The Unbeaten Track

Chapter 1

The Unbeaten Track

By Vivien Dean

I don’t sleep.

Okay, that’s obviously a lie. Everybody sleeps, or else we’d be a planet full of psychopaths. I can already hear Dr. Willoughby scolding me. “Stop exaggerating, Sean. You’re not doing yourself any favors.”

She was a b***h, but she was right most of the time, so I guess I should probably listen to her when she decides to poke her nose into my psyche these days.

I don’t sleep much.

That’s more accurate.

I go two, maybe three hours tops. That’s my last parting gift from Dr. Willoughby and the staff at Bronx Lebanon. It’s not their fault. f**k, they were great, everything considered. It’s just that after spending so many weeks sedated and stuck in bed when that hospital was the last place I wanted to be, I think my body has revolted. It’s like it thinks that if I go to sleep again, really asleep, I’ll end up back there, and that’s the last thing I want. I’ve worked too hard to move past it all. Even if it has been over a decade since I got out.

So after work, I get on the train and I just ride until my head feels like a cannonball and my brain is tripping over itself trying to remember where my stop is. That usually happens around four, five in the morning. I don’t leave Manhattan. I’m not that f*****g nuts. Plus, it helps that I look the way I do. People don’t mess with a guy who’s six-two and packing a hard two-twenty. They take one look at the shaved head and tats and assume the worst.

If Dr. Willoughby saw me now, she’d probably have a field day telling me how I’m trying to live down to people’s expectations, but that’s not it. It’s about putting on armor. It makes me feel stronger if I think people see me that way. Trust me, I need that boost. When you get broken bad enough and then fix yourself up, you never want to end up in that place again.

The thing about the train is how easy it makes it for me to shut off. Sure, the homeless camp out for the night, and sometimes there’ll be pockets of people coming from a late night party or show, but I mostly avoid the parts of the city where I’d most likely run into annoying people. I like that I can sit there, and the rhythms of the train, the rocking, the hum, the hollow roars, all of it works to erase the effects of my day. Nothing to distract me. Nothing to do. Just be.

That’s why I wasn’t prepared the first time it happened.

I was on the 4 southbound, after just switching trains. At that time of night, it takes about half an hour to do the length of Manhattan, from 125th Street to the Brooklyn Bridge, so I ride it out, and then hop off and go back in the direction I came from. Train pacing, I call it. With the train doing all the work. I love the damn express.

It was about three o’clock, and the car I was on was deserted. Not even the rats were out to keep me company. I was actually tired tonight—the restaurant where I’m a line cook had been slammed with two different private parties, both of which had VIPs to make sure we impressed—and I’d leaned back against the wall with my eyes shut while I debated making the transfer at Grand Central to get home early. I didn’t have long to decide. That’s the midway point on that particular run. Miss the stop, and I’d have to ride it through, then either turn around and come back or f**k around with transfers at the Bridge.

I wasn’t in the mood for either of those options, so the choice was easy.

When I opened my eyes to watch for my exit, I saw him instead.

My seat was near the end of the car, and though my gaze faced forward, I saw his reflection out of the corner of my eye. When you’re going through the tunnels, the windows act like mirrors, but nobody notices except when there aren’t many passengers. I see it all the time so I’m used to that added sense of solitude the reflections give by doubling up how empty it is around you. My stomach dropped through my feet at the sight of Dixon, though.

He looked like he always had. Dirty blond hair stuck up in the front from the cowlick he hated. The faded black Rush T-shirt he’d stolen from his dad’s closet, the one that was a thousand sizes too big for him so it made his arms look even more like matchsticks. The jeans his mom kept throwing away because they were too short, but then he dug back out again because they were one of the few pair he had that didn’t fall down his skinny ass.

He’d been taller than me back then. He’d been six-three, so he’d still be taller than me now if we both stood up.

The only problem with that was Dixon Thompson had been dead for eleven years.

My head whipped around, my body tense to leap up and face the stranger who dared to wear Dixon’s face.

The car was empty. When I looked back at the window, the reflection was gone.

I missed my stop.