(Part 1 is here.)
Max was unsurprised when he was separated from his group the next day. Their travels around the city had been noticeably uneventful. He had watched traffic close around them, doors shut in their face, and restaurants refuse to seat such a large class, and he knew that the city wasn’t favoring him anymore. At 3:00, a fretful Miss Hudson led the eighteen students down into the subway to travel back to New Jersey, where the school bus was parked. Max watched the turnstile reject his all-day pass three times before letting him through. He ran to catch up with his group. Miss Hudson, standing inside the train doors, shouted for him to hurry, hurry! Then a large businessman took up the last inch of space on the train, and the doors closed, and the class squealed away towards New Jersey. Max stood alone beneath the infinite footsteps of midtown Manhattan.
He laughed a little. All day he had been waiting for something to happen, and now it had. He stood indecisively for a moment, looking around for a ringing payphone or an approaching stranger, but there was nothing. He rode the escalator back to the street, and hailed a yellow taxi.
“Going to New Jersey?” asked the driver.
“Right,” said Max, closing the door. The taxi pulled into traffic, and they drove in silence for a while. Max watched the driver watch him, bushy eyebrows trying to conceal quick glances back at the boy.
“It’s okay,” said Max. “I know she sent you.”
The driver’s eyebrows looked relieved and concerned. “This city can do a lot of things, kid. But even she can’t bring back the dead.”
Max said nothing.
“She took something from you, years ago, and she wants to make it right. Ask for something else.”
Max didn’t stop looking out the window as he spoke. “No,” he said. “If New York City calls my hotel room phone, that means something impossible is happening. And if one impossible thing can happen, then I’m not going to settle for anything less than meeting my mother.” He shifted his eyes to the mirror, and the driver was taken aback by the strength of their concrete-gray defiance.
“Your mother is dead,” he said.
“Fine. Then I want to meet the city.”
The driver turned on his blinker. “It’s not like that, either. She — ”
“If she can call my hotel room, she can talk to me face to face. Take me to her.”
“It’s not — it’s not like that,” protested the driver. Then his ancient flip-phone rang. “Hello? No, he … yes. Yes, ma’am.” He closed the phone and gently squeezed the gas pedal, like a trigger. “Kid, you’re gonna be late getting back to your school group.”
“I know,” said Max, watching the light change from red to green.
—
(Continued in Part 3)
2 responses to “Zeitghost, Part 2 (for Libby)”
yes. keep going.
Awesome! I will, then.