He removes his gloves and hoodie. He doesn’t want them anymore. He lets them fall to the floor of the hall just as he would let his clothes fall to the side of his bunk back in Cabin Three of Camp Yadin.

It feels great.

He slides the door open at the end of the car. He closes his eyes.

Doesn’t Malorie get it? The man told them what to do. What was safe. And Tom is doing it. That’s all there is to it. That’s all there’s ever been to it. They don’t have to stay in their room the whole trip. They don’t have to wear their folds and their gloves. They don’t have to be so scared.

But Malorie has no sense of this. No instincts at all.

The thought of it makes him mad again. Madder. But he doesn’t want to be angry. He wants to be free.

He passes between cars. Opens the next door. Lets it slide closed behind him.

He opens his eyes.

Another hall. Doors to his left. People hiding like Malorie hides. Tom isn’t going to hide anymore. Tom isn’t going to live by Malorie’s rules anymore. Tom isn’t ever going back to Camp Yadin again.

He pauses. His heart beats powerfully with the realization that he really isn’t ever going back again.

Back to the only place they’ve ever really called home.

Never going.

Back.

Again.

“Good,” he says.

A door opens to his left. A man steps out. He closes the door behind him.

“Hello,” he says.

Tom can hardly believe it. It’s what the world is like in his sister’s books. People step out their front doors and wave to one another and ask how their days have been.

“How’s your day been?” Tom asks.

The man, much older, eyes him suspiciously. Is it because he wonders what a sixteen-year-old is doing walking the train alone? Does the man think Tom is being unsafe? Can he tell Tom was just slapped?

Tom brings a hand to his face.

“Good,” the man says. He doesn’t move. Just stands in front of the closed door to his room as if Tom might slip inside and take something.

Tom passes him. He reaches the end of the car, looks back, sees the man still standing there, still facing him. Only now his eyes are closed.

Tom closes his own. Opens the door. Steps between the cars.

And stops.

He pulls his glasses from his pocket and places them on his face.

The air swirls here. A small cyclone between cars. Windy enough to blow a blindfold from a face if you don’t have it tied tight enough.

The wind goes up the short sleeves of his shirt, down the neck.