“Your parents didn’t allow you to go on swings?” Q stretched his long legs over the grass.
“Not just swings. Playgrounds.”
“What? Why?”
“My brother was sick for a very long time.”
“I’m sorry,” Q said.
“Even after Jace got better, my parents refused to take any risks with his health. They basically covered us in Bubble Wrap and kept us indoors as much as possible.”
“They isolated both of you? Were you sick too?”
Raya’s gaze drifted to her bag and all the forbidden, sugary things straining its seams. “Being sick wasn’t allowed.”
“What do you mean you weren’tallowedto be sick? I—” A high-pitched whistle cut Q off. The crystal train slowed to a stop. He swallowed hard. “We’re here,” he said, standing slowly.
“I don’t know if I want to find the stowaway and get this over with”—Raya choked, sharing the lump lodged in Q’s throat—“or if I wish that Rasmus has better luck than us.”
“Neither do I.” Q stared in the direction of the crystal train’s doors. They slid open, splitting the faded blue slide in half and unleashing a hurricane’s roar.
“What happened to Olly?”
Frequently Asked Questions
The Elsewhere Express
Passenger Handbook
Q
The only thing that Q hated more than being blind was being lied to, but as he stood inside the gallery’s brutally bare receiving room, he had never been gladder to be fooled.
The room’s sole adornment, a water feature located in the middle of the room, masterfully mimicked the sound of rain. Q reluctantly called the square hole cut into the room’s concrete floor “a fountain,” but his vocabulary did not include a word for a pool where water floated to a cement ceiling in shimmering drops, crawled across it, and fell in a downpour of color.
In the miniature train, the fountain had sounded like a storm. But inside the gallery it filled the room with a steady drumming that, in the comfort of his own bed, might have lulled Q to sleep. He tilted the single umbrella provided by the gallery to keep Raya from getting wet, ignoring the rain splattering on his shoulder.
“This fountain nearly gave me a heart attack,” Raya said.
“Unfortunately, we can’t relax just yet.” Q plucked the crystal train from a rainbow puddled on the concrete floor and stuffed it into his coat pocket. “The stowaway could still be in this train car.”
A woman emerged from the door to the gallery’s exhibit area and opened a burgundy umbrella that matched her chunky sweater. “Oh, hello. I didn’t hear you come in.” She walked over to a rain-soaked desk. “Welcome to the gallery. How can I help you?”
“We’re here to see the exhibit.” Q wrestled with the sentence, speaking it as though he were pronouncing words like otorhinolaryngologist orfloccinaucinihilipilification.Seeing an exhibit—or anything for that matter—wasn’t something he had done in a very long time.
“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?” the woman said. “I thought you said that you wanted to see the exhibit.”
“We do,” Raya said. “Why? Is it closed?”
The woman let out a squeal. “This is so exciting. You’re the first guests I’ve had since I started working here. I was seriously considering putting in a request to transfer to another department. Everyone who comes to this car just wants to see the fountain.”
“Why?” Q asked.
“Because of the rain, of course. This is as close as you’ll get to the real thing on this train.”
“It never rains on the Elsewhere Express,” Q said, not realizing he had said it out loud.
“But passengers also come here for thatotherthing.” The woman winked. “Even if no one admits to it.”
