“I’m not going to be sick,” I assured him. I tried to toss my satchel up the stairs and inside the wagon’s small door, then kicked it when it fell back down and landed on my feet. And while Huck took it from me, I slowly climbed the stairs and ducked to enter the pixie door.
Miles away from the luxury of the Orient Express, the tiny space was half filled with supplies packed in crates and several pieces of wooden furniture—a table and chairs stacked and bound with rope. In front of this in the remaining space was a pallet of ragged, colorful blankets. Everything smelled of freshly sawed pine.
Valentin hung the lantern with its sputtering nub on a hook near the door. “It is humble, but it serves its purpose. There is a local expression—to make a whip out of shit. It means to do much with very little.”
“It’s perfectly fine,” Huck told him.
I roughly fell back onto the pile of blankets, which was farther away than my backside expected. “Hey, Valentin? I’m sorry I snapped at you with my wildcat teeth.”
He chuckled. “It is nothing. I admire the wildcat. They attack when you least expect.”
“Hear that, Huxley Gallagher?” I said, grinning up at him. “Better watch your back.”
“Good night, my friends. Tomorrow we will travel over the river.” And with that, Valentin closed the wagon door, his merry whistling fading into the camp.
When he was gone, Huck looked down at me and asked, “You okay, banshee?”
“I’m peachy. Or maybe I should say plummy.”
“Ithinkyou mean drunky.”
“Don’t judge me.”
Huck chuckled and pinched out the lantern’s candle, sending the small space into darkness. “Don’t you worry, banshee. I won’t tell Fox.”
“And I won’t tell him that you slept with me in a wedding wagon.”
A string of mumbled obscenities filled the small space.
“It was just a joke. J-o-k-e,” I spelled out. “Lighten up, Huxley Gallagher. Not going to tear your clothes off again. I’m not that desperate.”
He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Fox mentioned you were seeing a few people, but he wouldn’t tell me who.”
“That’s none of his business. Or yours.”
“Oh...”
“Do you have a girl back in Belfast?” I asked.
“Too busy working.”
“Well, I’m too busy studying,” I said. The truth was, I tried dating once, earlier this year, but there was no magic. Huck poisoned my head for other people. And I hated him for that. “But I get lots of offers,” I lied.
“You always know how to make a guy feel good about himself, banshee.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Did you, now? I’ll try to remember it next time.”
I gazed up at the small windows on either side of the wagon, but everything was spinning. I shut my eyes for a moment and said, “I forgive you for what you said out in the fields. Do you forgive me?”
The wagon creaked and shifted. Huck’s silhouette passed over me and lay down somewhere near me. “Tell me tomorrow,” he said. “After you’re sober.”
How was I supposed to take that? I opened my mouth to ask but couldn’t figure out how to say it. So I didn’t. I just flipped up my fur collar, rolled to my side, and curled shrimplike inside my coat. I was done. I’d said my piece and received nothing remotely satisfying in return. Time to figure out a way to stop caring. I was tough. I could do it. I didn’t need Huck’s stupidly pretty face in my life.
The traders’ blankets smelled of dust and earth, and I wondered how far they’d traveled and what they’d seen. And I wondered where my father was sleeping that night. I guessed I’d find out tomorrow, when we’d meet up with him in Bucharest. Then this brief adventure would end. And no one would care that I’d drank too much and slept inside a wagon in a forest with a boy who’d broken my heart. Maybe not even me. So I pretended to casually, accidently, fortuitously flop over until we were facing each other. Until I felt his breath on my forehead. Until my knee jabbed into his leg.
“Ow,” he complained a few inches from my face.
