tell you something. Vane had a vision about you.”
We pulled up into a train station as the train screeched to a halt. More rain poured over the steel roof of a thin concrete platform. A sign declared the stop to be the city of Kandy. Decorative, twinkling lights and bright lanterns were strung across the platform. At its center, a banner celebrated the upcoming Vesak Poya festival. We were halfway to Ella.
***
Almost four hours later, I sat, annoyed, in the train. So much for taking the first step—I may as well have not said anything. Beside me, Matt flipped through the guidebook. He’d already read twice. I seriously considered chucking it out the window. His reaction to Vane’s vision had been two underwhelming sentences. “It doesn’t change my plans. Believe me, I know what I’m doing.” Then, he turned back to the guidebook and buried his nose in its pages without speaking another word.
Boys, I cursed.
The train took us closer to the mountains in the middle of the island and up into the hills and higher elevation. Outside, the dense foliage resembled a jungle. We passed through a short tunnel, hewn out of rock, and the countryside opened to the sky. Tidy rows of tea bushes layered hillside terraces of a large tea estate. At its center, I spotted a stately white Colonial house.
Matt shut the guidebook and stared out the window in silence.
“No,” I burst out. “I refuse to believe that’s your whole reaction to the vision. There’s more to it. I know it. So do you. So what are you not wanting to say? What are you holding back this time, Merlin?”
He said softly, “I already trusted you once, Ryan.”
And you betrayed me. The unspoken words reverberated in my head, cutting deep into my heart. I took a breath, and let it out. “I can’t change what I did.”
“No, you can’t.”
He was making me crazy. I sighed. “Can you, for one minute, stop feeling sorry for yourself?”
“I might if you’d bother to help me fix what you’ve broken instead of wasting time admiring the countryside.”
I glared at him. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“Why are you? I might deal in half-truths, but at least I haven’t been lying to myself.”
“What does that mean?”
Matt dropped the guidebook on my lap. “It means you can’t have it both ways, Ryan. You can’t believe in Vane and me at the same time. Only one of us is right.”
I didn’t think he was talking about belief.
The train pulled up onto a long platform of another small town. A sign declared it as “Nanu Oya.” More old-fashioned oil lanterns lined the platform's ceilings. Colorful hanging baskets of orchids swayed in the cool breeze of the darkening sky. The train pulled to a screeching halt. I watched as those around us jumped up and began to grab bags from the metal overhead shelves that lined both sides of the compartment.
Matt got up and reached for his bag from the overhead rack. His action treated me to a nice expanse of bare skin. He turned to walk off.
I jumped up. “Matt, this conversation is not over.”
A few tourists watched us with avid eyes as they took their bags and half-dragged themselves away from the unfolding drama. I flushed under the heat of their scrutiny.
Matt grabbed my backpack and held it out to me. “We’re here. This is our stop.”
I blinked. “Th-this isn’t the stop for Ella.”
“I realize that.”
Realization hit me, too. I scowled at him. “You lied to Raj.”
“Of course I did,” Matt said without remorse. “Don’t tell me you’re actually surprised?”
***
Half an hour later, I wondered what the punishment in Sri Lanka was for strangling someone. I hiked uphill, following the bane of my current existence along a muddy trail that squished sticky goo into my brand-new Vans. The tennis shoes managed to survive the mucky streets of Chennai only to be decimated in a hill station full of super-clean, cobblestone walkways. The town boasted Colonial-style bungalow houses with perfectly manicured lawns, a replica of any small village from England. None of which, however, were on the trail Matt wisely chose for us to take... for no other reason than a perverse desire to torture me.
“Nuwara Eliya. Nickname: Little England,” I read from the guidebook and trudged along behind Matt. I flipped the page. “In the central highlands of Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was called during its British occupation, the hill country retreat became a private sanctuary for colonists, civil servants, and tea planters