“Well, you went in your pants and I can smell it!” Penny said. “That’s crazy!”
There was another silence, in which June looked shocked and betrayed. “Hanging your butt out the door is dangerous,” she finally said, very quietly.
“Everything is dangerous,” Penny said. “I want to go home now.”
“Don’t be a child,” Isabel said.
“Shut up!” Penny felt the tears coming. But tears would just prove Isabel right. Penny wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. “Our parents would have found us at that house.”
“Don’t say that,” Marcus said.
“It’s true! We should have stayed there. We only had to leave because of her.” Penny knew she was onto something, because Isabel’s face had turned a weird color. “We had a doctor there, and food, and bathrooms. But Isabel wouldn’t listen to George and stay downstairs.”
“Leave her alone,” Marcus said.
“You just don’t want to admit it, because you’re in love with her.”
“Shut up!” Marcus said.
“But she’s not in love with you. She was in love with Raúl.”
“I was not!” Isabel hissed.
“Shut up, Penny!” Marcus said.
“Stop!” Oscar said.
“You don’t understand anything,” Isabel said, low and threatening.
“I understand!” Penny said. “I understand it’s your fault that we’re on a stupid train in the middle of nowhere!”
“So go, then.”
“Fine,” Penny said, getting up. “I will.”
She stood, her split knee stinging, and went to the open door. She couldn’t stand to be with Isabel another second.
“Penny, no!” Sebastian said.
“I have to find the insulin.” She sat down at the edge, so she wouldn’t have so far to jump to the ground. It was still alarmingly high, and the ground was moving. She could tell she was about to make a terrible mistake, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Don’t go!” June cried.
“Let her,” Isabel said.
Penny pushed off, hit the ground hard, and fell sideways. The loud wheels of the train went by, too close to her head. The others were shouting. But they couldn’t tell her what to do. Her mind had gone blank with rage and indignation. She stood and brushed off her legs.
“Penny!” Sebastian said. “Wait!”
And he jumped out of the train. He took the landing pretty well, bending his knees, but he still fell over. She ran to help him up. No one had ever risked so much to join her.
“Sebastian!” June shouted.
For a moment Penny thought June might jump, too. But she didn’t. Penny was not as magnetic as all that. June in the train car’s doorway was getting farther away.
Penny took Sebastian’s hand and they set off walking back along the tracks. They would find the insulin, and then they would figure out the next thing. It was good that Sebastian had jumped, because she didn’t know how she would have gotten back to him. It hadn’t been a great plan. The train rumbled alongside.
“Penny?” Sebastian said.
“What.”
“Remember the man with the white horse?”
“Yes.”
“Did he die?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
They walked. “Do you think we’ll die, too?”
“No.”
“Look,” Sebastian whispered, pointing at the train.
Penny turned and saw a little boy peering at them from one of the cars. He was younger than Sebastian. He drew back into the dark and then the car was past.
Penny wondered if the little boy was with his family or with a coyote. Pollos, she remembered they were called, the travelers trying to get to America. Thieves robbed them.
The train’s caboose came past, and a sweating man looked out the window.
“Hey!” Penny shouted up at him. “Can you call the police? La policía?”
The man frowned down at them.
“We’re the kids from the ship!” she shouted. They watched the back of the train pull away, and get smaller. “Los ni?os del barco!” she said, but there was no way he could hear her.
The world grew quieter, with the train gone. They stood together in the silence.
“Do you know where we are?” Sebastian asked.
“No,” she said.
“Will someone find us?”
“I think so.”
They kept walking. Penny scanned the ground for the paper bag, even though it was probably miles back. There was a wall of green trees on either side, and no sign of a trail.
“Did you hear that?” Sebastian asked.
“What?”
“That,” he said, and he looked toward the trees on their right. It was an engine noise, a car or a truck on a road. The last time they had followed an engine noise, it had been a bad idea. But they couldn’t stay alone here.
They left the tracks and made their way into the trees. It was darker there, and they had to climb over branches. A giant buzzing bug flew at Penny’s face. She swatted it away and wanted to cry.
“Do you think there are snakes?” Sebastian asked.
“Probably not,” Penny said, though they couldn’t even see the ground.
She thought about the time she’d been on an overgrown trail in Colorado with her mom and then reported to her dad that they’d been swashbuckling through the forest. Her mom had laughed and said, “You mean bushwhacking.” They still teased her about it, and would call this swashbuckling if they were here.
She wished they were here.
Abruptly they came out on the side of a narrow dirt road, but there were no cars.
“Should we walk?” Sebastian asked.
“Yes.”
“Which way?”
Marcus would know. But she’d left Marcus in the train. If they turned right, they would be going the same direction the train had gone, and she wasn’t sure that was a good idea. She didn’t want to go to Nicaragua. So she turned left, and Sebastian followed her.
An old red truck came toward them and Penny instinctively stepped back into the trees. Sebastian followed her. There was a man in the cab of the truck, who didn’t seem to see them. When it was past, Sebastian said, “Why didn’t we wave?”
“I don’t know,” Penny said.
“Someone has to find us,” he said.
“I know.”
They walked. Penny felt sweaty and miserable. Now that they had left the tracks, she would never find the bag of insulin.
A small yellow car came along and slowed when it passed them, then stopped. A woman looked back. Penny jogged toward the car.
The woman rolled down the window. “Por dónde van?”
“A mi casa,” Penny said, because she couldn’t remember how to say parents.
“Eres americana?” the woman asked. She had her hair up in a scrunchie and wore no makeup.
“Sí,” Penny said. There was something about speaking Spanish that made this feel like a game, like a test she could pass. “Somos los ni?os del barco.”
The woman looked startled. She looked around, into the woods. “Dónde están los otros?” she asked.
“On the train,” Penny said.
The woman reached over and pulled the handle to open the car’s door, but Penny moved toward the back seat.
“Can we sit together? In the back?” Sebastian was moving slowly, but Penny got him in. “Will you call our parents?” She mimed a phone at her ear. “Mis padres?”
The woman made an apologetic face. “No tengo teléfono. No podía pagar. No phone. No pay. Me entiendes?”
“Oh,” Penny said. “My parents will pay you.”
“I don’t feel good,” Sebastian said.
The woman looked worried.
“We need a doctor,” Penny said. “Please.”
The woman turned in her seat and started to drive.
36.
NORA TEXTED PEDRO to ask if he knew anything about the Herrera family. It was a perfectly rational, understandable thing to do. He might know something now that they had a name. But texting him still felt compulsive and shameful.
He didn’t respond, and she took the stairs down to the lobby and stepped into the heat.