Free The Way Back from Broken by Amber J. Keyser Page B

camera—Juan’s favorite taqueria, a bedraggled Chinese New Year dragon rotting in a parking lot, the bridge that reminded him of church windows.

CHAPTER 10
    Rakmen slept for most of the flight from Portland to Chicago, waking only once when Jacey spilled ginger ale in her lap. Mrs. Tatlas mopped up the mess in strained silence. The girl’s apology spilled out after the mess— I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry . When her mother didn’t respond, Jacey curled up, stuck a piece of hair into her mouth, and buried her face against Rakmen’s shoulder.
    They slept until the plane thudded down the runway. Rakmen’s sleeve was damp where she had pressed against it, but he didn’t know if the wet was sweat or drool or tears. It was dark in Chicago, the middle of the night. Rain streaked the windows. They dragged themselves off the plane and into the terminal to wait for the next flight.
    Their gate was near a security checkpoint. A TSA agent with a wispy mustache and a paunch that strained against his uniform swabbed hands for bomb residue. Another, an older woman with a bad dye job, stared into the luggage scanning screen, the contents of each carry-on revealed in X-ray black and white.
    Rakmen flattened his notebook against his thigh.
    September 11th. Homemade explosives. Planes going down.
    He’d been little when the towers fell, had grown up in a world where they could.
    Nauseous and unsettled from the time change and sour airport smells, Rakmen shifted in the uncomfortable plastic seat, watching Mrs. Tatlas out of the corner of one eye. She felt dangerous. He didn’t want to get on the airplane with her.
    The security line had thinned, finished. The TSA agents were talking. He couldn’t help overhearing. The woman had a husband with cancer. The fat guy said his mom did too, and he knew he should stop smoking, but he couldn’t. It was the only pleasure he had.
    D’Shawn hadn’t smoked. No one in his family had. But cancer snuck in, waiting for an opportunity, quiescent until it exploded. Civilian casualties. Hidden threats. Security breaches.
    As soon as they boarded the flight from Chicago to Toronto, Rakmen balled up his jacket and tried to sleep against the window, but when a family with a sleepy toddler and a baby sat across the aisle from them, Mrs. Tatlas nudged him awake. “Switch with me.” He blinked at her, blurry with exhaustion. “Take the aisle.”
    The baby squawked as the dad tried to settle him against his chest.
    Mrs. Tatlas winced. “Please,” she said through gritted teeth.
    They snarled the procession of embarking passengers as he, Jacey, and Mrs. Tatlas switched places. She plastered her face to the window, staring out into the dark nothing and the rain.
    The baby cried all the way to Toronto. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Everything is okay,” the baby’s father whispered ceaselessly.
    There were men who put bombs in bags at the finish line of marathons.
    People lost their legs.
    . . .
    In the thin light of dawn, they were in a rental car heading north. Mrs. Tatlas, hunched over the wheel, hit scan on the stereo. The radio flicked past Christian stations and French stations and classical music and talk shows about fishing. She settled on ’80s rock.
    Next to him in the backseat of the moving vehicle, Jacey took pictures of the roller coaster at Canada’s Wonderland, a captive herd of buffalo, and fields of corn.
    â€œThey won’t come out,” he told her.
    â€œThey will.”
    â€œThey’ll be blurry.”
    â€œBut the good kind. The blurry that says go fast!” She bounced in the seat, pointing her camera at him. He held his hands up in front of his face, but she took his picture anyway.
    An hour outside of the city, they stopped for coffee and donuts at Tim Hortons. Bright signs inside proclaimed that he could donate and help the Children’s Foundation send a child to