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much Sage wanted to believe her, she couldn’t. If she was so great, why would her father stay so far away?
    “Oh,” she moaned again, holding her stomach.
    “Hang on.” Ben stood up. “I’ll see where we are.”
    She nodded, watching him go to the door. He couldn’t help her nausea, but she could feel him wanting to do something. They were in the seventeenth car of a freight train, chugging west through New York State. Their car was carrying bins of machine parts manufactured in New London, Connecticut, and bound for Boise, Idaho. Sage had checked and rechecked the destination labels, and she could smell the grease the parts were packed in, heavy and sweet as old perfume.
    Sage and Ben were heading for Wyoming, to see Sage’s father. They had to go somewhere. Sage had vague memories of the ranch being huge, endless, with barns and cabins everywhere. Even if her father didn’t want any part of her, he could let her and Ben stay in a cabin hidden off in the mountains till the baby was born.
    “Can’t see too much,” Ben called, peering through the narrow gap in the sliding door. The car was old, made of wood and iron. People had carved their initials in the panels. “Fields and trees covered with a little snow, or maybe just frost. Looks like farm country, haystacks everywhere.”
    “Are we still heading west?”
    “Yep. Following the sun,” Ben said, coming back to hold her. He was an Eagle Scout with many badges, as knowledgeable and comfortable in nature as anyone Sage knew.
    “Good.” Sage leaned against his thin chest.
    It had been her idea to jump this train. When she was little, after she and her mother had moved back to Connecticut, her mother had told her stories of the Old West. Even though Sage was so young, she had noticed that all her mother ever talked about was the place they’d just left. But the stories had made her feel closer to her father, so she’d never said a word. They were about cattle drives, roundups, square dances, and powwows. They told of cowboys, cowgirls, medicine men, very good guys and very bad guys, and hoboes who rode the rails.
    This train line ran all along the shoreline, right through Silver Bay, and from the time Sage could remember, she had imagined becoming a hobo, hopping a freight back to Wyoming to see her father. If people could do it in the olden days, why not now? Sage had dreamed of going so many times over the years, not because she didn’t love her mother, but because she needed her father: hearing that long train whistle leaving Silver Bay in the middle of the night, holding on to the ancient dream of being her father’s daughter again.
    But even Sage had been shocked by how simple getting aboard actually was. Six cars had been standing behind the old depot. With Ben hiding behind the station, Sage had watched men loading crates with forklifts, and she’d asked straight out which ones were heading west.
    “This one, little lady.” One old codger had laughed, spitting tobacco juice. “Why, you want to make your way to Hollywood?”
    “No, I’m just doing a report for social studies,” Sage had replied.
    “Good for you,” the man had said, nodding encouragingly. “What on?”
    “Freight trains,” she’d answered. “Where they go, how long it takes.”
    “Well, this car you asked about,” he began, “heading out to Boise, Idaho, with a load of engine parts. Later today the old 4:52 is gonna swing down from Worcester, and these cars are gonna hook aboard. It’ll take around a week, going straight through Chicago and over the Great Plains, through the Rockies . . . engine parts, limestone, traprock, and fish meal. Wish I was going for the ride.”
    Sage had been leaning on her bike, her hair in braids, trying to look younger than sixteen so he wouldn’t guess her motives. She knew the man was about her grandfather’s age, and she listened to him tell her to work hard in school, that trains were ten times better than trucks, that if she