perhaps the mystery of what lay beyond in the ocean.

“There’s our spot,” Jonah said, pointing at the sandy hill that rose up right before the beach off in the distance.

“Our spot,” Brynn repeated, a smile involuntarily gracing her lips. “I like that. ‘Let’s go to our spot,’” she intoned with a grin. “It has a nice ring to it.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” he said warmly, still looking out over the city.

“What made you come to the party tonight?” Brynn asked, finishing the rest of her glowing drink in one sugary gulp. “It doesn’t seem like your thing.”

“Doesn’t really seem like yours either,” he countered, “Though that dress would suggest otherwise,” he added thoughtfully, attempting to hold back a smirk.

“Don’t even get me started on the dress,” she warned, waving her glass menacingly in front of her. “My house made the dress. I had absolutely no say in its length.”

“Or lack thereof,” he said.

“Yes,” Brynn agreed, “Or lack thereof.”

“So what do normal people who don’t spend all of their time in the library usually do at these parties?” Jonah asked, pulling his eyes away from the window to silently survey the room.

“They usually invent new methods of travel, discuss art, talk philosophy, that kind of thing,” Brynn deadpanned.

“I should have known,” Jonah answered with a defeated shake of his head. “I don’t know if I’m brilliant enough to be here anymore.”

“Probably not,” Brynn said. “It might be best if we just go.”

Brynn looked over at Amber, Bennett, and Ty, who quickly looked away from her, obviously trying to avoid the appearance of obsessively studying what was transpiring between Brynn and Jonah. She shook her head at her friend’s behavior before looking back at Jonah.

“I have a train to catch. Want to walk me to the station?” she asked, raising one eyebrow quizzically.

“Well, I was really hoping I could absorb some of the free thinking going on here, but if you insist on dragging me away from this culturally enriching experience, I guess I’ll go.”

“Perfect,” Brynn said with a smile. She and Jonah walked over to her group of friends, who were still pretending not to notice them.

“I’ve got to get going or I’ll miss my train,” Brynn informed them over the loud music that filled Amber’s house.

“So soon?” Bennett asked with a suddenly sad expression. “You literally just got here!”

“Can’t be late,” Brynn replied with a shrug. “Amber, the party really was amazing. Message me with a link to the weekly top ranking site so I can see your new remodel on there!”

“I will,” Amber exclaimed, instantly forgiving Brynn for leaving her party early with the reminder that she may have finally cracked the top ranking.

“Thank you for inviting me. It was a lot of fun,” Jonah said politely, lying through his teeth.

“We’ll expect to see you around here more often now that you’re one of us,” Bennett said, giving Jonah a long slow wink.

“Subtle,” Brynn told her friend with a shake of her head.

“Have a safe trip,” Ty said to Brynn, a worried look passing over his face.

“I always do,” she answered, pulling her friend into a tight hug and closing her eyes for a moment.

“You still smell as sugary as ever,” he whispered to her, placing a light kiss on her cheek as they pulled apart.

“See you in a few days,” she told her group of friends as she and Jonah made their retreat from the party.

* * *

“So, how long is your trip?” Jonah asked as they walked through the relatively silent streets of the city. Most people were either at parties or home by this time of night in Seaside.

“I leave tonight and come back in two days,” she informed him, trying not to fall over in the kitten heels her house had thought were a good idea. “I’ll only be in Central Wildwood for one full day, but with the twelve-hour train ride both ways, it makes the trip a bit long.”

“How often do you go?” he asked her.

“Once a month,” she answered, still concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other. After leaving the party, it seemed much more difficult to walk straight than it had going in.

“Wow. That’s a lot of trips. Do you always go to the same place?”

“Every time,” she said with a knowing look. “Didn’t I tell you about the trip I took with my parents?” she asked, finding that her memory recall was not working quite right at the moment.

“Is this the trip you took when the train stopped?” he asked, trying to make a connection between the trip she took with her parents and all of the bizarre things she had asked Jonah to look up since they met.

“I just figure, maybe if I keep taking the same trip, the train will stop again and I can get some real answers for once,” she answered with a defeated sigh.

“Real answers,” he repeated, hooking his arm through hers and making it much easier for Brynn to walk suddenly. “Now that would be something
, wouldn’t it?”

Chapter 11: Luxury

Though the purpose of Brynn’s monthly trip was to gain knowledge and hope for a breakthrough in her ever-growing list of questions, she couldn’t help but revel in the luxury of traveling by train. She had reserved a private compartment at the very front, only a few steps from the door all of the Angels had filed through when she was nine.

Her compartment contained a small bed, an entertainment wall screen, and a plush maroon armchair with a side table. Though she didn’t expect the train to suddenly come to a jarring halt after years of having taken the same trip every month with no luck, Brynn was still on high alert, hoping for anything out of the ordinary to happen.

Ice water with sugar?
the wall screen in front of her suddenly read.

“Yes please,” Brynn replied, never quite sure why the train computers could only type and not talk. The wall dispenser to her left pushed the icy glass into her hand before retracting and disappearing seamlessly into the dark wood paneling of the train.

“Thanks,” she said distractedly, drinking down the sugary water while her mind focused on other things. She thoughtlessly swiped her finger across the surface of her tablet, turning the pages of a magazine she didn’t really care about as she thought back to the recent events that had set her on a more productive course.

Before she’d met Jonah, she had g
rudgingly accepted the role of ‘the girl with questions’. Her friends were well aware of the fact that nothing seemed to sit right with her, but when even her parents couldn’t answer the endless questions she thought of, Brynn had all but given up on ever trying to figure things out.

That was before Jonah.

Once she met the elusive boy with intelligent blue eyes and long, thoughtful pauses in his conversation, things seemed to change. Now, not only was she more motivated to find her own answers, she had someone just as interested in discovering the truth. Whatever that truth might be.

Brynn thought back to what Jonah had said to her right outside of the train station. “Real answers. Now wouldn’t that be something.”

She played his remark over and over again in her head. It almost sounded to her like a challenge. Like he was daring her to come back from her trip empty-handed after all of the stories she had told him.

“I won’t let you down,” she thought aloud, a small smile beginning to spread across her face
as she sat her water glass on the decadent gold end table. She slid the door to her compartment open and peeked her head out into the long empty hallway of her train car. Glad to have some privacy, she padded on silent feet over the lush carpet of the train to the door where she’d seen the Angels enter.

Brynn placed her hand against the door, feeling the speed of the train through the vibrations in the wood. This train wasn’t slowing down. It wasn’t even thinking about stopping anytime soon. She was already almost six hours into her trip, the exact time the train had stopped on her first trip as a child. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the door, wondering if she could hear the answers there in the elaborate carving of the wood.

A bump in the track sent the car jolting to one side, causing the wall where her head rested to hit Brynn sharply. She pulled away, placing her hand gingerly over the small bump that had already formed right above her left eyebrow and cursing quietly under her breath. Turning angrily away from the door to the outside world, she focused her attention on the door she was really interested in.

The one that led to the control panel at the front of the train.

This door was much more intimidating than the one the Angels had come in through. This one actually
did
contain a secret for her to discover. If she could somehow break through that door she would have complete control over the train’s movements. She could speed it up, or more importantly, stop it right outside of Aywon.

The lock on this door didn’t look overly complicated, though the series of numbers and letters proved to be a problem. There was no way Brynn would be able to figure out the code to get into the control room. With little hope that this plan could work, she pulled her tablet from her ever-present olive green canvas messenger bag and typed in the password that would connect her to her house.

“Are you having a nice trip?” Charlie asked the second she came online.

“Lovely,” Brynn said hurriedly. “I don’t suppose you could do me a favor?” she asked sweetly, trying to butter her house up so that it would cooperate. She knew her house hated socializing with strange computers.

“Of course,” she said unsuspectingly.

“I need you to talk to the train’s computer and ask it for the code to the control room,” Brynn said simply.

“Of course,” Charlie repeated without much of a fight, surprising Brynn. “While I’m at it, would you like me to take over the city and drain the ocean?”

There was the sarcasm Brynn had been expecting.

“Charlie, just try,” she said irritably.

“Is this about the dress? Because I thought you looked wonderful. And Amber’s house told me Jonah seemed to like the dress too,” Charlie informed her.

“Oh, so you have no problem talking to Amber’s house about my social life, but you can’t talk to a train computer when I ask?” Brynn said in disbelief, feeling the blood rush into her cheeks over being the subject of inter-house gossip. “Please just try.”

“I’ll do what I can, but trains are even more unpleasant than libraries,” Charlie warned before going completely silent.

Sighing deeply at the feeling that everyone was trying to sabotage her plans, Brynn gingerly placed her hand against the wall of the train once more, feeling the vibration of the movement outside. She couldn’t quite think of a way to get out of the train short of drilling a hole in the wall, which she somehow thought wouldn’t go over too well.

For a moment she thought back to her times in the library with Jonah. He was a smart boy, although spending all of your time surrounded by books would probably make anyone relatively smart. She wondered briefly what he would make of the lock to the control room. If he would know of some clever way to get past it or if he would simply reference a book that told her how to stop a train using only a tablet and a shoelace.
She thought about calling him on her tablet, but realized she didn’t know his ID number. That did present a problem. Simply searching for a “Jonah” with no ID number could turn up any number of people.

“I hate to say I told you so,” Charlie’s voice suddenly said over Brynn’s tablet.

“Do you really?” Brynn asked in irritation. “Because I’ve never quite gotten that vibe from you.”

“The train’s computer is so archaic,” Charlie went on, ignoring Brynn’s dig. “It can barely speak. Mostly
it just makes unintelligible grunting noises and then resorts to typing everything out. Honestly, I don’t know how you can stand to spend so much time with that thing every month,” Charlie said, showing her true snob metropolitan manufacturing roots.

“It’s a struggle,” Brynn said sarcastically. “So what did it say?”

“Well
he
said…or typed rather, that you’re in violation of some sort of code right now,” she said calmly. “And that if you don’t step away from the control room door and return to your compartment, you may be banned from the train for life.”

Brynn pulled her hand away from the wall as though she had been burned and backed into her compartment. She wasn’t sure if Charlie was telling the truth, but she couldn’t risk losing her only connection to Aywon.

“Personally I don’t think that old processor even knew you were standing by that door until I told him,” Charlie went on, unfazed by the panic Brynn had just undergone over her simple statement. “Probably has a dusty fan or something,” Charlie said, more to herself than Brynn.

“So no code then?” Brynn asked, though she already knew the answer.

“No code,” Charlie repeated before powering down.

* * *

Chalking the night up as another great failure, Brynn ordered filet mignon doused in garlic sauce, chive stuffed potatoes, and green beans sautéed in butter and nutmeg to drown her sorrows. She watched the year’s top-ranked movies on her wall screen, lazily eating the rich food and drinking the large glass of cranberry juice with sugar cubes she had ordered from the archaic computer Charlie seemed to hate so much.

She only half paid attention to the storylines in the movies that played in front of her, instead focusing most of her attention on the door at the front of the train. If she could somehow obtain the code, she’d be back in business, but she was almost certain no one would be able to help her with that. Since it was highly unlikely that the code was written in a book, Jonah would be no assistance, although Ty may be a different story. He was a computer genius, after all, and Brynn had seen him hack into more complex computers than this just for fun.

Excited by a new prospect on the trail she had thought cold only moments before, she pulled out her tablet and punched in Ty’s ID number. His brown eyes popped up onto the screen looking red and puffy. Brynn could see his bare shoulders and realized he didn’t have a shirt on, and from the odd angle she was seeing him at, he appeared to be holding his tablet above his face from a laying position.

“Brynn, do you know what time it is?” he asked sleepily. Brynn quickly slapped a hand over her mouth, not realizing that she had scheduled a late train ride this month instead of her normal morning departure.

“I’m so sorry, Ty,” she said quickly, feeling bad for disturbing him in his sleep.

“At least you know I’ll pick up for you even when it’s
…whatever time it is,” he answered with a yawn. For a moment the entire world turned upside down on Brynn’s screen as Ty sat up in his bed and adjusted his position so that she was looking at him head-on. A soft orange light popped into life on the side of his screen as he turned on his bedside lamp.

“I see you’ve changed out of
the
dress,” he remarked, rubbing his eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding his tablet.

“Yep, back to my boring default outfit,” she said, “Try to contain your disappointment.

“So, what’s so urgent?” he asked, looking a bit more awake as he ran his fingers through his sandy blonde hair.

“You’re a computer genius,” she said, with no hint of a question in her voice.

“I’m going to go with a yes for that one,” he agreed, too tired to try to be modest.

“If I show you an electronic lock, would you be able to tell me if you can
hack it?” she asked cautiously.

She could see the confusion in his eyes and was almost glad now that she had woken him up. He wouldn’t be too logical or too prone to follow the rules to help her out. She needed to play off of his bad judgment for a moment.

“I guess,” he answered warily.

He opened his mouth to ask her more details, but the less information she gave him the better, so she cut him off with a quick, “Perfect. One sec.”

Sliding her compartment door open once more and poking her head around the corner, she was met, yet again, with a completely empty hallway. She allowed herself a quick congratulatory smile as she tiptoed to the door to the control room and turned her tablet so that it faced the lock.

“Does that loo
k too difficult?” she asked Ty.

Even though she couldn’t see his face on the screen that was turned away from her, she knew his eyes would reflect that his brain was working through the problem.

“Is this a lock on the train?” he asked as Brynn turned her tablet around to face her once more and retreated back into her compartment, not wanting to risk the idea that the train’s computer might be watching her.

“It might be,” she said elusively, though it was pretty obvious that she was still on the train from the frequent jolts to one side.

“Brynn,” Ty said in a voice much like the one her father adopted when she had done something naughty as a child. “What are you up to?”

She thought for a moment, trying to decide exactly how much she should tell him. Ty was alw
ays so responsible and serious that she knew he wouldn’t risk getting either of them in trouble even if Brynn insisted it was for the greater good. He cared too much.

“I’m just bored and thought I’d ask,” she lied.

“Yeah, like I’ll believe that for a second,” he scoffed, shaking his head at her. Even in his groggy state he was still perceptive enough to read the situation perfectly. “What are you really trying to do?”

“I just want to see what’s beyond that door,” she said, semi-honestly.

“You already know what’s beyond the door,” Ty told her. “It’s the control room to the train.”

“Okay, so maybe I want to be able to control the train
…just a little bit,” she said guiltily, squinting her eyes at her screen as if distorting Ty’s image would make him appear less worried about her.

“Brynn, you’re not going to try to run the train off the tracks or something, are you?” he asked, sounding like he was torn between worry and panic.

“No, nothing like that,” she insisted, seeing why he was always so concerned about her.