Mapmaker (16 page)

For a few months after that, Harrison kept referring to Cleo as the “hot little hippie.” My dad would sort of laugh but I could tell he both was unnerved and annoyed. She was my dad’s best friend from college. They’d met at MIT. But I think she was always more than that; she was my dad’s Venus de Milo. I’m not saying my dad didn’t fully and totally love my mom and Beth, but Cleo was the one he could never have. No one could have Cleo. She’d never married, never had children, never had a significant other in her life.

I could see what he saw in her: mystery. She lived off the grid, even though she’d been a better student than Dad and could have had her choice of jobs. (According to him, anyway.) She never talked about her past; she never mentioned her childhood or family. She traveled a lot, but it was
never clear if it was for work or pleasure. Once I asked her what she did and she said, “Well, one of my passions is saving horses. I tend to them on my ranch.” But I don’t think anyone really knew.

No one except my dad.

Memories came and went
as the bus sped north-northwest. I thought back to the last time Cleo’s name had come up while he was alive: that phone call I’d remembered when Connor and I first hacked into my dad’s computer.

I hadn’t been able to sleep, so I went downstairs to have a snack. I could see through the stairwell window that the light was on in his shed. It was September; the nights were cool. I was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and sweatpants, but my feet were bare; the grass tickled my toes. The window was cracked open.

Dad was talking on a grey flip-phone attached to a grey box four inches wide. His “special phone,” as he called it. I never knew why it was special and I never asked. I thought it was a cell-phone-reception thing—our house was occasionally spotty—and figured it was a cool new gadget prototype, care of MapOut.

I hadn’t planned on eavesdropping. I had planned on doing some kind of prank, like scraping my fingernails against the windowpane, like the vampires in
Salem’s Lot
. So he’d shriek and we’d both laugh.

But he must have seen me outside.

He snapped his phone shut and asked me what I was doing.

“Looking for you,” I’d said innocently.

In a way, I still was.

I spent the rest
of the bus ride trying to decode the word
ALASKA
. I imagined Connor’s finger in my palm, tracing letters. I tried to shove that daydream aside, but couldn’t.

A is for Altitude

L is for Longitude

A is for Aerotriangulation

S is for Surveillance

K is for Kill-zone

A is for Access.

That was the first blind foray of dozens, maybe hundreds. The possibilities were endless (and ridiculous) but I couldn’t stop my mind. For thirteen hours I tried; I tried and came up with nothing. How ironic: I needed an app for this.

Union Station, Chicago, was the Alton train and bus depot’s polar opposite: vast, crowded, and bustling, even at 11:28
P.M.
I’d taken a taxi from the bus station to avoid surveillance cameras on mass transit. I only had a little over eighty dollars cash left. That was fine; I’d withdraw another three hundred at the stroke of midnight. I stared up at the Arrivals and Departures board. There was a Los Angeles–bound train with several stops in New Mexico, leaving at 12:05
A.M.
That would cut it close—very close, but I had to risk it. And before then, I had to figure out how to buy the ticket without using my real name, which meant not showing ID.

My eyes roved over the atrium, never lingering on a person or group of people for longer than a second. I tried not to count the number of police and National Guardsmen. There was a huge food court, news shops, souvenir stores, and a café with Internet. I resisted the urge to run straight to the café. I kept reminding myself that it wasn’t just risk;
it was certain death. There was no way I could check my email to see if Connor had tried to get in touch with me, even though it was all I could think about now. The moment I logged in, my location would be pinned in a few minutes. And I’d already vowed not to put Blaney and Rebs in danger. As sick as it made me feel, it would be best for them if they thought I’d disappeared forever, or worse.

First I needed to clean up. As I headed toward the bathrooms, I noticed that one of the souvenir shops sold Chicago Bears sweatshirts and sweatpants. Getting rid of these shredded jeans would help me blend in. Already, I’d caught a few long glances from some cops.

I couldn’t believe the prices, twenty-eight dollars for a pair of black sweatpants. It would have to do. I decided to buy a new Bears baseball cap to match, so I looked like some diehard Chicago local. Thank God the cashier was too glued to his phone to notice the filthy waif in the Redskins cap who was shopping. He probably saw worse than me on a daily basis.

As I paid for the clothes, I smelled the stale stench of cigarettes. A man stood right behind me, a little too close in the line. He smiled at me when I turned around. He had short, ginger-colored hair, and wore a suit shirt and tie with a brown leather jacket. I don’t know why exactly, there were lots of people in the store, but something about the way he smiled as though he knew me gave me the creeps.

I hurried across the station into the women’s bathroom. Now I was down to forty-eight dollars. But as I washed up in the bathroom, I knew it was worth the money. I looked human again: clean from head to toe, with a matching cap and pants. Even the navy-blue sweatshirt didn’t look so out of place.

After that, I stood in the line for the ticket window, mostly to kill time.

A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman with bright white teeth and brown hair in clips smiled at me.

“How can I help you?” she asked in a singsong voice.

“Um, how much is a one-way ticket to Elk, New Mexico? On the next train?”

The woman turned to her computer screen, typing slowly. I could see her fingers were knobby, her joints swollen. My grandmother had the same type of hands. I felt sorry for her, that behind her happy smile she must be in pain. I understood her, too.

“That would be train one seventy-five, leaving at twelve oh five
P.M.
 … let’s see.” She stopped and squinted. “You’ll have to transfer with a two-hour layover in Boyston. The fare is three hundred twenty-five dollars.”

“Three hundred twenty-five dollars?” I repeated, before I realized how stupid I sounded.

“Yes, that’s correct.” She flashed a sympathetic smile. “If you had booked it two weeks in advance, the fare would have been two hundred and ten dollars.”

I blinked. I wanted to answer,
“Well if I’d known two weeks ago that I would have been kidnapped from my office, drugged, and driven to Virginia to be murdered, then absolutely I would have booked the special discounted two-week advance fare.”
Instead I forced a smile back at her. “Thanks for letting me know.”

At 11:40, train number
175 was announced on the departures board. Track 11N. I scanned the station to find track 11N so
I would know where I’d have to run. It was 123 feet from the closest ATM machine to the gate. I positioned myself next to the machine so I could butt in front of someone if I had to at the right moment.

I started counting the minutes.

At exactly 12:01, I swiped my card. Punched in my password. I took one last glance around the huge station. No one seemed to be watching me, except for the fish-eye camera on the ATM. I felt my heart ticking like a bomb. The red pin on the map had dropped. Tanya Barrett was here. Even as I saw my new balance, $2,097.00, I wondered why Harrison hadn’t frozen the account. He was my legal guardian, after all. Maybe he believed that if he kept me afloat, I would eventually come home. Or maybe he was keeping me out in the world for some reason.

I pressed
WITHDRAW
and punched in $300. I could hear the clicking sound as the machine counted out the bills in twenties.

As soon as I grabbed the money I bolted for the gate. My palms were sweating now. The card slipped from my hand, falling to the floor. Time was speeding up. My heart was racing. I didn’t have time to pick up the card from the station floor. But that was fine. I didn’t need it anymore, anyway. I had enough to get me to Elk, plus an extra $23 for food. My trail would go cold at Union Station, Chicago.

“Wait!” I called to the lone conductor on the empty platform. He held his hand on the door for me. I jumped on and he stepped in behind me. A loud bell rang and the door closed quickly behind us. I pressed the automatic door that led to the passenger car and collapsed into the
nearest seat, sweaty and shaking, as the train pulled out of the station.

The midnight train wasn’t crowded. After a few minutes, I moved closer to the center of the car and took a window seat. Harrison had probably already pinned me at Union Station ATM. But 400 trains left Union Station a day.

Good luck picking the right one
.

“Tickets, please.” The conductor’s voice jolted me up.

“I don’t have one. I have to buy one,” I said, faking a yawn to disguise my strange behavior as fatigue.

“Reservation number?” He stared down at a rectangular black box in his hand, slightly larger than an iPhone.

“I didn’t have time to make one. I’m sorry. This was a last-minute family emergency. I barely made the train.”

He was tall, in his thirties, with brown hair and a nice, friendly face. There was a gold wedding ring on his finger.

“Okay, no reservation. Where are you heading?”

“Elk, New Mexico.”

He took a book from his back pocket flipping through the thin phone book like pages. “Let’s see … Elk, New Mexico. That’ll be three hundred eighty dollars.”

I shook my head. He must have got it wrong. “But I thought it was three hundred twenty-five?”

“If you buy on board, there’s a penalty charge.”

My throat felt thick. “I only have three hundred forty-eight.” I reached into my pocket and shoved the wad of bills at him. “I’m so sorry. Can you help me out?”

He flipped back through his book of fares and destinations. “It’s three hundred thirty if you get off the stop before, in Montgomery.”

“Montgomery is one hundred forty-nine miles from Elk!” I cried.

The conductor raised his eyebrows, surprised. “You know your geography.”

“Whatever, I’ll take it,” I said. My voice cracked, and I had to grit my teeth to hold back tears. It felt like the universe was conspiring against me in every way possible. Even Amtrak was against me. And I should have kept my mouth shut about geography.

“It’s a two-day train journey. How are you going to eat or drink?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The conductor glanced over his shoulder, toward the front of the train. “Here,” he said, handing me a receipt for Montgomery. He counted out change and placed the remaining eighteen dollars back in my hand. Then he took a pink slip and wrote
ELK
on it, and stuck it in the slot over my head. “Keep this with you at all times, and take it with when you transfer at Boyston,” he said. “Café car’s at the end, five cars down.” He winked. “Go Bears!”

Now I couldn’t hold back the tears. I managed a grateful laugh between sobs. I knew my face was turning red. I sniffed loudly.

“Thank you, sir,” I stammered.

I lay down on
the empty seat beside me, hoping the train would lull me to sleep. But when I closed my eyes, I could see the train moving through Chicago. I was watching it from above, like always. Every street was imprinted in my brain; I’d been to Chicago as a kid with my parents. I knew if this
didn’t stop, it would drive me crazy. I needed to sleep. I had pills for this, but they were in my medicine cabinet at home.

When I was younger, when I was helping my dad map the walking trails in the Amherst woods, I had the same sort of insomnia. At night, when I tried to sleep, my brain was tracking each step we took in the woods. From above, I could see all the trails, I could see my father and myself and everywhere we walked. After I was awake for two nights straight and verging on delirium, Dad took me to a doctor who prescribed me what Dad called “kiddie Ambien.” I was eight and taking sleeping pills. I still took them sometimes, but I could control it better.

My dad credited the insomnia and compulsiveness to my gift, but it was one of those times that I didn’t see it as a gift at all. Then, as now, it haunted me, like nightmares. Or more accurately: a waking alternative to nightmares.

I felt really, really alone staring at the dark window. I let myself think about Connor, about what he might be doing now. Right now. He was probably out somewhere with his girlfriend and Stanford friends. The last text he sent still made me miserable. I’d lost my phone but cruelly the text played inside my head.

“Sorry I didn’t get to say bye in person … I might not be exactly where I want to be but I’ll keep looking.”

What did that mean exactly? Why even write that in a text? It was probably Connor’s longest text ever. Maybe it was long because he felt so guilty over being such a coldhearted person and terrible friend. Not to mention just stupid for spelling Piri Reis wrong.