After years of sickness and mismanagement, the U.S. had finally elected a decent president. She was the one who called for the no harvesting law. Down there, it was illegal to scoop dreamers up. Not that that stopped people from doing what they thought was best for themselves, which was why it was still dangerous for us there. They had gotten used to brown lives being disposable, used to it being okay to throw us into cages because of something as shallow as politics, being okay to kneel on our necks until breathing was impossible. It was easy to imagine what they would do if they thought their lives were in danger and that we, the disposable, could bring that danger to an end. But at least there, we’d have the law on our side, for once. I stopped my brain from reminding me of all the times we’d been the exception to the rules—the forced relocation that history forgot to account for, the missing women no one looked for, the crimes against us that had gone unpunished…

That was enough. I needed to sleep. Nothing to do but rest before the next leg of the journey, and who knew what waited for us on the other side. We never knew. We just knew we had to stay ready for anything.

I closed my eyes. But the nagging feelings of both having forgotten something and having committed an unforgivable act weighed heavy on me. So heavy I started to feel claustrophobic. My breathing got sharp and shallow. I whimpered a bit, and that sound amplified the panic. I had to calm down. We had been told this journey would last hours, and now was not the time to freak out. Instead, I focused on the tracks clacking below us. If I paid enough attention, the sound turned into music, a muffled shuffling and gentle clicking. I tried to find the rhythm and match my heart to it.

Words came to mind now instead of horrible images, words I had memorized to keep them safe. They became my traveling song, and I offered them up into the confines of this box and my broken heart.

I have to get out. Help me. I am forgetting the words. I forget my children’s faces.

They’re changing the game. Tell the leaders to burrow. Tell them to take up arms. It’s the only way.

One thought kept breaking through—Rose. Where was she? I couldn’t do any of this without her. I thought about the way she laughed with all her teeth showing. How she kept her eyes clear of anger even when she was shouting at me so that I knew it was temporary and that if I said the right words or did the right thing, her anger would melt away like summer snow.

“Oh, Rose,” I whispered into the anxious corner of my moving tomb. “I don’t think I’ll find you. I can’t hold on without you.”

✦✦✦ ✦✦✦ ✦✦✦

I must have successfully matched my heartbeat to the rhythm of travel, because it was the train slowing down that pushed me awake—gasping, slamming my forehead when I tried to sit up to catch my breath.