“I am minding the drift. You’ve gained weight.”
“That’s rude. You’ve lost muscle.”
“Don’t insult the bloke holding your ankles. You and Bo aren’t up to anything, right, Sis?”
“Of course not.” My protest comes out too forcefully.
“Good.”
“And what would be so wrong about it if we were up to something?”
“There’s a reason you don’t put a puppy in a cockfight.”
“Who’s the puppy?”
“It’s not you.”
I pinch his shoulder with my toe.
He jerks, and we both sway. “All right, all right! Bo’s my best mate, but it wouldn’t be a good match, Val. He’s a fireman. He’ll never be able to provide for you.”
Just like Ba couldn’t provide for Mum. Charlotte wanders into my mind. “Can a fireman provide for someone who probably stuffs her mattress with money?”
He snorts softly. “I would never even consider it. Her father owns a bank.”
“There’s a shocker.” Despite my sarcasm, his words press two fingers into the soft clay of my heart. Who’s the girl for Jamie? He’ll never find her buried in the boiler rooms. There were few Chinese in England, and there may be fewer still in America.
Jamie’s shoulder begins to tremble, and I jump off. He mops his head with a small towel that he must have swiped from the lavatory.
“So why’s Wink so mopey?” I ask.
“He wants to go to America, too.”
I blink at the idea of it. Well, why not? Wink deserves the chance to grow in the light of the sun, not the hot glow of a boiler room. Olly, too.
Jamie regards me the way a cat studies its shadow.
“Well, maybe I—”
“Stop there. You can’t save everyone.”
I fix a bright smile on him. “Don’t plan to. Only the ones who need saving.” And that includes you. “Let’s get a drink.”
Grabbing my cap, I swing open the door and come face-to-face with Skeleton.
He couldn’t have been listening to us, could he? I curse myself, wishing I’d remembered to make my voice low like a man’s. I also wish I’d put my cap on before exiting. I slip it over my head. “Er, hello?”
“Last call for the sweepstakes.” The steward shakes the satchel, and coins tinkle. “It’s a good sweeps, more than double the last. What do you say, fine gentlemen?”
His beady eyes linger on me longer than they need to, and his beaky nose sniffs. Does he recognize me as the person who overheard him with his cousin, the hapless Bledig? But I’d been dressed as Mrs. Sloane then. Surely, he hadn’t seen through that disguise.
Jamie levels his gaze at Skeleton. “We’re not interested. But since you’re here, one of the men in E-16 asked to use the bath, and he said you didn’t understand him.”
That must have been Drummer.
“Oh, well, there are many foreign tongues spoken here. You can hardly expect me—”
“Next time he’ll draw you a picture,” Jamie says dryly. “A bath before supper would be ideal.”
The steward inclines his head and leaves, passing Bo on his way back in. Bo closes the door and gives us a questioning look.
“I think he heard me talking like a girl,” I hiss.
Jamie attempts a handstand. “Forget about that creeper. It’s a dumb rule, not letting men and women socialize in their rooms. Bet they don’t have that rule in First Class.”
“No. That would be too drear.”
Bo pulls down the wall chair and drops into it.
Jamie lifts a hand. He still has the grace of a swan. But after only a few seconds, his arm shakes so much that he sets the other one back down again and then collapses onto the floor.
“Nice,” I offer.
He makes a face. “You only say it’s nice when it’s not.”
“It’s your tricky wrist. You have to warm it up more.”
He can’t lose his nerve now. We haven’t even gotten to the hard stuff, like shooting stars, which are ten times as hard on the rail. The distance between this stone and the next suddenly seems to widen before my eyes.
I shake out my hands, which have begun to fist. “Come on, Brother. It’s all muscle memory. ‘Tame the devil in your mind, and you can fly.’” I repeat Ba’s old phrase. “Remember?”
“It’s not my mind I’m worried about. It’s . . . this.” He gestures at himself.
“So you’re no longer spindly. But we’ve been growing all of our lives, and we’ve always taken it in stride. Why can’t you do that now? Practice and your body will figure itself out. Try the gunslinger again.”
“I doubt I can manage a two-arm handstand up there, let alone one.”
“You just have to work up to it.”
“Stop pushing me. I can’t do it all by tomorrow.” He grips his temples, his knuckles whitening.
I cross my arms. I feel Bo’s eyes on me and remember his comment about me ordering Jamie around. “I only push hard because I know what we’re capable of.”
“You know what you’re capable of.” Jamie glowers at me, and I glower back. Mum always said we were like the two sides of a railroad track; when one got hot, the other got equally hot.
“But I can’t do it without you.”
He sighs. Suddenly his glare loses its heat. Something has changed about him, a shift in attitude that leaves me feeling foolish and young.
“Want to know what I think?” Bo says quietly in Cantonese.
I’m about to say no, but Jamie says, “Yes.”
“Either of you walking on that rail is enough to turn heads. I think Jamie should do the basics and leave the fireworks to Valora.” Bo puts a fist over his mouth, the bump of his ring like a peeking frog’s eye. I definitely don’t notice how his arm muscles bulge. He catches me not-noticing them, and I quickly shift my focus to my big toe. “I bet she can handle herself.”
Jamie swabs his forehead. “What do you say, Val?”
“So . . . no double shooting stars? No gunslingers?”
Jamie slips on that old smile, which fits his face as easily as his cap fits his head. “We’ll think of something just as impressive.”