CASSIAN

The journey lasted two days.

It was a slow crawl across a world I had only ever seen from the tinted windows of my father’s cars.

Now, the world was loud and smelled of exhaust and old fabric.

We took a bus that dropped us at a station where the air was thick with the scent of cheap grease.

Then we found another bus. When the buses stopped running where we needed to go, we piled into a shared van with five other people who didn’t look at us.

When the van reached its limit, we walked.

We had very little money. Julian managed what we had with a cold, hard focus. It was a specific kind of economy. Every cent had a purpose.

There was no room for error. We weren’t using the family accounts or the cards that tracked my every move. We were using crumpled bills and heavy coins.

The motels were all the same. They were cheap in a way I had never imagined. They were the kind of rooms that didn’t ask for identification.

They didn’t ask questions because the people renting them couldn’t afford a place that cared who they were.

Sometimes there were two beds. Sometimes there was only one, and we shared the space, lying stiffly in the dark.

The wallpaper always seemed to be peeling at the corners, revealing yellowed plaster underneath.

The bathrooms were functional, usually featuring a thin bar of soap and a shower that took ten minutes to turn lukewarm.

The windows never offered a view of anything beautiful. They looked over cracked parking lots, or brick walls, or just the empty dark of nothing in particular.

Julian was enthusiastic about every room we found. He would drop his small bag on the floor and look around like he had just checked into a palace.

"This one has a television," he would say, flicking it on to a screen full of static. "And look, the water is actually hot."

Once, he walked into a room that smelled of stale tobacco and something sweet and rotting. He took a deep breath and nodded.

"This one smells like someone lived a full life here. I respect that."

I looked at the stain on the carpet and the crack in the ceiling. "It smells like someone died here," I told him.

Julian didn’t even turn around. "Same thing, different timeline, Cassian."

We ate in diners where the tables were sticky and the air was heavy with the smell of fried onions.

Julian ordered food like he had been doing it his entire life. He knew how to talk to the waitresses so they wouldn’t look too closely at us.

I would look at the menu and feel lost. I was used to menus that came with a list of wines and a waiter who waited for me to make a choice.

Here, the options were listed in bold plastic letters. Julian would reach over and point to a plate of eggs and greasy potatoes.

"That one," he would say. "It’s the cheapest thing they have and it’s the most filling. Those are the only two metrics that matter out here."

I ordered it. I ate it. And I discovered something I hadn’t expected. The food tasted good. It tasted better than the five-course meals at the estate.

It was the specific taste of something that belonged to me. I had earned the money for it that morning by carrying heavy suitcases for an elderly man at the station.

He had tipped me exactly enough for this meal. It was the first time in my life I had worked for my bread. It was a strange, sharp pride.

Later, we went into a grocery store. Julian moved through the aisles with a system. He wasn’t browsing; he was hunting.

"You take the left side," he whispered. "I take the right. We meet at the exit. Walk at a normal pace. Don’t look at anyone in the eye. Just keep moving."

"I’m not going to steal anything," I said, feeling my face heat up.

"Nobody is stealing anything," Julian replied.

A moment later, I saw a bar of chocolate disappear into the sleeve of his jacket. He did it with absolute ease. He didn’t look nervous. He didn’t even break his stride. When we got outside, I stopped him.

"That was stealing, Julian."

"That was efficiency," he said. He broke the bar in half and handed me a piece.

I followed him because there was no other choice that made sense. I was a prince without a kingdom, and he was the only one who knew the map of the world I was now living in.

"If we get caught—"

"We won’t," Julian interrupted. "I’ve been doing this since I was like six. Trust the system."

I looked at him, really looked at him. "You’ve been doing this since you were six???"

"How do you think I survived before I ended up at your father’s estate?" he asked. He didn’t sound like he wanted me to feel sorry for him.

He wasn’t asking for anything. It was just a fact, like the color of his hair or the shoes on his feet.

A quiet settled between us. It was a heavy, painful quiet. I was learning things about him that made the picture of who he was grow larger.

But the larger it grew, the more it hurt to look at. I had known him for years, and I had known nothing at all.

By the second day, the landscape began to change. The city buildings grew shorter and then disappeared.

We were in the spaces between cities now. The land was flat and gray under the winter sky. I watched the dead trees pass the window of the bus.

"Are you sure about this?" I asked. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I truly wanted to know.

Julian looked out the window for a long time before he spoke. "I have an uncle," he said. "He’s a distant relative. My mother’s half-brother."

I waited.

"I’ve been writing to him for two years," Julian continued. "Ever since I realized I couldn’t stay in that house forever."

"What does he do?"