Adam and I dutifully took out our new IDs and I said a silent prayer that the glue holding them together was fully dry. The guard, a very young woman—seriously, was she even older than me?—held my photo a bit too close to her nose for Adam's comfort.

"We're late for a train," he ventured, but she was unimpressed.

Staring at the teenage girl, I couldn't help but remember what Sage called kids like her: True converts. Did this girl really believe in what my mother was doing, or did she simply have no choice? In another reality, would she have been in school with me? Would we have been friends?

"You're not from here," she stated, still peering at my paperwork.

I felt a globule of spit get stuck in my throat, and I strained to swallow it down. But the guard didn't seem particularly disturbed by what she had just discovered as she switched her focus to Adam's ID.

"When did you two arrive from Seattle?"

Adam stepped forward, a subtle hand on my upper arm informing me that I should let him do the talking. "Recently."

"Why did you transfer here?"

I looked to Adam, hoping he had another one of his smart answers ready to go, but I could see his mind was racing just like mine.

"We were hoping to find work," I blundered, still looking to Adam for confirmation.

"I'm a carpenter," he added without missing a beat.

Her eyes finally flitted up from the paperwork in her hands to Adam and me, scanning us from head to foot like an X-ray machine. "You're newlyweds?"

I almost choked on that bit of spit, once again lodged in my throat. But Adam caught on quicker than I did, grabbing my right hand—the one with the diamond ring on it. Of course, I realized, and I forced a smile of what I could only imagine might appear to be wedded bliss.

"So where are you going on the train, then?"

I swallowed hard. That was a very good question. An impulse took over me suddenly, from where, I had no idea. "He got a gig," I beamed, rubbing my hand over his in a way that I hoped looking loving and not creepy. "Building houses."

Adam smiled awkwardly back at me, and we held the pose as long as we both could.

"Congratulations," she flatly stated, handing us back our documents. "You should hurry for that train."

"Yes, ma'am," Adam agreed, all but yanking my arm out of its socket as he pulled me the rest of the way to the station.

***

It turned out that the diamond-ring trick was good for more than just getting out of police interrogations. Once we were on the eastbound overnight train, Adam slipped a porter a small amount of the money Sage had spotted us in order to score an upgrade to a sleeping berth. "We're newlyweds," I overheard him whispering to the frail old woman, and I swear I even saw him wink.

I had to admit, however, that any weirdness I might have been feeling was allayed when I realized we wouldn't have to spend the night sleeping upright in rigid little seats.

The berth was a tiny compartment with a set of bunk beds along one wall and a luggage rack against the other. As soon as we were inside, Adam hurled his body onto the lower bunk, muttering something about waking him when we got there.

"You want a sandwich first?" I asked as I climbed up to the top bed, fishing a bag with Sage's take-out meals out of the backpack she'd loaned me. But he was already breathing deeply into the pillow.

Unable to sleep, I watched the night sky pass outside the window for a bit, lying on my stomach and nibbling on a turkey and cheese. The world didn't look too different once it started to move. I had noticed a similar phenomenon on the interdimensional train with Robbie and Piper—that no matter where we were, which plane we were visiting, once in motion it was all a blur of green and brown. The earth didn't change; only the people in it.

Different clothes, different hair, but mostly different eyes. Happy and bright in certain worlds, empty and longing in others. The world was only what we made of it. And in the underlake world, what people had made of it was a travesty.

I unwrapped the plastic from my arm to let the air heal it. The blood had dried into three identical scabs, and I laughed silently at the fact that I looked like the world's most inefficient suicide attempter.

I fell asleep remembering the warm feeling of Brady's arms around me, his heartbeat pulsating gently against my ear. Would I ever get to feel those arms again?

Would he still love me if he knew how much of our lives together I couldn't even remember?

I slept long enough to dream that I was looking for my brother Robbie in a dark cave, frightened by the echoing thrum of silence. Then the silence became the constant churning ache of the train passing over the rails. And the ache became a grunt. The grunting grew louder and louder until I felt the cave slipping just out of reach of my fingers.

Inhaling through shocked nostrils, it took me a moment to remember where I was, and I almost rolled off the top bunk, catching myself at the last moment.

My eyes creaked open enough to find that the grunting was Adam, doing pull-ups against the metal bars of the luggage rack, his back to me. My inner clock told me it was probably the middle of the night.

"Jesus, do you have to do that?"

"Couldn't sleep."

"Read a book."

"Can't get soft," he grunted again as his chin made it to the level of the bar, and then just a couple inches above it.

I tried to cover my head with the pillow, but it was no good. The grunting seemed to seep through the cotton. So I just laid there, my face turned towards him inside a taco shell of bed and pillow, watching him go up and down for a second.

"Were you really a wrestler?" I asked.

"What do you think?"

He plopped down on the floor now, squeezing his body into crunches and exhaling sharply at the top of each one.

"Did you like it?"

"Wrestling?"

"High school."

"Loved high school," he grunted, corkscrewing his elbows to touch the opposite knees. "Best time of my life. I had a cute girlfriend, shelf full of trophies. Good grades. Plus my dad liked that I was a wrestler. 'Cause he'd been one."

"Then why'd you do it?" I wondered out loud, so softly I wasn't sure if he'd hear me.

"Do what?"

"Leave."

He fell flat onto his back now, catching his breath. A thought seemed to be on the tip of his tongue, but he shook it off, piked his legs up above him, and began twisting his way up to touch his toes. But he only made it to the count of five before collapsing to the floor again and staring up at the ceiling, breathing in short bursts through his mouth.

"If I could take it back, I would," he said. "If I could just... start over."

"You know you could, right?" I asked, taking the pillow off my head. It was a touchy subject—the door to Yesterday. The impulse to undo all our mistakes.

"I was fourteen the first time I went down. I couldn't go back to fourteen even if I wanted to, and I don't want to. What's done is done."

I let this information wash over me for a moment. When given the same choice, I had tried to redo the past. But it turned out that some things can't be fixed.

"You didn't go to college?"

"The world was my college."

"The world doesn't give out teaching credentials."

He smiled sardonically at me as he flipped over to do push-ups. "I got my degree online. Almost every dimension has the Internet," he paused briefly, exhaling at the top of a push-up, then lowering again. "I would just come home to take the tests so they would count."

He did about twenty more, then flipped over again and sat down, letting his upper body collapse a bit over his legs. I thought maybe he was done talking to me, and I started to drift back off to sleep. "It's not enough anyway," he said, making my eyes pop back open.

"What's not?"

"I really should have a masters. The school only hired me because they were desperate. It's only a year-long gig."

"And then?" I asked, my eyes settling into a half-open state. "When this is over? Will you just—I don't know, take over some happy version of yourself somewhere on a tropical island and live out your days?"

He finally turned to look at me, his breath returning to a normal pace. "I've been down for six years, Marina. There are no other versions of me. I'm all that's left."

I picked my head up to look at him. How could I have not realized that? It seemed so obvious now that he was saying it. Six years, in and out of every dimension he could find. There's a price to pay for that.

"So what's in Boston?" he asked, finally done moving around. "Besides your brother?"

"I'm applying to MIT for the fall."

His lips pulled down into an impressed face and I laughed at how shocked he seemed.

"Yeah, I'm smart."

"Oh, I know you're smart," he laughed, shaking his head. He hauled himself up off the floor, airing out his sweaty shirt. "I have to change my shirt. Turn around."

I laughed a bit at the fact that he was suddenly shy, but I rolled over as I was instructed while he rifled through a bag of extra clothes Ado had given him. "M," I said after a bit.

"What's that?"

"My friends call me M."

When no response came, I glanced back over my shoulder to find one of Ado's T-shirts halfway over his sculpted abs. I whipped my head back towards the wall before he caught me.

"Let's get some sleep," he said, climbing back onto the lower bunk... "M."

"I was trying to," I joked.

"And don't snore."

"I don't snore!"

He was silent for several seconds as I tried to will myself back to sleep. "You snore a little," he joked, and I couldn't help but laugh.  

***

Well, what do you think of this new friendship? Can't wait to hear your thoughts.