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i-am-snowils-admiral · 7 years ago

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Train Tracks and Ice Cream

This is another original story! I wrote it for a fiction writing class. It’s fun I like it. Feedback is always great (I know it’s a little long to ask you guys to read seeing as it’s not fanfiction, but I’d appreciate it).

(For those who know my ocs, just know that although the story started out with it being about Eli and Milo, they didn’t fit the roles so I shifted it around. I couldn’t bring myself to change Milo’s name though, so the Milo in this story is not necessarily connected with my oc Milo)

Words: 3812

Samuel Cain had hoped, initially, that he would find a nice quiet field somewhere to set up his picnic blanket. He had been most excited when he first found the picnic blanket in the corner of the garage, because it was white with red perpendicular stripes, and fit perfectly into his fantasies of hot summer days and laughing children playing in the grass while happy parents sat and gossiped about kindergarten teachers. He was almost certain that his family had been on one of those outings, but had neither pictures nor stories to confirm it. Sometimes he wondered if seventeen was old enough that his chances of being one of the playing children were gone.

He had found himself not with a quiet field but with a smallish park - Burlington Park, according to a nearby sign - right next to the railroad tracks in the historic downtown of Hinsdale, Illinois. There was grass in the park, but it came in narrow strips in-between concrete walkways, and Samuel knew that he would feel rather silly setting up a picnic blanket there. As it was, he wasn’t sure he had the energy to set up a picnic blanket. Northern Illinois was going through the first real heat wave of the summer, and the power of it was leeching the strength from his limbs. The air was humid, the cicadas screaming the heat from their hiding places in the trees, and his slacks were sticking to the backs of his legs where he had been sitting on the train for the better part of the day. There was a rather nice looking fountain with some benches surrounding it, and so Samuel figured that that would have to do.

Hinsdale was not Samuel’s final destination. In fact, he was going to Chicago, and was going to have to make a number of train transfers, though Hinsdale was not one of them. He had chosen to stop here partially because he knew that when his parents got the bill for a new train ticket at a town he wasn’t supposed to stop at, they would call him, which they wouldn’t have done otherwise, and partially because he knew that he needed to take some time to think about the summer in front of him.

Samuel Cain was a well-behaved, mellow sort of boy, who gave off the vibe of being significantly older than he actually was. He did well in school, had a number of other well-behaved friends, and had not complained when his parents suggested that he spend the summer before his senior year of high school as what was effectively a garbage boy at the bank where his uncle worked. Samuel was clever enough to know that this was a scheme to get him out of the house so his parents could argue with his older brother in relative peace, but had stuck to the plan without complaint because he was determined to not turn down opportunities, as that was what his parents always accused his older brother of doing. There was also the issue that the previous summer’s scheme had consisted mostly of dumping Samuel at his friends’ houses for days at a time, which was fun at times but resulted in a number of raised eyebrows and difficult questions.

Many young men of Samuel’s age might have been thankful for the relative failure of an older sibling. Older siblings set the bar, after all, and if the bar was set low, pleasing parents enough to keep them off your back was fairly easy. Samuel, however, considered his brother’s incompetence not as a lowering of the bar but as a heightening of it. Every moment of weakness or failure he showed to his parents was to them a threat of falling into the same habits as the older son.

Following this conclusion, Samuel had built up his own character with the nervous apathy of a child stacking blocks at the doctor’s office in lieu of thinking about an imminent shot. He would get along better with his teachers than his fellow students (which he knew was a sign of maturity to most adults), would do all of his homework in neat handwriting at a desk facing the wall rather than the window, and would excel in both Math and English. If he were to be honest with himself, Samuel would admit that he preferred History to Math and English, really enjoyed the view from his bedroom window, and found several of his teachers to be exceedingly dull. However, Samuel was rarely honest with himself, and remained completely oblivious to his own opinions. He was happy, he supposed, not necessarily because he actually felt happy but because he wasn’t aware of any particular feelings of unhappiness. He wasn’t completely denying himself as a person, and his actions lessened the stress on his weary parents, whom he loved very much and wanted to cause as little trouble as possible. In another year, he would be going to college, and then perhaps he could branch out a bit more.

As it was, he was stuck here in this tiny midwestern town, sweat dripping from his dark hair, eating a ham and cheese sandwich he couldn’t really taste, suffocating on the smell of hot, damp grass, and waiting for the next train to arrive so he could continue on to Chicago.

Distracted as he was thinking about his destination, it was really a miracle that he noticed the boy on the train tracks at all. The tracks were close by, but not that close, and it took him a while to notice that the boy was on the tracks themselves instead of the sidewalk.

Peeling himself off the bench, Samuel walked closer to the tracks and watched the boy for a while, feeling quite sure that the boy’s mother would eventually notice and pull him off the tracks herself, most likely crying and screaming and kicking up such a fuss that the boy himself would probably start crying as well, and there’d be a big scene. However, as time went on and no one seemed to notice the boy, Samuel began to wonder if it was up to him to intervene.

The boy, who appeared on closer inspection to be wearing a stiff plastic backpack, a faded yellow shirt and bright red rain boots that matched the sunburn smattered across his nose, was watching his own feet with intense concentration, placing each foot with purpose. Although there wasn’t a train in sight, Samuel couldn’t help but feel a sense of urgency as he rushed out of the park and onto the tracks, grabbed the kid under the arms, and practically dragged him back towards the relative safety of the sidewalk.

The most alarming thing about dragging a random kid with no mother in sight off of the train tracks was definitely the fact that he did not struggle or yell. Hadn’t this kid ever been taught about basic stranger danger? Samuel had just dragged him away by the arms, for goodness sake! The least the kid could have done was look frightened.

Instead, the boy wavered on his feet for a brief moment, scrunched up his sunburned nose in concentration, and focused on Samuel as if he had just noticed him.

“Hi!” the boy exclaimed with a kind of hazy enthusiasm. “I’m Milo. I’m running away.”

Samuel fought the urge to scream in frustration. He actually took several moments to just stare at Milo in complete disbelief, trying to figure out if his age would account for the complete stupidity of informing a stranger of his name and current lack of supervision. The kid was what, seven, maybe? Samuel wasn’t sure. He wasn’t very good with ages, and was even worse trying to figure out maturity levels. He was terrible with kids.

Samuel was just considering the question of whether it would be hypocritical to tell the kid that he shouldn’t be talking to strangers when he realized that Milo was swaying on his feet, and that the sunburn on his cheeks wasn’t the only thing causing his face to flush. The blue eyes peeking out from under straw-colored hair had a slightly glazed look to them, and the boy’s lips were chapped and peeling. The kid was clearly dehydrated, and was well on his way to heatstroke.

Sighing in frustration, and wondering vaguely how a kid his age had managed to keep walking for so long in such a condition, Samuel grabbed the kid’s arm again and dragged him towards a nearby line of shops. He didn’t want to deal with an ambulance, and the fact that the kid hadn’t passed out yet and wasn’t slurring his speech told him that although he was close to heatstroke, he hadn’t actually gotten it yet. Samuel was pretty sure that there was an ice cream store nearby, which would have water and would be well air-conditioned.

Milo came along pretty willingly, and sipped at his water obediently when seated at a small table in the ice cream store. He was beginning to look more alert already, and Samuel was slightly nervous about what would happen when the kid really noticed where he was and who was with him.

“So,” Samuel started, a little awkwardly, glancing around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “How long have you been running away?”

Milo stared at him blankly for a moment, kicking his legs against the chair. “Since this morning,” he finally admitted.

Samuel let out a sigh of relief. Milo couldn’t be that far from home. “Have you run away before?”

“Nope! This is the first time. Sadie said it would be fun.” Milo stopped and narrowed his eyes at his companion. “Who are you, again?”

Samuel rested his head on his hand and raised an eyebrow at the kid. “I’m the guy who got you off the train tracks. My name’s Samuel. You probably would have died had I not been there.” Realistically, Samuel knew that someone else probably would have gotten Milo off the tracks eventually, but he felt honor bound to impress upon the kid just how dangerous his little escapade had been. “Who’s Sadie? Did she run away, too?”

Milo’s eyes had widened slightly at the mention of his potential demise, but he seemed to dismiss his brush with death fairly easily at the mention of Sadie. “Sadie’s my sister. She didn’t run away with me, but she said that I should. She said that I should get on the train tracks and keep walking until I got caught. She’s super cool and knows all sorts of things!”

Samuel didn’t trust himself to answer that without saying something not very flattering about the types of things that Milo’s sister knew, and so he changed the subject by suggesting that they actually buy some ice cream. The store had been a good idea for fending off the heat, but the smell of the ice cream was hard to resist. He also couldn’t help but be amused at the irony of a stranger offering to buy a lost child ice cream. Ice cream seemed to show up in every kidnapping story he’d ever heard. Ice cream and puppies. Sometimes there were balloons involved. He’d have to look into finding some balloons.

Now with ice cream, the unlikely pair settled back down in their seats, chatting aimlessly about subjects unrelated to running away and the potential negative influence of older sisters. Samuel learned that Milo was from the next town over, that he liked frogs better than salamanders, and that the stiff plastic backpack had been a birthday present from his aunt. The contents of the backpack (which was lime green with race cars on it, a questionable choice by anyone’s standards) turned out to be a flashlight, a picture book about dinosaurs, and a stack of newspaper, which Milo informed him was to make his bed, since Sadie had said that all runaways slept on newspaper.

Samuel was beginning to feel severely exasperated with Milo’s sister, and was starting to be truly thankful that his brother had never managed to drag him into any of his rebellious activities the way Sadie had dragged Milo. From his limited ability to judge the situation, Samuel had come to the conclusion that Milo had been goaded into running away by an irresponsible older sister who wanted to cause trouble for her overprotective parents. After a little digging, Samuel was able to discover that Sadie had recently been very upset about her parent’s interference in her relationship with a boy whose name Milo didn’t remember. Milo did remember that the boy smelled funny, was older than his sister, and that there had been a lot of yelling the day after he had come to visit.

Samuel thought that he could commiserate with the story in a certain way. Perhaps he could help this boy in ways beyond saving him from heatstroke. After all, Samuel himself had had to discover ways of dealing with troublesome older siblings and stressed out parents by himself, and here before him was a boy who was just beginning to understand the troubles awaiting him in the future. Samuel was just about to interrupt Milo’s story about what had happened to his last backpack to begin instructing him in the ways of being a mediator and a non-problematic child when he was struck with such a strong sensation of shameful revulsion that he was momentarily shocked that he had ever even considered destroying the potential of such an enthusiastic child and turning him into the same type of miserable, submissive person that Samuel himself had become.

“I’m not miserable,” he said aloud, and then blushed furiously, thanking his lucky stars that Milo had been too distracted by his own story to notice the outburst. Shocked out of the moment by his sudden exclamation, he took his attention off of Milo completely. He wasn’t miserable, right? He led a perfectly good life. He had nothing to complain about. Nothing made him unhappy.

And yet, he had automatically been repulsed by the idea of Milo following in his footsteps. As if his own path had somehow been faulty. As if encouraging the boy to mimic him would cause more harm than leaving him to figure it out himself.

Milo was asking him something, and Samuel pulled himself from the introspection with a jolt.

“What?”

Milo rolled his eyes. “Do you want to see my dinosaur book?” he asked, clearly repeating a previously ignored question.

Samuel agreed absently, bending over the dinosaur book with fake enthusiasm, asking questions to keep the kid happy while his mind swirled with confusion.

It was a miracle, really, that Samuel noticed the time. The next train would be arriving in five minutes, and there wasn’t another one until an hour after that. He tucked the dinosaur book under his arm and grabbed his suitcase, glad that he hadn’t left it by the park bench. He took Milo’s hand in his free one, and led him out the door.

“It’s time we got you home, Milo,” he explained briefly, relieved when the boy didn’t fight him on it. After the brief bout of almost-heatstroke and the thrilling adventures of the day away from home, the boy was sure to be exhausted.

He paid for the tickets with cash, somehow no longer wanting to goad his parents into calling by using the credit card. He could always call them first, after all. Somehow managing to keep a hold on the book, the suitcase, and the runaway child, Samuel managed to get the whole party on board the train, and settled them both down in some seats on the first floor of the double-decker passenger train. He tucked the dinosaur book into a sleeve on his suitcase. No need to distract the kid with it now. He had something to say.

“Milo,” he began, not entirely sure how to broach the subject. “Do you think that running away today was the right thing to do?”

It was a bit of a gamble, he knew, and it wasn’t exactly his job to instruct the kid, but he somehow felt that anything Milo’s parents said wouldn’t stand up to the temptation of the older sister’s approval, and something told him that the advice of a relative stranger may actually make more of an impression than the inevitable alarm of the parents. He felt he ought to teach the boy something, anyway, seeing as he couldn’t bring himself to do so earlier.

“The right thing?” Milo repeated, chewing on his lower lip in concentration.

Samuel could tell that his phrasing had been confusing, and figured that Milo was probably too tired to play a part in his question-and-answer teaching technique anyway.

“I mean that you probably scared your parents a lot,” he clarified, “and I think they’re going to be very unhappy. It’s dangerous, too. If I hadn’t been the one who found you, someone bad could have taken you away. And then you’d never see your parents or Sadie again.”

Probably a little harsh, he thought to himself as Milo’s eyes turned a little misty and his lip started to tremble. But it was necessary, really. Anyone could have found him. He could have been kidnapped. For one terrible moment, Samuel considered the fact that he could just keep the kid on the train with him and disappear into Chicago, Milo in tow. They wouldn’t last long, Samuel wasn’t well connected enough for a clean kidnapping, but the option was there. They could run away properly, vanish into the streets of the city, and escape from older siblings and concerned parents. He could take Milo to the natural history museum and show him the dinosaur bones. They could sit by the lake and eat ice cream.

But that wasn’t realistic. A daydream, really, and it would benefit Samuel more than it would Milo, anyway. He shook his head slightly as if to dislodge the thought, and looked out the window to where they were already approaching Milo’s station. Despite the length of his journey, the boy really hadn’t travelled far.

Taking a hold of his now-silent companion, Samuel got them both off of the train once more, and headed off in a random direction before realizing that outside the town name, he had no idea where Milo lived. One quiet conversation and an inquiry with the railway assistant later and they were headed in the right direction, Milo strangely subdued next to him.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Samuel said suddenly. “I was just worried is all. This is a safe area, but you really shouldn’t be all by yourself.”

Milo nodded silently, and Samuel wondered if it was more the exhaustion that was causing him to be so quiet.

If Samuel had been unsure about the address, he needn’t have worried, for he had just turned the corner of a street apparently a few blocks from Milo’s when a car that had been driving past them swerved halfway into a driveway and screeched to a stop. Three people, all of whom looked a bit like Milo, clambered out of the car and ran towards them with a yell. Milo, seeming to reach his limit, burst into tears and broke away from Samuel’s hold, throwing himself, backpack and all, into the arms of a woman Samuel could only assume was his mother.

A man who was probably Milo’s father and a girl of about Samuel’s age who must have been Sadie arrived moments later and all draped themselves over Milo in a giant tearful embrace. Sadie was nearly hysterical, and looked as if she had been crying all day. With each gasping sob, she stammered out an apology, clutching to Milo as if he had returned from the dead.

Perhaps Samuel had been too quick to judge her.

Observing the small huddle for a while, Samuel wondered if he was overstaying his welcome, and turned to go, but was stopped by a strong arm on his shoulder. He turned and was met by the tear-filled but suspicious eyes of Milo’s father. The man looked as though he couldn’t decide whether to hug Samuel as well or hit him, and Samuel suddenly realized that they didn’t know whether he had taken the boy or was escorting him home.

“I found him in Hinsdale,” he explained, hoping that the man would believe him. “He was walking on the railroad tracks. He looked like he was about to pass out from heatstroke so I got him some water and then took him home.”

The man seemed to pale at the news, and closed his eyes for a moment, surely imagining his son collapsed on the tracks, oblivious to an oncoming train. He opened his eyes once more and studied Samuel closely, searching for deception, then turned to hear the tail end of Milo’s own explanation. The boy seemed to have regained some of his previous energy, and was choking out between tears something that must have matched Samuel’s story, because the father turned and enveloped Samuel in a sudden hug.

The heat, which had been unbearable before, seemed to escalate with the added contact and smell of hot, terrified man, but Samuel couldn’t help but return the embrace, feeling his own eyes smart unexpectedly at the simple act of thanks.

The man pulled away and patted Samuel on the shoulder, nodding but not saying a word, before turning back to his son.

After the initial thrill of the return, there were actual words of thanks, invitations to dinner, and, upon his refusal, a demand that Samuel call them once he arrived safely in Chicago. Sadie held back, her fingers running through Milo’s hair in a protective gesture, as if she had only recently discovered how precious he was. Judging by her wide, shame-filled eyes, Samuel figured that she had.

He bade the family farewell, giving Milo’s hair an affectionate ruffle of his own, and renewed his promise to call when he had arrived at his Uncle’s, tucking the hastily-scribbled phone number into the sleeve of his suitcase. He turned back towards the train station, a spring in his step that he couldn’t quite explain. When he had put away the phone number, his hand had brushed up against the dinosaur book, but he hadn’t said anything or attempted to return it. Depending on how important the book was to the boy, it might give him an excuse to come back and visit sometime, to return it. Maybe Milo could even come to Chicago. They could make a whole day of it, getting ice cream and going to see the dinosaur bones. The summer suddenly seemed quite exciting, though for the life of him, Samuel couldn’t remember why it had seemed so bleak before.

#my writing #my ocs #sort of #I mean I guess they are ocs though not official ones

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