The conductor came back to open the door for me as the train slowed. I hefted my suitcase, clapped my hat on my head. Her red hair coming out of its braid, her face twisted in that expression people make right before they start screaming-Īnd then the whistle was blowing. Lucy Spencer flashed in my mind for a moment then. But if it was true, if I was right, then I needed to be home again.Īfter all, there was no other place for me in the world. None of it seemed plausible when I held it up to the light.

It all felt faded and vaguely ridiculous. I had a vague, half-remembered feeling that it wasn’t exactly safe. Maybe there were good reasons I wasn’t supposed to be at home. But the weather chilled my anger and crystallized it into fear. I’d been angry when I’d gotten on the train, and that had kept me in motion. It had been almost summer in Maryland, but as we rumbled across the bridge that divides New Hampshire from Maine, I saw a few stubborn patches of snow clinging on beneath the pine trees. He disappeared, and I stared out the window and watched the landscape for a while. When the whistle blows the first time, get ready.” “We’ll just be slowing down, not a full stop,” he said. But he just smiled at me tightly and touched his hat. I rummaged frantically in my mind for a convincing lie. Once I said it I froze, terrified he’d ask me why I was coming back now. “They don’t leave Winterport much, do they?” He twitched like a rabbit before settling himself back down. Always wanting to know about your family. People up here were like this, I remembered suddenly. His eyes had wandered down to my suitcase. He looked nervously down at me, and I felt guilty, wondering if he could tell I was on the run. Just the conductor, coming down the aisle to check on me. The door at the far end of the car clattered open, and I jumped. No matter how many times I did it, I could still taste copper. Thinking about it, I ran my tongue over my teeth again. I’d hung on to them this whole way, through sleeping on a bench in Penn Station and sprinting to catch a train in Boston, ever since I’d left Saint Brigid’s School for Young Ladies this time yesterday. How long had I been asleep? I looked down to make sure I still had my things: my straw hat, my suitcase stamped with the letter Z. I opened my eyes, and I was on the train.

What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo