“Oh, I found it all right,” Hugo says cheerfully. “Well done, you.”
“It was film related,” she says, and he laughs.
“Sounds to me like it was cow related too.”
She groans. “I swear that farmer is never around. And if the fence hadn’t broken, it would’ve been fine. But then we had to try to round them all up again, and the police showed up, and it was a whole thing.”
“The lengths we go to for art,” he jokes, and even after they’ve both stopped laughing, Mae can’t seem to get rid of her smile.
She’s not sure what it is, this electricity that’s buzzing through her right now. Maybe it’s Hugo, or maybe not. Maybe it’s leaving her parents, or being on her own, or the fact that she’s on her way to college—so many changes all at once. Or maybe it’s the train and the exhilaration that comes from being swept across the country like a tumbleweed. But here in the dark, talking so easily as they rumble through the night, the music of Hugo’s accent filling the tiny cabin, she’s struck by the unexpected joy of it all.
After a few minutes, she clears her throat, not sure if he’s fallen asleep yet. “So that college…,” she says, and for a long time, there’s no answer.
“Right,” he says eventually. “The University of Surrey.”
“They gave all six of you a scholarship?”
“Not exactly. It was some rich guy who went there.”
“Seriously?” she says, surprised. “He just handed you a whole bunch of money?”
“Well, he died a few years ago, so technically he handed it to the university. And we had to get the grades first. But otherwise, yeah. He thought it would be good publicity for them. Which it will. Basically, we get a free education and they get to parade us around campus.”
“I’ve heard of worse deals,” Mae says.
Hugo sighs. “I know. That’s just it. What kind of prat would have the nerve to be ungrateful for something like that?”
“A prat who wants something different?”
“Did I mention it’s also in my hometown?”
“Oof,” she says. “Really?”
“And I’m the only one who seems to mind it. I love my brothers and sisters. I do. They’re my best mates, and it’s strange to imagine being without them—like losing an arm. Or five.”
“That’s a lot of arms.”
“And it’s not as if I didn’t know this would be happening. It’s been the plan since we were born. Literally. I thought I was fine with it, but then I started hearing about classmates who are off to new places, and Margaret…” He trails off. “She’s going to Stanford. And she’ll be meeting all these new people and doing all these exciting things while I’m stuck at home, about a mile from our secondary school, surrounded by all my siblings, like nothing has changed at all.”
“Have you ever thought about not going?”
“And do what?” he asks. “We can’t afford anywhere else.”
“What about loans?”
“I can’t—” He pauses, frustrated. “I can’t just abandon them. That’s not how it works with us. We’re a unit.”
“But it won’t be that way forever,” Mae says.
He’s quiet for a moment. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“No,” Mae says, shaking her head, though he can’t see her. “It’s just me.”
“Then you can’t understand. It’s not that easy.”
Maybe not, she thinks. But they’ve always been a unit too—she and Dad and Pop and Nana—and she’d left them behind because it was time to go. And because she has dreams that are too big to fit back home. She suspects Hugo’s problem isn’t that he can’t bear to leave. It’s that he hasn’t figured out where he wants to go.
“Most things are easier than you think,” she says. “It’s deciding to do them that’s hard.”
“I suppose,” he says with a sigh. “Though we can’t all be intrepid filmmakers who run headlong into a field of cows. Or whatever dreams we’re chasing after.”
She smiles at this. “Well, why not?”
“For starters, I don’t even know what my dreams are. All I know is that I feel…restless. And I’d love to do something different, you know? Something new.”
A few seconds pass, and Mae looks up at the bottom of his bed. “Hugo?”
“Yes?”
“Who ever told you that doesn’t count as a dream?”
Hugo wakes not from the motion of the train but from the absence of it. He blinks at the ceiling, which is alarmingly close to his face. Below, there’s the scratching of a pen on paper, and it takes him a moment to place himself.
He nudges open the curtain beside the bed, wincing as the light comes streaming in the window. Outside there’s a sign that says Toledo. Beside it, the man from across the hall, bleary eyed beneath the brim of a cowboy hat, is smoking a cigarette. It’s early still, not quite six, and the sky is glowing and shimmery. Hugo flops onto his back again.
“Mae?”
“Morning.”
He traces a finger over a squiggly line that someone has drawn on the ceiling, which doesn’t seem to lead anywhere in particular. Maybe it’s a map. Maybe it’s their route. Or maybe it’s just a line. “Where’s Toledo?”
“Ohio,” she says.
“What happened to Pennsylvania?”
“It’s still there. We just slept through it.”
There’s a pause, filled once again by the scrape of a pen, and he asks, “What are you writing?”
“Just some notes,” she says.
Hugo shimmies over to the edge of the bed. His legs get tangled in the harness as he tries to get down, and he nearly tumbles sideways but manages to right himself before dropping to the floor. Mae, who is sitting on the lower bunk with a notebook balanced on her knees, looks up at him. She’s already dressed in black jeans and a gray T-shirt with the Ghostbusters logo on it, her feet bare. He notices that her toes are painted the same color purple as her glasses.
“I didn’t think anyone used pen and paper anymore,” he says, and she smiles as if he’s paid her a compliment. He leans an arm on the top bunk and takes a peek at the page. It’s a bit awkward, hovering over her like this, but there’s not really room to be anywhere else. “Wow. Your handwriting is truly terrible.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You know those blue lines aren’t just suggestions, right? You’re supposed to write in between them.”
She gives him a look of mock outrage, then tucks her legs in so that there’s room for him to sit on the other end of the bed. “I’m working up some questions for my interview with Ida.”
“Want to practice on me? I do a mean American accent.”
“I’m sure you do,” she says. “But you’re no Ida.”
“Fair enough. What sorts of things are you going to ask?”
“Questions about her life. Her hopes. Her fears.”
“Well,” he says, leaning back against the window, “we know Roy’s fear is that they’ll run out of apple pie.”
Outside, there’s the muffled sound of Ludovic yelling “All aboard!” and then heavy footsteps as people climb back onto the train. The curtain is still drawn across their compartment’s doorway, but they can hear their neighbor return to his room, and the train jerks forward once, then twice, before starting to pull away from the station.
Hugo nods at her notebook. “So what’s the plan?”
“I think,” Mae says, looking up at him through her glasses, “I might be making a documentary.”
“About Ida.”
“Sort of. I mean, you saw the way she was with Roy last night. Think about how many other people are on this train right now, how many other love stories. That’s what I want the film to be about.”
“Love and trains?”
“Love and trains,” she agrees, and then she tips her head to one side, studying him. “Hey, if you had to describe love in one word, what would it be?”
Hugo blinks at her, his heart quickening for no particular reason. “I have no idea.”
“It could be anything. Like, say…pizza.”
“Pizza?” he asks, surprised. “Why pizza?”
“That’s…not important,” she says. “It could be something else too. Anything.”
“Wait, do you think love is like a pizza?” he asks with a grin, and she looks at him impatiently.
“This isn’t about me.”
“How do you reckon love is like—”