Sugar Coated (22 page)

He continued to move the metal in his left hand up and down a few more times while Brynn glanced nervously at her watch. They only had five minutes until they were supposed to get off the train, and even then she thought they should have jumped sooner to make absolutely certain they would be headed in the right direction.

As the minutes on her watch quickly counted down and eventually reached zero, she was almost positive she was about to have a heart attack. Her fingertips tingled and her mouth felt all wrong as she tried to keep calm and breathe evenly.

“Jonah?” she asked, unable to hide the worry in her voice.

“I’ve almost got it. Just one more pin to go,” he said, still keeping his eyes closed and his ear pressed against the wood of the door.

Ty looked over Brynn’s shoulder skeptically, obviously not putting as much faith in his abilities as Brynn did.

She looked up at the ceiling, trying to keep herself from having a complete breakdown as the minutes ticked by and their window of opportunity to jump got smaller and smaller. She was trying to count how long it had been since the stopwatch reached zero, hoping she could figure out if they would have passed the city already.

“Got it,” Jonah finally said, standing up and shaking the door handle a few times to make sure it really was unlocked.

Brynn let out a huge sigh of relief, only to remember that Jonah’s success in picking the lock now meant that she’d actually have to jump off of the train—the thing she had been dreading since they’d come up with the idea.

“Let’s hope there’s a lot of trees and ground cover wherever we are,” she said nervously. “Just in case someone notices the door before we get a chance to really get away.

“I think it’ll be a lot like Central Wildwood,” Jonah said. “We shouldn’t have trouble finding a place to hide.”

Looking around the door that led into the back room, Brynn made sure no one was coming down the hallway while Jonah pulled out their wind catchers. He stepped into his own harness, tightening the straps around his body and double-checking the tarp to make sure it was folded correctly.

Brynn looked down at her own harness and hoped more than she had ever hoped for anything else that it would support the weight of both her and Ty.

“You step into it first,” she instructed Ty, pointing out where his feet were supposed to go in the now familiar tangle of straps.

Once he was in position she stepped in front of him and pulled the harness up around them, making sure she let out all of the slack and hoping it would be enough. Ty was quite a bit taller than her, making the harness fit awkwardly around the two of them. It ended up being quite a bit looser than she would have liked.

Jonah walked over to the pair of them and pulled on the harness, making a face that put Brynn on edge.

“What is it?” she asked immediately.

“These straps just don’t work well with you two being built so differently,” he said, trying to adjust them so that they’d be snugger. “Honestly, if Ty and I wouldn’t be so heavy together we’d be a better match since we have the same build.”

“Sorry,” Ty mumbled, fully aware that the problem they were facing with no time left to debate was fully his fault.

“I think it’ll be fine,” Brynn said unconvincingly. “You’d just better hold on to me,” she said over her shoulder to a very nervous looking Ty.

“I will,” he assured her.

“Maybe you two should go first so that I can let your wind catcher go for you,” Jonah suggested.

“Good idea,” Brynn agreed, trying to get her knees to stop shaking as she felt the speed of the ground rushing under her feet.

“Okay, so I’ll open the door and hold onto the tarp. Once Ty’s got a secure grip on you, I’m going to throw it out behind you and the force of the wind should do the rest,” Jonah said in a hopeful voice, leaving out the possibility that the ridge he’d installed in the tarp wouldn’t work and the two of them would be immediately pulled under the train and smashed into nothing more than a red line on the tracks.

“Okay,” was all Brynn could manage to say, her throat feeling like she had a mouthful of sand.

She was fairly certain she was only a few moments from vomiting
, but tried desperately to keep her body in check. She reached for Ty’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze, needing to feel him there to reassure her.

“I’m opening the door now,” Jonah told them calmly, trying not to rush when they were already so behind schedule.

As soon as the door opened, the full volume of the outside world rushed in, along with strong wind gusts that almost knocked all three of them over. The walls of the train were instantly flooded with light from a source Brynn couldn’t see as she faced away from the door, blocking her first view of the world outside of a city. The cacophony coming from the outside world was so deafening that she had to resist the urge to clamp her hands over her ears.

Brynn’s long black hair flew wildly around her, smacking Ty in the face as he tried to yell at her to pull it up. She quickly obliged, wrapping it into a bun on top of her head and apologizing profusely for assaulting him with her hair in the first place.

“If the lock didn’t alert someone to what we were doing, the noise sure will,” Brynn called to Jonah who stood with the tarp in his hands, ready to throw it behind them.

“I guess we’d better be fast then,” he yelled back. “Ty
, grab onto her in case the harness is too loose,” he shouted.

Ty didn’t speak
, but brought his arms around her waist, pulling her tightly against him as he stood with his back to the open door.

“I’ll
hold on tight,” he called over Brynn’s head to Jonah, who simply gave him a thumbs-up in understanding.

“Ready?” Jonah called to them.

“No,” Brynn shouted hysterically, feeling as if she were about to cry.

“Too bad,” Jonah yelled as he threw the tarp behind them.

Brynn’s body was immediately flooded with a burning pain that she sincerely hoped wasn’t the ground rubbing her skin off. She felt a sharp sting in her right shoulder and a dull thud at the back of her head as the force of the wind catcher caused her to smack into Ty’s chin. She could hear him yell in pain as stars flashed before her vision.

Brynn
closed her eyes tightly and it took her a moment to realize the harness was digging unrelentingly into her. She could feel the material of her black outfit rip as the straps made contact with her bare skin and tore into her flesh. She let out a loud scream of agony as Ty clung to her tightly, keeping a good grip on her as he promised he would.

At least we must be off the ground,
she thought, still not sure she’d be able to open her eyes both from terror and the sheer agony she was feeling in her arms and legs as the harness designed for only one person tore into her. She was almost certain it would rip right through her, but she tried desperately to ignore the visions of her own dismemberment streaming through her mind.

“Brynn, it’s working,” Ty yelled as the thundering sounds of the train faded into the distance and were replaced by only the rushing of wind past her ears. “We’re actually in the air
…well…sort of,” he shouted, though with the sudden silence he didn’t need to raise his voice at all. “Wait, we’re coming back down pretty fast!” he yelled, completely unaware of Brynn’s suffering. Obviously the harness wasn’t hurting him nearly as much.

“I can’t breathe,” Brynn managed to choke out, still keeping her eyes closed and trying to focus on pushing air in and out of her lungs
. She tried to reach up to the place on the back of her head where she’d hit Ty’s chin, but found that her body wouldn’t respond to her command. “I can’t move my arm!”

“Brynn, brace yourself. We’re about to hit pretty hard,” he informed her, not hearing her previous statement.

With almost no warning, Brynn could feel the heels of her boots skimming soft ground underneath her, the dirt moving much faster than it should have been. She finally managed to open her eyes and was amazed at just how wrong they had been about the terrain.

The sun was blindingly bright as it reflected off of a landscape that was anything
, but green. There were no trees to speak of in the flat, sandy expanse around them. In fact, there were barely any plants at all, unless you counted the dead looking brown and sage colored brush that sprang up periodically in the sand covered ground.

Though only her heels had been skimming the ground before, Brynn could tell they were quickly lowering to the land that was still rushing by underneath them at an alarming pace.

“Why are we still going so fast?” Ty asked as the wind catcher gave up its last attempt to keep them afloat and completely dumped them into the sand, making them roll several times before they came to a stop, covered from head to foot in dry, hot dirt.

Brynn lay on her back on top of Ty for a moment, still trying to breathe and closing her eyes against the pain in her arms, legs, and head.

“We’re alive,” Ty said, laughing slightly at this revelation.

“I can’t breathe,” Brynn repeated.

“Is the harness too tight?” he asked, making Brynn laugh as much as she could with no air.

“It’s ripping my arms off,” she gasped.

She could feel Ty shift underneath her, moving so that his head looked over her shoulder.

“Oh no,” he said, instantly causing Brynn to look down at Ty’s arms which were streaked with a dark crimson that didn’t quite make sense to her.

“Is that blood?” she asked him, too distracted by the world around her to really pay attention to the mysterious red liquid that had appeared on Ty’s arms wrapped around her waist.

Her head was slowly losing the pain that had plagued her so much since their jump off of the train
and her right arm was beginning to go numb. In fact, everything was growing fuzzy.

“Brynn
, what happened? Why are you bleeding?” Ty asked in the completely panicked and worried voice she was so accustomed to hearing with him.

“How did we get onto the ground so fast?” she asked, looking around at the sparse desert. “It must be really dry here to have no plants,” she thought aloud.

“Brynn,” Ty said again, trying to keep her attention on his question. “Where does it hurt?”

“Where did Jonah go?” she asked, looking at the few plants that did dot the land. “He was so wrong,” she said with a giggle. “He thought there would be trees everywhere
…silly boy.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Ty asked urgently.

“Look at how ugly this place is,” she exclaimed, trying to point around her, but finding that the action sent white hot pain through her body, instantly making her recoil.

“Is it your arms, Brynn? Do your arms hurt?” Ty asked, trying to use short sentences to bring her back to reality.

“I bet we fell to the ground faster than Jonah because we weighed more. Hopefully he’s not still in the air,” she said, still unable to focus on whatever unimportant thing Ty was talking about.

“Brynn, you need to listen to me,” he said.

“Can you imagine how high I would have gone by myself?” she asked, leaning her head back against Ty’s chest and closing her eyes in the too bright sunlight. “You saved me,” she said to Ty. “I’d kiss you right now if I wasn’t facing the wrong way.”

This made her laugh and she found that once she had started laughing, she couldn’t quite stop. So many emotions ran through her that the only logical reaction at that moment seemed to be amusement. She was shocked by the fact that their plan had worked, elated that she wasn’t dead, and completely puzzled by the numb feeling in her arms and legs.

“There’s too much blood,” Ty said over her shoulder, sounding as if he were talking to himself more than to Brynn.

“Yeah, where did that come from?” she asked, trying to focus on reality when the world just felt soft and fuzzy.

“It came from you Brynn. You just need to tell me what’s hurting,” he informed her reasonably, sounding almost too calm as his hands worked frantically to undo the harness that didn’t seem to want to let them go.

“Nothing’s hurting. I actually feel really good. I can’t feel my arms or legs
, but it’s kind of a nice alternative to being a smear on the train tracks, don’t you think?” she asked, trying to suppress a monumental giggling fit that was threatening to escape her. “Oh, and my head’s kind of fuzzy…I think I may or may not have lost a piece of it when we flew off the train.”

“Yeah, you slammed it into my jaw,” Ty said, still trying to undo the harness. “How were we supposed to get off of the train together without this harness completely ripping your arms off?” Ty asked no one in particular. “I bet your genius boyfriend didn’t think of that,” he mumbled.

“I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Brynn said, continuing to let her head rest back against Ty’s chest. “The sand is so nice and soft.”

“It’s probably burning your arms and you don’t even realize it,” he answered, sounding upset.

“I wonder if I can see Aywon from down here. Do you think we passed it already?” she asked, rolling her head from side to side.

“I’m glad you’re lucid enough to worry about your mission
, but not enough to worry about the blood pouring out of you,” Ty said, finally un-strapping the harness and releasing them.