Samantha and Nipper stepped through the “Paris” archway and walked along the corridor. There was enough light for them to see their feet, but not much more. She guessed, from the sound of their footsteps, that they were probably walking on a tiled floor.
As she walked, she looked up and squinted, trying to make out what the ceiling above them looked like. Then Nipper whacked her with an outstretched arm, and she stopped.
“Look down,” he said.
They’d reached a ledge.
Light filtered down through a grate in the ceiling, so she could make out the details below. About three feet down from the ledge, two wide metal tracks led off into the distance and disappeared into the darkness. And on the tracks, directly below Samantha and Nipper, sat a small open car. The strange vehicle looked like something that belonged on a roller coaster.
“Magtrain,” said Nipper.
Samantha thought again about their family trip to Pacific Pandemonium. The visit had been cut short after Nipper insisted that Samantha sit next to him on the Holy-cow-a-bunga! roller coaster over and over again. After four times around the winding, flipping, twisting track, Samantha had had enough and got off. Nipper stayed on and rode the Holy-cow-a-bunga! nine more times. Then he barfed mightily and the staff had to close the attraction while they cleaned out the car. The Spinners left the park right after that.
Everyone in the family was extremely grouchy that their trip to the amusement park was cut short, but Samantha remembered having fun the whole ride home guessing license plate messages with Uncle Paul.
“C-L-W-N-C-four-R,” she said, reading the plate on a tiny red sedan in front of them.
“Clown car!” Uncle Paul answered quickly.
A van sped past them. As it went by, they saw LVFR4NC3 on the plate.
“Love France!” she called out.
“Or leave France,” her uncle said thoughtfully.
Looking down at the magtrain car, Samantha guessed it was about the same size as the one they rode on the Holy-cow-a-bunga! But it looked odd, even for a roller-coaster car. There were benches wide enough for two riders in the front and in the back. They were connected by a single bucket seat in the middle, so there was room for a total of five passengers. Viewed from the top, the car was shaped like a big letter H.
“Shotgun!” shouted Nipper as he bolted ahead of Samantha, hopped over the ledge, and plopped onto the right side of the front bench. He rapped his knuckles against the wide, curved windshield that stretched across the front of the car. Then he waved, signaling her to join him.
Samantha was never, ever going to sit next to her brother on any ride again if she could help it. She hopped down from the ledge. Then she took a big step forward and lowered herself into the bucket seat in the center of the H. They both sat for a minute, looking around and waiting for something to happen.
Samantha noticed a glowing red oval button on the back of the bench in front of her.
She reached out and pressed it.
The button clicked down and a soft hum began to fill the air. The oval turned yellow and numbers and letters appeared across its front.
000000 MPH
The tiny hairs on her arms stood up, and from where she sat Samantha could see the tracks begin to glow. They bathed the chamber all around them with soft orange light.
In front of her, Nipper’s hair stuck out in all directions. Illuminated by the glowing tracks, his head looked like a porcupine. She could feel the hair on her head sticking out, too.
“Electric,” said Nipper.
The hum grew louder and the car began to move forward. Samantha quickly stowed the umbrella in a narrow space below her feet and gripped the sides of her seat. She prepared herself for a roller-coaster ride.
But there was no jolt of g-force. The car began to speed up, slowly and incredibly smoothly. Samantha looked down at the oval. The numbers were rising, and they were already moving pretty fast.
000003 MPH
000008 MPH
000090 MPH
“Magnetic,” said Nipper.
Samantha kept her eyes on the oval and watched the numbers advance. She could feel the car continuing to accelerate.
Suddenly Samantha understood the word magtrain. They were floating above the tracks, propelled by magnets.
The rails beneath the train now glowed bright yellow, so Samantha could clearly see the walls around her and Nipper—and that they were racing past them very quickly. The numbers in the center of the oval kept shooting upward.
000140 MPH
000308 MPH
000912 MPH
001200 MPH
“Fantastic!” Nipper shouted.
He turned to look back at her and carefully stood up from the bench. The air blasting over the windshield whipped his hair around wildly.
She smiled at her brother. This was pretty fun.
A card of some sort slipped out of Nipper’s pocket and was caught by the rushing air. Samantha and Nipper both followed its fluttering path onto the tracks and watched it vanish into the long tunnel behind them.
“Sam!” Nipper shouted. “I lost my old baseball card!”
Samantha shook her head but didn’t say anything. He was going to lose that card sooner or later.
The walls narrowed and Nipper sat back down. The car was moving faster and faster. They rocketed smoothly down an endless tunnel. The rails were now bright white.
Samantha glanced at the yellow oval.
010000 MPH
“We’ve stopped accelerating,” she called. “It’s about five thousand miles from Seattle to Paris,” she added. “We should be there in thirty minutes.”
“That depends,” her brother shouted. “Which way around the earth are we going?”
Samantha had to admit that it wasn’t a completely ridiculous question. It was one she might have been able to answer if she’d noted which way they were pointing when they took off below the surface of the planet. But it had been hard to see much of anything in the little round station room. They probably missed a lot of details there. The magtrain coasted on and on and on. Considering how fast they were going, the ride was pretty comfortable.
As they raced through the tunnel, Samantha took out her little black journal and opened it to the most recent entry. Yesterday, she was planning to add to it. Then Nipper interrupted her—and they’d discovered the Plans.
She reread the sad sentences.
There’s a little bit of Nelly McPepper hidden inside all of us. It’s a tiny egg of sadness, waiting to hatch into a giant chicken of woe. The sky is gloomy and gray because the sun has been jacked up on a massive flatbed truck rolling south. We stand soaking in the dreary drizzle each rainy day, clueless fools in a crummy cruel world.
We have nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Samantha could hear the motors of the magtrain car purring like a giant electronic cat. She scratched out the gloomy lines and started over.
There is a hidden magtrain station in Seattle, Washington. It is located near Volunteer Park, about two miles from downtown….