Challenge Read Free

mother mad at him. Better not push it.
    “Hold on, just a minute,” she said, cupping the cell phone. “Steel, I’m going to take this by the rest-room. It’s private.”
    “Is it Dad?”
    “No. Just private.”
    She headed down the aisle and began talking again. Something weird was up: she didn’t usually keep secrets from Steel.
    He looked down the central aisle at all the people settling in. He knew which head belonged in what seat. Had it memorized. It was just the way his mind worked; some people remembered songs or dialogue from films, Steel remembered anything and everything he saw: the plays of a football game, a math equation three lines long, or the backs of heads of seventy-six people in a train car.
    So when the pretty woman with the dark hair and sunglasses left her seat and headed off the train and out onto the platform, Steel quickly jumped up, following her window to window, paralleling her movement away from the direction of his mother.
    Mid car he looked up into the overhead rack and saw what he could picture so well: the briefcase. He’d seen her carry it on board, and now she’d left without it. He reached up. He found himself out on the platform, pursuing her. He struggled against the tide of late arrivals, the woman’s briefcase in hand.
    “Hey! Lady!” he called out in his croaking, cracking voice. It was an embarrassment to even talk. Why couldn’t he be a year older right now? He hoisted the briefcase over his head—the thing was light as a feather.
    She had to be ignoring him, for she certainly could hear him: everyone was looking in his direction.
    “Excuse me! Lady!” he shouted even louder, still hoisting the briefcase.
    He caught up to her at last.
    “Lady! Lady! Your bag!”
    She stopped and turned slowly, as if she didn’t want to turn around, as if she were one of those monsters in a horror movie that had the face of the devil. But it wasn’t true: she had a nice face. Spanish, maybe. Her eyes widened when she saw what he carried. “What are you doing?” She couldn’t take her eyes off the briefcase. “What the”—she caught herself— “heck are you doing with that?”
    Winded, Steel blurted out at her, which was pretty much the way he talked, winded or not. Talking with anyone other than his mom and dad, his mouth became a bottleneck, an impediment to the speed at which his mind worked. The faster he spoke, the fewer words piled up waiting to get out, so he spoke very fast.
    “You left this—and I saw you—and I started to follow—and I tried to catch up because I thought you’d forgotten it—and the train’s going to leave any minute now—and that would leave you off the train and the briefcase on the train—and so here I am.” He pushed the case toward her. She didn’t accept it, raising her arms.
    “Not mine.”
    “Yeah. Yours. You carried it on the train not five minutes ago. I saw you. I’m six rows behind you.” He squinted. “You were seven rows from the front, aisle seat, left side. You have a red squishy thing holding your hair in a ponytail. When you came in, you put the briefcase in the overhead rack and sat down.” Again he encouraged the briefcase toward her.
    Her face remained impassive. “I’m sure you are mistaken.”
    Steel knew himself to be many things—precocious, overconfident, intelligent, geeky—but not mistaken. Not now. Not ever. “No, actually. I’m never wrong.” He stated it for her just like that. He got a rise out of her, too. She took a step back. He said, “You boarded with this briefcase. You put it up in the overhead rack, and you left the train without it. You don’t strike me as a terrorist, and it isn’t heavy enough to contain a bomb.…”
    She looked him up and down. “You have me confused with someone else, young man. And that means at the moment you’ve stolen someone’s briefcase, and I do not imagine this person will be happy about that.”
    “You’re wrong,” he said. “You’re lying to