I Should've Just Stayed in Bed

Chapter Three: GO!

"I don't exactly know," I mumble as I stare at the map. I thought I knew what I was getting into when I offered to help Jonathan. Now, I'm not so sure. I roll up the map and stare at him, wondering if he has a girlfriend back at his home.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Well, you were staring at me," he says.
"Well, it's not every day you see someone from another dimension," I lie. He rolls his eyes. It's obvious that he knows how handsome he is. He must have girls drooling over him in his dimension, I think. He probably does have a girlfriend. Pity. I return to the map, until I feel his eyes boring into my skin. I look up; he blushes and looks away. Hmm. "Aha!"
"What?" Jon looks at me. Gosh, his eyes. They're so... Focus, I tell myself.
"I found a way to get to the sorceress that woman told us about. We just have to follow this road from Plyor," I point to a squiggle on the map, "and then we get to the town, um, Gryton is what I think she called it. What we do then, I'm not sure. We'll just have to figure it out when we get there."
"How do we get there?" Asks Jonathan.
"Good question," I reply.

We arrive at the train station after stopping for lunch at a small café. I pay for two economy class tickets to Plyor, the closest town to Gryton. I tried to get to a closer location, but apparently the train will absolutely never take anyone to Gryton because that town was once a place of exile for disease-ridden people who had turned into monsters under the plague. No one knows for certain, but rumor has it that the monsters still roam that area. At least that's what the attendant tells me. On the train, I explain this all to Jon. He frowns. As we hand our tickets to the conductor, I tell Jonathan that it's still a good 60 miles to Gryton from Plyor. His frown deepens. The train whistle blows and we lurch forward.
"So can you, um, do magic too?" asks Jonathan. I smile and nod. "Oh," he says, "Cool." I stretch out my hand, palm up, and a warm, tingly feeling spreads from my fingertips to my wrist. A ball of light floats above my hand and I throw it into the air. It dissipates and thousands of light crystals slowly rain down on us. Jon is staring at me in awe. I smile, a big, toothy smile. He laughs. "That was...amazing," he says, and my heart does backflips inside of my chest. Suddenly, the train stops. I look out of the window, expecting to have arrived at Plyor, but only to see dark smoke billowing out of the engine room. And not just out of the chimney. Smoke is flying out of the windows and is filling the air with ash. A voice comes over the loudspeaker. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing technical difficulties at the moment. Please stay seated and we will have the train moving in a couple of hours. Thank you for traveling with us." Several groans fill the car.
"Well, this sucks. How are we going to get to Plyor now?" complains Jonathan.
"I guess we'll have to go by foot," I say. I open up my window and start to climb out.
"Ma'am, ma'am, you can't do that. Please stay seated until-" An attendant shouts after me, but I don't hear the rest of what he's saying. As soon as Jonathan drops from the window, we start running. "The map!" I shout, about three minutes away from the train. "We forgot the map! It's still back there!" Jonathan holds up a scroll of paper and grins. "You're a lifesaver!" I say, hugging him. Wait, hugging him? I quickly let go and blush.
"Um, thanks," I mumble.
"I kind of liked that," says Jonathan, wrapping his arms around me. I lace my fingers behind his back as he pulls me in tighter. He moves his face closer to mine and I pull away. He needs to get back to his dimension. I belong here. In a place full of people like me. I would never fit in in his dimension. Plus, my mom. Even though the government forces us to live in our own houses at age sixteen, I still have my mom to consider. She'd never let me leave.
"So where to next? We had barely left the train station." Jonathan's voice pulls me back into reality. I consult the map. "It says here that the train station is about thirty miles from the nearest town, besides the one we were just in. From there, Plyor is about twenty miles and then we can get to Gryton from there, hopefully. And, according to the location of the sun, the nearest town is," I point my finger East, "that way. Let's go." I head off in the way I was pointing. After about thirty minutes of walking, I decide that we should set up camp for the night. I conjure up a meal that consists of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and two bright green apples. We sit quietly for a while, eating our food.
Jonathan interrupts the silence. "So where are your parents? I mean, they weren't at your house or anything, we're they?"
I swallow a bite of apple. "My mom has her own house. We're required by law to move into our own houses when we turn sixteen, so we can keep the tax money rolling in to keep the government from going bankrupt. My dad, he's what caused the ban on portals to your dimension. He went to do business, it wasn't illegal back then, and he never returned." I blink back tears.
"Oh. I'm so sorry," says Jonathan. I don't reply. Instead, I take another bite of my apple. I get up and yawn. I form two air mattresses out of thin air and lay down on one. Jon hops on the other, still crunching his apple. I offer to take the first watch, but Jonathan refuses. He lets me sleep and I drift off quite easily, despite all that's happened today.