Chapters (40)
- The Jane Tucker School for the Blind
- Ten Years On
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- The Blind Train
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- Safer Rooms
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- Dedication
- AFTERWORD/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- BY JOSH MALERMAN
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
Malorie tries to close her mind’s eye, the eye behind the eyes that are already closed, all of it behind the blindfold she lives by. She doesn’t want to think of Ron Handy or Camp Yadin, Tom the man or Olympia the woman, the Jane Tucker School for the Blind, Annette or Gary. She wants to focus on the sound of the train, moving, the rolling wheels, the squealing of metal, the pumping, the steam, the machine. Yet her mom and dad appear, standing as they were at the end of the dock on Twin Lakes, deep in the Upper Peninsula. They’re smiling her way, encouraging, you can make it, swim, come on, you’re so close. Dad’s hair is still brown and Mom doesn’t yet wear glasses, and they’re the people they were when Malorie was a child, swimming for the first time.
Only they’re wearing blindfolds suddenly, their hands extended. They can’t see Malorie, and it feels like nobody knows how to connect. They call to her, just as voices call to her as she runs, and Malorie flails, hot from the sun, unsure she’s going to make it, sensing something huge in the water with her, sensing something huge (and moving) in the darkness with her now, as she runs, as the toes of her boots connect with the tracks.
Tracks!
Malorie is running for a train!
Come on, Malorie!
Shannon. Even her sister is encouraging her from the dock. The same sister who expressed jealousy and said but the lake was hers to swim in and had to be consoled by (Sam and Mary Walsh) Mom and Dad. Now Shannon calls to her, her voice high and energized. She’s rooting for Malorie to make it just as Malorie once rooted for Shannon to make it in the new world, just as that new world was replacing the old one, even as Shannon believed in the creatures before Malorie did.
Come on, Malorie!
And Malorie reaches for the dock, blindly, the water and the darkness above her head it seems, so that she might be running sideways now, might be running toward the earth or even away from the train.
Mom and Dad are laughing, and Malorie knows it’s because she’s going to make it.
A hand grips her own.
The train isn’t moving fast. Can’t move fast. Blind.
She’s pulled forward, and a second hand takes her second hand, and Malorie’s feet are suddenly dragging. Her shin connects with something metal and the sound of the machine is so loud, so terribly loud, that she feels like it’s falling from the sky, falling directly above her.
“Step up,” Tom says.
It’s Tom who has her. Tom holds her, guides her to a set of metal steps.
Malorie raises a leg, puts it down, but her boot connects with nothing and she’s dragged again.