Ghost in the Machine by Patrick Carman

Author:Patrick Carman [Carman, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-545-29552-9
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2009-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Wednesday, September 22, 12:43 P.M.

That took longer than I expected. How was I supposed to know they were building trains up at Longhorn’s? Have you ever stumbled into a room full of model train enthusiasts? Those guys are big-time recruiters, so they wouldn’t leave me alone. They’d all heard about my accident and some old-timer told this really horrible story about a conductor who fell between two train cars and held on for dear life with both hands. His legs bounced around until finally someone found him and hauled him back to safety, but by that time both his legs were broken.

So then this guy says to me, “Lucky he didn’t end up under the train. That‘s a whole ’nother story you don’t even want to hear.”

I hadn’t wanted to hear the first story, either, but that hadn’t stopped him from telling it to me, and sure enough he told me this other story about the guy who fell under the train. I’m not going to repeat it. It’s a bad story.

Once they had me standing there, I had to hear about the engines and the trains that used to run through town and look at all their models and on and on. It was pretty interesting, actually. I was standing there thinking, Hey, I could join these guys if I didn’t have school. I could get my own train and do some research on this and that. These old guys aren’t that bad.

In other words, I was distracted.

It was about thirty minutes after I’d left the café that I realized I was away from my post and was probably missing Old Joe Bush himself turning the black crow on the steps of the library.

I excused myself to use the men’s room. Once I was in there, I realized a sink is a lot easier to climb on top of when you don’t have a leg that was recently broken into a bunch of pieces. But I was determined to get that window open for Sarah. I must have been in there a long time, like ten minutes, because I had only just unlatched the top window and gotten halfway down again when I heard someone at the door peeking in, asking if I was okay, had I fallen into the toilet — the usual stuff.

I sort of half fell, half climbed the rest of the way down and landed on my rear end on the tile floor. It’s a miracle I didn’t hurt myself. The same guy who had told me the two train stories helped me up and tried to make me feel better by commenting on how difficult it must be to go to the bathroom with a broken leg, etc., etc.

The funny thing was, I’d had about ten cups of coffee and I really needed to use the bathroom. But I’d already been in there forever so I made for the door and headed back here, to the café, which is where I’m sitting.

I went straight to the bathroom.

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