Agata ran through her uncle's spacious and lush backyard, through tall plants and grasses. A small vegetable garden gave off a rich, hot scent of new tomatoes. She pushed through the brush and to the wall, feeling along it for the iron door that had been bolted into it years and years ago, before Agata was born. It was hard to open, she knew, but it would let her out into the street.
The door was hidden by a tall stand of creeper vine, and it took a moment for her to find it, her hands rushing through the brush to feel the hard corner of the stone jamb and the cold of the metal. She found the handle and turned it. It creaked down and began to move on its hinges, but it would give only an inch.
Behind her she heard a gunshot and began to cry.
"Go, Agata, go," yelled her uncle from inside the house.
The door still gave her trouble, but it was starting to move. She pulled harder and it opened more, groaning on its rusted hinges. Finally she had the door open wide enough to snake through, pulling it shut behind her.
She was in an alley. In front of her, splattered in spray bomb on the back wall of an old garage she had never seen open was the number 13, faded a bit from the bright sun but still clearly visible, even under a mesh of other graffiti. Someone had tried to wash off a corner but someone else—probably her uncle—had repainted it. Running to it, she pushed on the center of the number, right at the midpoint of the three. Nothing happened.
She looked both ways and pushed harder. Somehow, the wall gave way, and she was falling inward into a cushion of air. It sucked her in and then slammed the door behind her. When she turned to look at the door, she discovered that on this side it was iron, just like the one in her uncle's garden, but with no handle. She tried to push the door back open the other way, but she couldn't budge it.
She was inside the Mytro. Her father may have been here, but now he was somewhere else on the line, somewhere very far away. She was standing in what looked like a long train station with a platform running in front of her. (East to west? North to south? She couldn't tell.) Rails ran along in both directions in front of her and disappeared into tunnels. The air in the small, close station buzzed with something like electricity. It was no more than five feet to the platform and the whole station was tiled in brown, unglazed adobe. Her skin prickled with goose bumps as a breeze lifted and began to swirl some loose leaves into the air around her feet. The leaves blew away from her and down the tunnel, into the dark.
Suddenly a train roared into the station and stopped, its wheels ticking on the steel. The doors chimed and opened.
The train was clearly waiting for her and only her, and the scent of hot oil, dust, and some sort of spice greeted her as she boarded. Perhaps this train ran through the market in Barcelona, picking up scents like a bee rushing through a puff of pollen? Immediately, the train started moving and she thought, What now?
The surprise at seeing the station and concern for her uncle had blanked her mind. She rustled through her recent memory, trying to recall his instructions. New York, she thought, and the train began speeding up, pitching her into a wicker seat.
A moment later she was in New York.
She stood in the gloom of the darkened city hall station—"City Hall" was written in gold above the door, the station dimly lit by guttering gas lamps. She watched the train roar away and then another one took its place a minute later. That one roared away.
Another train blew into the station, the door opened in front of her, and two men came through. Both wore dark masks and one held a small pistol.
Agata had only a moment to think as the hot spike of fear rolled through her and made the back of her mouth tingle and burn. She backed up as the men moved in, their eyes scanning the gloom and then coming back to her.
"You need to stand still, miss," one said in Spanish.
She froze in terror. As the two men—both wearing dark jackets and dark slacks and military boots that crunched on the tile—came toward her, the Mytro train chimed and the doors slammed shut. A blast of air from the tunnels pushed them all to the side and one of the men dropped his gun. Strangely, the doors all opened again, and Agata turned and dove back into the car. There were only a few heartbeats between her hitting the floor and the sound of the smoothly clicking doors closing behind her.
"Stop!"
The man with the gun had already recovered it and he fired. The bullet hit the window and shattered it, pouring glass onto her back. She covered her face and eyes. Another bullet splintered the window on the far side of the car. The train started to accelerate.
As she stood up, she peered back through the connecting doors at the end of the old train. The wicker seats near her were covered in glass, so she moved backwards, toward the front of the car. She heard another hoarse shout.
"Stop! Stop!"
They were on the train with her. They must have jumped onto it as the doors were closing. The men moved toward her and tried the door handle, which was locked—although Agata couldn't see how. She worried they might try to shoot the lock. As she watched them, the train rolled into the tunnel and everything went black.
Central Park South, she thought. I need to go to Central Park South. And a moment later, out of the darkness, the station appeared. It was like a scene change in a movie—blackness one moment, light in the next.
She heard a swish and the doors in her car opened. She ran for the platform and then toward a door on the far wall where she found an iron handle embedded in thick wood. She pushed, pulled, pushed. Nothing. It wouldn't budge. She pounded, screamed. A shot rang out, and she heard it smash into the brick and tile next to her head. Then, just as the men were about to reach her, the handle turned down and the door opened. A second later she was outside. Safe.
Agata had been speaking for most of the train ride. She spoke quietly, her lightly accented English calm and collected. She told Turtle the whole story, and Turtle believed her. It was too wild, too convoluted to be a lie. After all, he had ridden the Mytro himself; he knew it existed. He just didn't understand the complexity.
When she finished her story, Turtle looked up. "That's amazing," he said.
"It's crazy, yes? Insane?"
"Then what happened?"
"I left the train as quickly as I could, and you opened the door for me. It was luck. Pure luck. If they had gotten out a second earlier, well ..."
"So you said you wanted to be in New York ..."
"I thought it," said Agata.
"And you're here. But you can only go where the map takes you?"
"I think so. I said New York and it took me to that one station, City Hall?"
"Yes, City Hall. South of where we were. So when you think 'New York,' it takes you to a landmark. If you think about a certain place, it takes you there.
"So you have to know where you're going..."
"To get there, yes," she said.
Pieces of the story echoed in Turtle's head as they climbed the subway stairs, and he stood blinking in the sunlight, unsure where to take Agata. He imagined what he'd say to his grandmother— "This is Agata. She's staying with us. She's an exchange student"— and how ridiculous that would sound. Maybe he could explain that her host parents had left town on an emergency? Maybe he could get the Kincaids to back up his story? There was no way he'd be able to tell her the absolute truth, especially after what Agata had gone through.
They walked along the leafy streets of Bay Ridge, past old duplex houses made of dark brick and the kebab restaurants that lined Fifth Avenue. Agata took it all in, wide-eyed and smiling, still holding Turtle's hand. He prayed it wouldn't sweat and it didn't, staying cool and dry in her grasp.
She looked at him, right into his eyes. "Thank you, Turtle." "For what?"
"For understanding."
They came to his house, a small, thin brick home with a carefully tended front yard and gold numbers over the old wooden door. He rang the doorbell and then took out his key. His grandmother wasn't home. She was at the retirement center, probably in the kitchen cooking dinners for folks who couldn't leave their apartments. According to the note she left, she'd be back in a few hours, and she wrote that there was spaghetti and garlic bread in the oven, still warm.
Agata plugged her phone in and turned it on. She turned it on with a swipe. No messages. Agata looked down sadly and then up at Turtle.
"Your grandmother is very kind," said Agata. "But where are your parents?"
"My parents died when I was a baby, in a car wreck," said Turtle. "She and my grandfather raised me and then Grandpa died three years ago. Pneumonia."
"It's terrible to lose people," said Agata. She looked down, almost crying. "Do you remember them?"
"I do, barely. What's wrong?"
"I don't want to lose my parents," she said.
"But your uncle said your parents weren't dead, just gone. Probably on the Mytro, right?" She sniffed and shrugged.
"Have you had spaghetti before? Do you like it?"
She looked up at him, and the sadness quickly left her eyes. She laughed, her high voice seeming to fill his grandmother's small, clean kitchen with sunlight.
"Of course, Turtle. I've eaten it. Thank you," she said, finally smiling.