The conductor gave him an odd sort of look and gestured out the window.

“It’s right there,” he said.Then he went on his way.

The train once again lurched forward and was soon chugging down the track. Carter now was quite puzzled. He wondered if perhaps he had gotten on the wrong train. There were so many platforms at Termini Station that he might easily have strayed onto a train heading in the wrong direction. But wouldn’t the conductor have noticed when he punched his ticket just after they left Rome?

Carter looked across the aisle, where a middle-aged couple was sitting. The man was reading a newspaper, while the woman chattered away on her cell phone.When she finally ended her call and put the phone in her purse, Carter leaned over with the map.

“Excuse me, Signora,” he asked in Italian, gesturing to his map, “but could you tell me where Uscita is?”

Though he had asked the question in perfect Italian, the woman looked at him as if she had not quite understood.

“Uscita,” Carter repeated, supposing that perhaps she had not heard him clearly. “Do you know where it is?”

The woman shrugged, and pointed toward the front of the train. Carter was about to ask her what she meant, but then her cell phone rang, and she was soon talking a mile a minute once more.

Carter scratched his head. He was beginning to feel as though he were in some sort of dream, like one of those stories where the main character wakes up to find himself all alone on a plane bound for nowhere. He sat there, staring at his map, until the train slowed once more and pulled into the next station.When it came to a stop, the couple next to him stood and gathered their belongings together. Before walking away, the woman looked at Carter and, with a polite smile, gestured out the window.

“Uscita?” she said, pointing to the station wall.

Sure enough, there it was again. USCITA.

At seeing him just sit there with a confused look on his face, the woman said, “Ciao,” and then strolled off the train with her husband.

Carter gazed out the window at them as they crossed the station platform and walked out past the USCITA sign. He noticed that all the passengers who had just disembarked from the train were walking out in that same direction.

It was then that understanding began to dawn on the young traveler.

His cheeks burning hot, Carter reached into his pack and pulled out his little Italian-English dictionary. Opening it, he flipped through the pages until he found, as expected, the word uscita.

“What an idiot,” he muttered when he read the translation.

“Exit.”