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Back Malorie
Chapters (40)
  1. The Jane Tucker School for the Blind
  2. Ten Years On
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. The Blind Train
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. Safer Rooms
  29. TWENTY-FIVE
  30. TWENTY-SIX
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. TWENTY-NINE
  34. THIRTY
  35. THIRTY-ONE
  36. Dedication
  37. AFTERWORD/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  38. BY JOSH MALERMAN
  39. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  40. What’s next onyour reading list?

Both teens are ahead; Olympia calls out the dips in the road, Tom says they have less than a mile to go. Malorie’s legs scream. Her chest is too hot. Her head is swelling with memories. Mom and Dad taking her and Shannon to the zoo. How the sisters followed the painted elephant prints to where the brilliant leviathan stood in a large enclosure, but nowhere near big enough. How Dad picked Malorie up and told her he wished he could sneak the animal out of the park, put it under his coat, walk it all the way back to Africa. Malorie remembers laughing at this, then understanding what he meant, then understanding that her dad was a nice man. She remembers Mom, at a store, standing in line to buy the sisters jeans. How the woman in front of them was two dollars short. How Mom gave her those two dollars.

Oh, how Malorie wants to see these two people again. The yearning has conquered her body. The hope, the rush, the possibility…

But she won’t let herself do this, won’t let herself commit. It might not be a train at all.

And even if it is…who drives it?

“Come on!” Tom calls excitedly. Malorie hears him nearly fall over and regain his balance. She feels Olympia’s hand at her elbow.

“Come on!” Tom yells again. And he sounds sixteen. So does Olympia. Two teenagers living, right now, a memory, a thing they will never forget, Malorie knows; she has memories of her own. Mom and Dad laughing with the neighbors at the kitchen table. Dad wearing a funny wig on Halloween. Mom stringing lights up on the roof in December.

She thinks, suddenly, of Ron Handy. How the man must be thinking of his sister, now, pining to touch her hand again, hurting to hear her voice.

“It might not—” Malorie starts, short of breath. “It might not even be—” She can hardly get the words out. “It might not even be a train!”

On cue, a whistle blows.

It shatters Malorie’s personal darkness, the black sky split up the middle by a cloud of white metallic steam, billowing with the force of a bona fide train.

Oh my God, she thinks. Oh my God oh my God oh my God.

And she’s running, her mind wild, fresh colors in the dark, one the color of belief.

It’s a train after all. There’s no doubting that now.

“COME ON!”