You see, Ms. Zalewski made a mean grilled cheese and radish. Mean is usually bad, but in this circumstance, it means extremely delicious. Carter sat at the table in Ms. Zalewski’s quiet kitchen, enjoying the warmest, meltiest, crunchiest, and meanest sandwich he’d ever tasted. The woman’s outrageous stories and her smile often warmed Carter with laughter, even after a horrible day out “working” with his uncle.
It was rare that anyone ever greeted Carter with such kindness, and he’d grown fond of her. She made him wonder about his grandparents and what a life with them might have been like.
“Would you like some prune juice, dearie? I mix it with this delicious orange powder when my pipes are clogged.”
“I think my pipes are good.” Carter giggled. Uncle Sly would never have talked with him about his pipes, and if he had, he’d never have tolerated Carter giggling about them.
Carter cleared Ms. Zalewski’s table and washed the dishes as she told him a tale about her childhood in Poland and Russia and then coming to America by boat. “The boat was filled with good people, and crooks too. This diamond I wear belonged to my mother, and her mother before her, and her mother before her. When I came over, I hid it in a matryoshka doll. You know, the Russian ones with a doll within a doll within a doll. This tiny diamond is all I have left to remind me of home.”
“I used to have a home,” Carter whispered.
“What’s that, dearie?”
Carter shook his head and said nothing. He liked when Ms. Zalewski spoke of home. He didn’t care if Uncle Sly thought he was being sentimental. Carter often wondered what having a real home again might feel like. Certainly it would it be better than a new bed in a new town every other week.
Uncle Sly stormed into the kitchen. He sat down and put on his famous fake smile for Ms. Zalewski. “Can I have some warm soup and a cup of coffee, sweetheart?”
“Of course, dear,” Ms. Zalewski said, disappearing down into the cellar. “Let me go get some more coffee beans.”
As soon as she was out of earshot, Uncle Sly leaned in to Carter and whispered, “Today was a mess, so I need you to step up. You’re gonna swipe the old broad’s diamond.”
“I don’t steal,” Carter said. “And she’s not an old broad. She’s our friend. She’s been feeding us all week.”
“We don’t have friends,” his uncle spat. “Haven’t I taught you anything?!”
“Nothing good,” Carter whispered.
“What was that?” Uncle Sly growled. He grabbed Carter’s arm, his nails digging in. But he quickly let go as Ms. Zalewski returned with a tin can. “Aww, thanks, sweetheart,” he said to her. “You’re the absolute tops.”
Uncle Sly put on quite a show for people when he wanted something. His earnest-looking smiles and overstuffed compliments fooled most people. Carter could see through it. Unfortunately, Ms. Zalewski ate it up, grinning as she brewed Sly’s coffee.
It made Carter ill to think how easily his uncle tricked people. Like magic, smiles can warm a person’s heart—but they can also be used to hide something dark and frightening.
Later that night, squeaking door hinges startled Carter out of sleep, and he woke on the cold wooden floor of their single room. Though it was still dark, he watched his uncle plop down beside him, admiring a small, sparkly diamond at the end of a thin chain necklace. Carter recognized it immediately. It belonged to Ms. Zalewski.
Carter felt sick. A rage in his stomach grew until he could no longer contain it. Before he could stop himself, he was shouting, “Why did you take that? It’s one thing to trick people in shell games, but it’s another to steal something so important from someone who is nice to us. Ms. Zalewski doesn’t deserve this. She’s a good person. You don’t care about anyone but yourself!”
Uncle Sly slipped the necklace into his pocket before flashing across the room and shoving Carter into the wall. “I raised you, took care of you, taught you everything I know, and this is how you repay me?” his uncle seethed through sour breath. “If you think you can do better on your own, go ahead. You think you’re such a good person now—just wait until your belly rumbles and you’re so hungry you can’t see. You’ll be stealing more than necklaces in no time.”
“No, I won’t,” Carter shouted back. He pushed his uncle away, grabbed his satchel, and ran out of the room. He was halfway down the stairs before he opened his hand to see Ms. Zalewski’s diamond necklace. He had lifted it from his uncle’s pocket, the way his uncle had lifted it from Ms. Zalewski’s neck.
Uncle Sly wasn’t the only one who was good at sleight of hand.
When Carter ran into the kitchen, he found Ms. Zalewski awake and frantic. “Oh, Carter!” she said. “I think I lost my family diamond. It must have happened before I went to bed. Could you help me look?”
“I just found it in the hallway,” Carter lied. “Here it is.”
Ms. Zalewski was so relieved, tears formed at the edges of her eyes. “Let me get you some milk and cookies.”
“I can’t,” Carter said, choking back a surge of emotion. “I’m kind of in a rush.”
“A rush to where?” asked Ms. Zalewski. “It’s still dark out.”
Carter ignored the question. “Take care of yourself—and watch my uncle. He has sticky fingers.” He made a bouquet of paper flowers appear out of his sleeve and handed it to the kind old woman, who only stared at him in shock.
Then Carter pulled off his first solo vanishing act:
He ran away.
And that, my friend, is how Carter ended up in a train yard running away from a terrible man and toward a new—and hopefully better—life.
THREE
Many hours after hopping onto the multicolored train, Carter woke to find that it had already stopped. Panicked, he gathered his belongings. Experience told him that a conductor or a cop would eventually go from train car to train car looking for extra passengers. It was best if he wasn’t caught. He didn’t want to end up in a foster home, or worse—reunited with Uncle Sly.
He cracked open the metal door to see where fate had taken him. Outside, a lush green forest stretched like a fuzzy rug all the way to a mountain range in the not-far distance. The sun had just fallen behind the horizon, turning the few wispy clouds overhead a lovely fuchsia as the dome of blue sky darkened into evening. He’d been asleep for a long time.
A sign standing along a nearby road said: WELCOME TO MINERAL WELLS.
Carter climbed back up the ladder to get a better view of the town. From the top of the train car, he could see a quiet community blanketed with twinkling lights that were spread out to the north and east of the tracks. Far beyond the grid of streets, a sprawling set of buildings sat on a hill overlooking the town, a glow coming from within the windows as if they were illuminated by the light of a billion fireflies. Closer to the train yard, across the wide gravel lot and just west of the twinkling town, was an enormous fairground where the bright lights of a traveling circus were just beginning to blink on. Colorful sounds came in waves—even from here, Carter could hear laughter and music and shrieks of excitement.
He was about to hop down when a small red car pulled into the gravel lot. Carter ducked, flattening his body against the roof of the train. It would be bad if anyone reported seeing him.