The subway station at Lexington Avenue was packed with people: shoeshine boys carrying wooden boxes, families on their way to visit relatives in the distant suburb of Queens, beggars carting bags full of tin cans, and women stepping daintily around them—all of them jostling, muttering, and sweating in the dank air. Thomas worked his way through the thick knot of people, dodging elbows and ducking under briefcases, compressing himself in the negative space between couples, and Sam plunged after him, blushing and apologizing.
“Excuse me. So sorry. Didn’t see you there. Mind your toes. Excuse me.”
“Young man. Watch where you’re stepping.” An outraged woman wearing a large hat trimmed with ostrich plumes spun around to face him. The feathers on her hat whipped angrily in Sam’s face.
“I—I—I—” he stammered to apologize. But the feathers were tickling his nose, and all that came out was a gigantic sneeze. “Achoo!”
“Heathen!” she shrieked and turned around, once again treating him to a mouthful of feathers.
“Do you see a train?” Pippa called to Thomas as she struggled to circumnavigate an enormously fat man standing guard over a pile of luggage. Thomas had reached the edge of the platform and was peering into the cavernous mouth of the subway tunnel.
“I see lights,” he called back. “It shouldn’t be l—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. One second he was there on the platform, staring back at them. The next second he had vanished. It took Sam a moment to realize what had happened, and then the truth came to him on a sudden drumbeat of terror.
Thomas had fallen onto the tracks.
“Thomas!” Sam lunged forward but his long legs got tangled on the fat man’s luggage. Someone yelled. The people on the platform ping-ponged off one another and then re-formed, tighter than ever, like a vast wave dispersing and then regathering force.
“Thomas!” Pippa shrieked. She, too, was fighting to the edge of the platform. And Max—where was Max?
Then Sam heard it—a growing rumble from inside the tunnel.
A train was coming.
He forgot about being polite. He shoved forward, ignoring the outraged yelps and muttered curses of the people waiting for the train. When he reached the platform edge, he saw that Max had dropped onto the tracks, and she was trying to coax a dazed Thomas to his feet. Her face was lit white, drawn and terrified, and she looked almost unreal; in that second Sam realized that she was bathed in light—they both were—lit up like a photographic still.
Sam felt as if he were moving through oatmeal. Light—light growing—two vast points of light as big as moons.
Like a huge mechanical monster, the train was blazing down on Max and Thomas.
“Max!”
Still holding on to Thomas, Max reached up her free hand. Sam wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled. She felt like nothing, like a feather. Her face contorted in pain and she let out a cry as she was yanked onto the platform just as the train hurtled into the station, brakes screeching, horn blaring.
“Are you crazy?” she shouted, rubbing her shoulder. “You nearly tore my arm off!”
“I saved your life!” he answered. He was shaking.
Suddenly, Max’s face went white.
She had let go of Thomas.
Still on her knees, Pippa was frantically trying to peer into the three-inch gap between train and platform. Tears were streaming down her face. “Thomas!”
All around them, people were shouting. At the very front of the train, a little door flew open and the driver burst out and came running toward them.
“Oh God, oh God! I tried to stop but—”
“Wait!” cried Pippa, pressing her ear to the gap. “QUIET!”
From underneath the train came the muffled sound of someone saying, “I’m okay. Would you mind getting this train off me?”
In another instant, the driver had jumped back in his compartment and slowly driven the train out of the station. As the crowd on the platform cheered, they saw Thomas squeezed between two rails, lying as flat as he could make himself, wide-eyed, clothes spotted with grease. Alive.
“It’s a miracle,” someone shouted, as Thomas climbed to his feet carefully, wincing with every other step.
Sam was moving before he knew it. He dropped to his knees and grabbed Thomas around the wrist, lifting him onto the platform and to safety. Pippa barreled into his arms, nearly knocking him back into the tracks again.
“It’s all right, Pip. It’s all right,” Thomas said, patting Pippa awkwardly on the back.
“I thought—well, I thought—” Pippa’s voice, muffled by Thomas’s shoulder, broke.
“Let him breathe,” Sam said, laughing. His whole body was full of an electric joy. He felt he could leap down into the tracks and stop an oncoming train, if he had to. He wondered why he had not thought to try it before.
“You idiot.” Max whacked Thomas on the arm as Pippa pulled back, drying her face with her sleeve. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“You?” Thomas grinned, raising his eyebrows at Max. “You were scared?”
Instantly, she scowled. “Only a little.”
Pippa reached and gave Max’s hand a quick squeeze. “I was terrified,” she said, and Max almost—almost—smiled. Then both girls took a quick step apart, as though remembering that they hated each other.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sam asked, as Thomas shifted again and then immediately winced.