Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“Is that what Miyole wants?” My words come out near a growl.

“I’m sure it is. You can talk to her yourself if it makes you feel better.”

“Maybe I will.” I snap the crow shut before she can say anything more.

I stomp down to Miyole’s classroom, where I pace outside the door until the session ends, and a pack of smallgirls comes streaming out into the hall. Miyole catches sight of me.

“Ava!” Excitement bubbles in her voice.

“Miyole.” My anger melts a little.

“I’m learning Mandarin,” Miyole announces. “And Ms. Sarangapani says we’re going on a field trip to the bioelectronics labs at Bangalore later this year.”

“That’s great.” I smile and fix one of her braids what’s gone askew. “Soraya says they want to test you more after school. Is that what you want?”

“Oh, yes.” She’s practically hopping. “Dr. Lata said if my scores were good, I could take biochemical engineering with the older girls.”

“That’s wonderful. You want me to wait for you after?”

Miyole frowns, thinking. “Isn’t Soraya coming to get me?”

“Right so,” I say.

“You don’t need to wait, then. Soraya can take care of me.”

I step back. “Are you sure?”

Miyole nods. “I talked to her already. She says we can stop and I can try kulfi on the way back. I asked Vishva about it, and she says it’s this sweet thing, but it’s cold.” She’s so excited she near forgets to blink. “I’ve got to go. Vishva and Aziza said we get to build our own bird glider in biomimetics.”

I leave Revati Academy alone. The rail, with its mash of people and suffocating heat, feels less foreign and luxurious now. I’ve stopped looking out the window. Instead of riding it all the way up to Soraya’s house, I step off early at the Salt.

The fence around Rushil’s shipyard is whole again, a section of it patched over with metal sheets. His trailer sits quiet in the corner of the lot, flanked by ships docked for repair or salvage. I picture his garden with its cucumber vines, and him and Miyole sitting together, trying out the metal burner. I close my eyes and lean against the gate. It wasn’t his fault the Wailers came that night, not any more than it was mine for needing a work tag.

“Hello?” I call.

Pala barks somewhere deep in the lot. I hear the uneven scuffle of his paws before he rounds a skiff and hobbles up to the fence to sniff me. I wait, eyes on the line of ships, but Rushil is nowhere in sight. I should slink away, go back to Soraya’s house, but now that I’m so close to the ship, I want nothing but to crawl up into its cockpit and sit in silence. Maybe Rushil will have found some tubing for me. I can apologize for blaming him and for the way I disappeared with Miyole, and we can start fixing the ship together again.

“Hello?” I call again.

But no one answers, not even Shruti. The heat warps the air above the shipyard’s white concrete and dirt. Some few lots down, a pack of dogs set each other off in a fit of baying.

Like I was never here.

I don’t know why I do it, but before I can think too hard, my hands are unknotting the leather cord holding my data pendant around my neck. I slip off the disk and stow it in my pocket, then loop the cord around the gatepost and tie it in a bow.

I was here, I think. Maybe he’ll see this and remember. Maybe he’ll know I came back. Maybe he’ll know I’m sorry.

I’m walking back to Sion station when the plan hits me. Khajjiar. I stop in my tracks. There’s a sleek new tablet at the bottom of my dresser what should more than cover the price of a ticket once I’ve hawked it to a street vendor. Would anyone even notice I’m gone? Miyole doesn’t need me now, much less Soraya or Rushil. I’m worthless—remedial—at Revati. I can’t wait any longer. If there’s even the smallest chance Luck is out there, I need to find him.

M y crow has been chirping nonstop for the last two hours. I pull it from my pocket and check the screen. SORAYA. Outside the train window, trees and small villages flash by in the last light of day. The man across the aisle looks up from his tablet and glares at my crow as if he wants to shove it down my throat.

I take a deep breath and flip it open. “Hello?” I was going to have to answer sooner or later, anyway.

“Ava? Thank god. Miyole and I have been worried. Where are you?”

“On a train.”

“A train?” Soraya sounds confused. “Are you on your way home? When will you be here?”

“I don’t know.” I glance across the aisle. The man is staring at his tablet, pretending not to listen in. “There’s something I need to do, something important. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before I left, but I promise I’ll tell you when I get back.”

“And when will that be?”

I wince. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow . . . where are you going, Ava? What’s so important you have to disappear without any warning?”

“Khajjiar,” I say.

“Khajjiar,” she repeats. “That’s all the way up in Himachal Pradesh. What are you doing? Did you even bring a coat?”

A coat? I look out the window. The land is flat, sandy scrub. I doubt I’ll need Perpétue’s old jacket, much less a coat. “I’ll be fine. I’ll explain everything when I get back. I promise.”

“Ava—”

“Tell Miyole not to worry,” I say, and snap the crow closed before she can answer.

The cabin lights come on as the sky darkens, replacing my view of the countryside with a wan reflection of the train car’s interior. The man with the tablet, an old woman asleep with noise-dampening pads over her ears, my ragged haircut and hollow eyes. I look like a ghost of myself. If only Rushil were here with me. He would make up a terrible, ridiculous nickname for the eavesdropper across the row, help me keep from worrying over Luck with talk of the ship and how we’re going to repair it. I switch off the overhead lamp, wrap myself in my jacket, and curl up with my head against the window. The night rolls out dense and black, broken only by a scattering of distant lights, as the train carries us to Khajjiar.

I blink awake to hills, misted and blue in the early morning light. My forehead aches with cold where it rests against the glass. I sit up. Jagged white mountains range across the horizon, so high they pierce the clouds. The trees and valleys are green but dusted with frost. My breath clouds the window.

We pass clusters of houses, their rooftop solar panels glinting bright with the sunrise, and then elegant white wind turbines staggered across the hilltops. The light melts over the snow-capped mountains like buttery ghee.

“Tea, miss?” A woman pushing a cart stops beside my seat and leans in close so as not to wake the other passengers.

“Thank you.” I hand her a square of pay plastic and sit sipping my tea as the train slows through the mountain passes. We pull up to a station. Past the terminal, a town rises on the gentle slope of a hill, closed in on the back and sides by a dense green forest. Most of the other passengers are busy gathering their bags and stowing away their tablets. I wrap Perpétue’s jacket tight around me and step out onto the platform.

The wind bites, but the sun burns off the morning chill some as I make my way into town. I stop at a store that sells pakoras and sit down to eat them at the counter.