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“For god’s sake, Audrey, I will not let us forget Christmas this year. It’s just...it was a normal thing, you know?” Melanie’s voice cracks, and Alex can hear her taking deep breaths before she continues. “It was the one day I could spend time with her and act like a normal family. I’m not forgetting it this year.”
“I’m not arguing that, but—”
“I still want to do it. I just…want to have this. It’s the first time in seven years…probably her whole life, where we’re back to normal. We’re all together and I can actually have a family again. I know it’s weird, I know it’s such an inconsequential thing to be fixated on, but god, Audrey, I just…want something normal.”
As far as Alex knows, there wasn’t any more discussion. She came downstairs the next day before dawn and Audrey was trying—and mostly failing—to set up a wonky tree. Really Alex doesn’t mind too much either way—on Big Alice, Christmas passed without much fanfare. The passengers got lab-grown meat for dinner. Wilford spent most of it getting blackout drunk, and Alex would stay up late playing cards with Emilia.
Everyone has a free night right now on Big Alice, a rare occurrence on a train where everyone had to be working, all day, every day. Wilford was somewhere—Alex doesn’t know—but he’d waved her away and told her to entertain herself. Alex didn’t need to be told twice. She’d run back to her berth, hoping that Emilia was there too.
Alex rounds the corner to the corridor where her bunk is. “Emilia!”
“Hey there,” Emilia says, putting down her book. Alex doesn’t know it yet, but it’s for Wilford’s book club—a strange farce that she would soon gain access to. Alex hangs off the edge of Emilia’s bunk. “Can we play cards?” It was a tradition they had struck up a year earlier, when neither of them could sleep. Alex liked spending time with the older girl: even if she wondered privately why an adult would want to do anything with her.
“Sure,” Emilia says, withdrawing the card pack from underneath her pillow. “Need help climbing up?”
“Nah,” Alex says, clambering up the side to plop down on Emilia’s bed. “I’m twelve, you know. I can do it.”
“Sure, whatever,” Emilia says, but she’s smiling. “What’ll it be tonight?” The question’s just a formality. Last card, king’s cross, speed, then go fish to finish. Alex can’t remember the last time they deviated from this order. They play three rounds of each, Alex winning almost half, though she’s pretty sure Emilia is letting her win. Once they’re done, Alex asks, “Hey, can we play poker?”
“What?”
“I saw Dubs playing it with Sykes. Come on, Emilia, teach me.”
“No way, Alex. You’re too young. I don’t want to get in trouble with Wilford for teaching you how to gamble.”
“Please? You know how to play, I know you do. Teach me. I promise I won’t tell him.” Alex puts on her best puppy-dog eyes face—even Wilford couldn’t resist it sometimes. Emilia huffs out a sigh, then says, “Fine. I’ll teach you. Because it’s Christmas. But”—she points a finger at Alex—“If Wilford asks, it wasn’t me, alright?”
“Okay, I won’t tell.”
Overall it wasn’t much of a special day, just one where Wilford could be relied upon to not bother her for a whole night. She can barely remember the Christmases of her youth, with the trees and the presents and all the trappings. Melanie probably would be sad that she doesn’t remember, so Alex resolves not to let on.
Alex doesn’t come back to her cabin for the whole day. She spends the morning at the helm, and the afternoon in Big Alice with Emilia. Alex wrangles the older girl into finding gifts for her moms. “But what do they like?” Emilia asks, half in a storage cabinet in Wilford’s apartment.
“Well, I don’t know. I haven’t seen my mom for seven years, and I only just got to know Audrey.” Alex yanks open a few drawers, shuts them. “Whoever came through here really picked this place clean.”
“I don’t suppose your mum would like a sword,” Emilia says, hooking a thumb at the weapons cabinet.
“No, but Ruth might,” Alex says under her breath. It takes a while, but she scrapes together two things, one for each of them. It’ll have to be enough. Aside from some tinsel wreaths above the windows, nobody seems to be in a particularly festive mood. The passengers seem to be content to go about business as usual. The crowd of people thins out as she gets closer to First Class, until she’s alone outside her door. Will her moms be home? That’s the big question.
Alex palms open the door, and immediately the scent of pine needles assaults her. It looks as if that previously-absent festive essence has been super-concentrated into this one room. There’s tinsel everywhere, green-and-red decorations hanging off everything. And of course, in the centre of it, the tree—which doesn’t look any less wonky than when Alex left.
“Hey there, Alex,” Audrey says, who’s baking something in the kitchen. “Have you seen your mom?”
“No, I haven’t.” Alex steps over the discarded tinsel on the floor to flop onto the couch. “It looks like the Santa Parade.” She doesn’t actually know what that is, but Emilia had mentioned it to her that afternoon.
“I know,” Audrey says, giving a self-deprecating little chuckle. “Melanie really wanted this, though. It was meant to be a surprise for her.”
Alex checks her watch. “I think she gets off shift at six.”
“Good, or else this meat…thing…is going to go dry. How about you go upstairs and freshen up?”
“You don’t need any help here?”
“No, I’m fine, baby. I’m sure you’ve had a long day. When you’re done, Melanie should be home and dinner will be ready.” Audrey winks at Alex, then turns back to whatever she’s making on the tiny stove. Even in First Class the kitchens aren’t very large. Alex supposes the First Class residents weren’t in the habit of making their own meals. She climbs the stairs to her bedroom. Alex quickly shucks her engineer jumpsuit, puts it away. She pulls on the MIT hoodie—given to her by Melanie—and a pair of sweatpants. Wilford would have a fit if he saw her in this now. Luckily he’s dead, and Alex never has to care about what he says again. Once she’s done changing, she ventures back downstairs. Audrey seems to be done with whatever she’s making and has transferred it to a decorative plate. Alex thinks, will this one be Christmas themed as well? and it is, with a lopsided frieze of trees along the edge. “Where is all of this from?” she eventually asks. “There’s so much stuff. Did you raid the storage cars or something?”
Audrey gives her a mischievous smirk. “Let’s just say that I have…access…to certain places other people wouldn’t think to look.” Alex wonders if there’s CCTV footage of Audrey wandering out of there with a huge crate of Christmas stuff. She’d like to see that. “Is that…nachos?”
“Yeah!” Audrey hands her the plate. “There’s not a lot of ways to make the lab meat palatable, but I did.”
“It looks good.” It really does, with tortilla chips lining the pan and generous amounts of cheese on top. “Wait. Is that actual cheese?”
“I’m just full of surprises today, aren’t I?” Audrey winks, then says, “Go put it on the table. Your mom should be here any minute.”
Melanie comes in the door right at that moment. “Hey guys,” she begins to say, when she stops short just inside the threshold. “Holy shit.”
“You like it?” Audrey asks, wandering out of the kitchen.
“I…” Melanie looks at the room in wonderment. “I can’t believe it. Audrey, did you do all this?”
“I sure did, baby.” Melanie and Audrey kiss; Alex looks away. “Shall we eat?” Audrey asks, disengaging herself from Melanie’s embrace. “It’ll go cold otherwise.” The nachos go quickly; they are delicious, and taste even better with the rare foodstuffs. Alex herself has not eaten cheese in years—on Big Alice, such delicacies were reserved for Wilford only. They can even ignore the fact that it’s lab-grown meat.
“Audrey, I can’t believe it,” Melanie says again, her mouth full. “How did you get all this stuff?”
“You Cavills are a suspicious bunch,” Audrey says. “I told y’all, I asked around. Now that Wilford’s gone, trade has started up again.”
“Okay,” Melanie says, stuffing another chipful of nachos in her mouth. “It tastes amazing, though.”
At the end of dinner, the nacho plate is empty, with a few tiny shards of chip left. Audrey brushes them off into the disposal and leaves the dish next to the sink. “Right. Now that the dinner portion has concluded…presents? Anyone?”
Alex can’t remember the last time she got something new, all for herself. Emilia gave her some earrings when she was fourteen, but that was it—and they weren’t even new, they were hand-me-downs from Emilia herself. If young Alex ever complained about it to Wilford, he put a quick stop to it. Alex doesn’t much care anymore, but she does feel a faint anticipation at this. Even though it’ll probably be a pair of goggles out of storage or something. All of the presents are wrapped in fabric: another anti-waste venture by Snowpiercer. Alex can imagine Ruth or someone else from Hospitality coming up with it. Alex recognises some of the fabrics as being from Audrey’s dresses. Did she cut up her clothes for this?
Audrey answers Alex’s unspoken question. “I had some old dresses, so I decided to break out the scissors. They didn’t fit me anyway.”
Alex thinks it might have caused a scene in the Nightcar; their madam tearing up her dresses for no reason. Audrey goes first: she gets perfume from Alex (stolen from Wilford’s apartment) and a filigree necklace from Melanie—it has pinhead-sized red gems studded along the chain. Alex can’t tell whether they’re actual rubies or not. Ironically, Wilford might have been able to tell her.
“Where in the hell did you get this, Melanie Cavill? Did you steal it off some sixty-year-old heiress or something?”
Alex snorts at the idea of her mom playing pickpocket to the First Class passengers. “No, of course not,” Melanie says, her eyebrows knitting in mock offence. “There’s a woman in Third who trades things.”
“What did you trade for it, then?”
Melanie slants a glance over to Alex, then says, “I gave her one of my rings. I don’t wear them anymore.” She takes Audrey’s hand. “Don’t worry about it. I hope you like it.”
“I do like it,” Audrey says, shifting the necklace so it catches the light. “So much. I just didn’t want you to go to too much trouble.”
“Nothing is too much trouble for you, honey,” Melanie says lovingly. Jeez, Mom, Alex thinks. “I bet she wishes we’d get a room already,” Audrey says with a giggle. Alex rolls her eyes. “Whatever.” She goes next: undoing the string holding the fabric together. Alex’s earlier prediction was right: she gets goggles from her mom.
“They’re brand new,” her mom says unnecessarily. “No cracks or anything.” The side of the plastic bag the goggles came in says for train personnel only. It feels strange for Alex, to know that she’s technically a Snowpiercer employee. Alex tears the bag open, tries them on. Oh, what a joy to have goggles that aren’t scratched to oblivion! “Thanks, mom,” she says. “I like these.”
“It turns out there’s a huge closet of equipment in one of the storage cars that nobody knows about. Engineer’s clearance,” Melanie says with a wink.
From Audrey, Alex gets a notebook. The plastic shrink-wrap is still intact. This is even more impressive—fresh, un-recycled paper is in very high demand on the train. Alex once saw a Third Class passenger trade a year’s worth of alcohol tokens for a single legal pad. “I know you like drawing,” Audrey says. “You probably have a ton of these, but it’s new.”
She’s right, but Alex won’t let her know that. “I’m nearly done with my current one. Thank you, Audrey.”
“Well, you know, you’d be surprised what you can find in the Nightcar,” Audrey says proudly, folding up the piece of fabric. “And of course, I’m the only one with access to the best storage room.”
In Alex’s private opinion, her mom gets the best stuff. Alex gives Melanie a portrait she drew. It’s from her actual sketchpad, and done more recently than the ones from her bunk. Alex feels mildly ashamed that it’s not framed, but Melanie doesn’t seem to care. “You’re so talented as always, honey,” she says, looking at it up close. “Who taught you to draw like that?”
“Emilia did.”
“Damn.” Melanie slides it back into the fabric sleeve. “I love it, honey. How long did it take?”
An hour and a half, but Alex won’t say that. “It’s a secret.”
The last thing is from Audrey, and it’s another ring, but this time it’s got diamonds on it. Is that a freaking engagement ring? “Where did you get this one from?” Melanie asks incredulously. “Don’t say the Nightcar storage room.”
“I’m telling you, there’s entire unopened crates of stuff.”
“It’s been seven years, Audrey! How do you find these things?”
Audrey crosses her arms. “Rings aren’t very noticeable. It’s hard to trade for them. You find them, wipe them down a bit, and you have something.”
“Why a ring, though?”
“Well…” Audrey pauses for a few seconds, then the words spill out in a rush: “I know we never really got married properly, but I wanted to give you a ring. I so wanted to, because you’re my wife now, and I wanted to give you something to symbolise that.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Melanie says, her voice breaking, and then she starts crying.
“Baby, what’s wrong?“ Audrey reaches out to her, and Melanie takes her hand. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just that…I never thought we’d have this, you know? Departure, Wilford, the research station…even before the Freeze, we didn’t really spend time together as a family.”
“Wait. We’re a family?” Audrey asks, in a pleasantly surprised way.
“Yeah?” Melanie says, wiping her eyes. “Of course we are, you’re my wife. And there’s Alex, too.” She slides the ring on her finger. “I never thought I’d have this, either. I love you guys.”
“Love you too,” Alex and Audrey both say at the same time.
The rest of the night passes languidly. All three of them squash up together on the couch under one of Audrey’s afghan blankets. Melanie found a bottle of apple liqueur and opened it. Alex has tried that stuff: it’s horrifically potent. It comes in a bright red bottle and honestly tastes more like chemicals than anything else. Wilford had some—Alex tried it and never drank it again. He was always into rare alcohol from far-flung locations. It’s nigh impossible to find an unopened bottle of any kind of drink on either train now—which is a testament to this one’s terrible taste.
“God, that’s awful,” Audrey says. “Is this apple or antifreeze flavour?”
“It’s all I could find,” Melanie says. “Come on, don’t tell me you don’t like obscure Slavic alcohol.”
“No, I don’t. It tastes like something I’d put down my drain.” Audrey offers her cup to Alex. “Here, try some.”
Melanie takes the cup before Alex can, shooting Audrey an incredulous look. “Hey, don’t corrupt our daughter. I’m hoping she’ll make it out of her teenage years without becoming an alcoholic.”
“We all did that,” Audrey mutters, slugging the rest of the liqueur down. “And with how that tastes, she’ll never drink again.”
“I’m not risking it,” Melanie says, screwing the top back on the bottle. “Alex, do you think you’ll drink at all in the future?”
“No, probably not.”
“You say that now,” Audrey says immediately. “She’ll meet some pretty guy or girl downtrain, and then she’ll be glued to the bar.”
“That won’t happen,” Alex says.
“Sure,” her mom and Audrey both say at the same time. Melanie puts the bottle on the floor. “What are we going to do with this? I don’t think either of us wants to drink it.”
“Give it to someone in Third Class. Or even Big Alice. Those people will drink anything.”
Alex yawns. She’s been up since six, running the helm and spending time with Emilia. “It’s getting late,” her mom says. “You should go to bed.”
Alex imagines that if she was a normal teenager, she’d resist, maybe with a mooooom, it’s not that late. However she is not a normal teenager, and she knows she needs her sleep. She bids goodnight to her mom and Audrey, hugging Melanie just a little longer than usual. “I love you,” Alex says.
“I love you too, honey,” Melanie says. “Sleep well.”
The First Class car has a living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom. It’s barely quarter size of Alex’s old home, but on the train it’s a palatial setup. When they moved in, Alex was given the attic bedroom. Alex climbs the stairs, steps inside it, closes the door. It’s barely four metres square: just enough space to squeeze in a bed and a dresser with a bookshelf in the corner. It’s also right against the walls of the train, so the room shakes abominably on rough stretches. It doesn’t matter. This room is hers, and it is paradise.
When Alex moved in with her mom and Audrey, she was forced to acknowledge how little stuff she had. All her things were on Snowpiercer at the time of departure. Wilford made her get rid of anything she came on board Big Alice with. Alex had nothing to her name, until her mom showed her the upstairs room and said, “It’s yours.” Luckily Melanie never got rid of Alex’s stuff. When both of them were off shift, Melanie took her down to one of the storage cars and revealed the nine or ten crates of nine-year-old Alex’s possessions from departure. Perfectly sealed, waiting almost in vain for their young owner. It took both of them, plus Javi and Audrey to carry the boxes all the way back to the ‘Cavill car’—as Ben had started calling it. Once she was alone, Alex got down to the task of opening them. Posters, books, sketchpads, photo albums, mementos of her old life. Now her room looks a lot less impersonal, if slightly juvenile. It’s as if Bill Nye The Science Guy and Rugrats threw up in there.
Alex opens her dresser drawer—it sticks, and she has to yank quite hard. She removes the well-worn sleep clothes in there, quickly changes out of her ‘house clothes’. Wilford often woke her up early in the morning, ordering her to be uptrain in ten minutes. Alex doesn’t have to go so quickly anymore, but she doesn’t like wasting time. She’s switched clothes in two minutes flat. After putting everything away exactly where it goes (another holdover from Big Alice) Alex flops down on her bed. When she lies flat on her back, she has a perfect view of a star chart she stuck up on the ceiling. She traces each constellation with her eyes: Sirius, the Big Dipper, Capricorn. Sometimes on clear nights, she can see the stars outside her bedroom window. Alex wonders how Javi and Ben are doing. They’re probably living it up in the engine, enjoying some uninterrupted guy time and drinking beer that they got from god knows where.
Alex rolls over a little bit, and the corner of something hard jabs her in the side. It’s dark, and she can’t tell what it is clearly, but it feels like a box of something. Alex flips on the lamp, and sees that it’s another wrapped present.
What’s it doing here? Who put this up here? All the present opening happened earlier. There’s a sticky note on the front: I thought you might want to open this in private. Love, Mom.
Intriguing. Alex has no idea what this present could be. Why did her mom think it was better to open it alone? The wrapping paper is a faded red colour, with geometric shapes strewn about in an uneven pattern. Another clue. Nobody used precious paper for something so frivolous as wrapping a gift, not anymore. Alex knows Melanie is sneaky enough to do it without anyone noticing, but that seems unlikely. More likely that this present is from before the Freeze. Old habits die hard. Alex carefully teases the tape away from the paper. She will fold it up later and take it to the recycling car. There’s an envelope underneath the first layer, which Alex withdraws. Inside is a sky-blue card: nine-year-old Alex’s favourite colour.
To my darling Allie,
Happy Christmas, honey. You’ve done so well and been so brave, and I’m proud of you. I hope you like this book. I love you always.
All my love, Mom
Alex can imagine it: her mom going out somewhere shortly before the Freeze, into one of the few stores still open, buying this for her daughter for the first Christmas on the train. Something to look forward to. Anything to hold onto a sense of normalcy when the world was grinding to a halt. Alex pulls away the rest of the paper, and sees that her earlier guess was correct; it is a book. Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls. Alex’s heart twinges—this is exactly what she would have liked when she was nine. Even as an often absent parent, Melanie knew what her daughter liked. The language is a tad simplistic, but as Alex flicks through it, she feels sadness growing. It hurts to think of her mom being so excited to give this to her, then not being able to. Alex can’t imagine how painful it would have been for Melanie to hold onto it when she thought her daughter was dead.
Alex’ll read the book later. She puts it on the bottom of the bookshelf and returns to her bed. Another book is calling her name: The People in the Trees. Alex opens it where she left off, the spine creaking a little at the exertion. She’s gotten ten pages in when she hears someone knock on her door. “It’s Audrey,” says the voice from outside. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” Alex calls back, and then the door is open with Audrey standing on the threshold. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Audrey says, walking in and taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “How’d you like our first Christmas on Snowpiercer?”
“It’s fine. I don’t really remember what it was like before…it wasn’t a thing on Big Alice.”
“How so?”
Alex pulls her knees up to her chest. “Like…Wilford would get drunk as hell, I played cards with Emilia…nothing much really happened. It’s not like there was much to celebrate on Big Alice anyway.”
Audrey takes Alex’s hand from the other side of the bed. “Well…it’s not like that anymore.”
Alex decides to change the subject. “Did Mom like it?”
“Yeah. She was just telling me how much she missed having that. It’s hard not having a family for seven years.” Audrey shifts to sit against the wall, and Alex joins her. “I’m sorry for springing it on you at the last minute, though. That wasn’t a great thing to do,” she says self-deprecatingly.
“I don’t mind,” Alex says.
“You know, Alex, I was talking about the family thing with your mom just earlier. I never had one either…my parents died when I was younger than you, and I spent my whole life bouncing around clubs until I got to the train. I like being with your mom, and with you. It’s nice that my life led up to this. I love both of you so much,” Audrey says, “but I didn’t want to push it. You just got your mom back, and I didn’t want to intrude, but…”
“You’re not intruding,” Alex says. “I love you too.”
“I’m so happy to hear that,” Audrey says, and it sounds like she means it. “I didn’t know what to do at first…I spent seven years being the madam of the Nightcar and in the space of half a year I have a wife and a kid. I know you’re not young, Alex, but it felt that way a bit. Especially in the beginning. I’ve never been a parent before, or even a wife, for that matter. I hope I’m doing enough for you guys.”
“Well, I’d say you’re doing fine. You’re like my second mom at this point.”
“Wait a second. I’m your mom?” Audrey looks completely thrown off. “First Melanie, and now you? I can’t believe this.” She huffs out a laugh. “Alex, do you really mean that?”
“Yeah,” Alex says, her pleasure growing at Audrey’s genuine surprise. “I do.”
“That’s probably the best present I could have gotten today.” Audrey snuggles up to Alex, and they sit there together for a long time.
After a while, Audrey shifts away. “Look at the time. If I don’t let you get to sleep, your mom will have my neck.” She stands up, stretching.
“You’re probably right. I have the helm at six tomorrow.” Alex slides under the blankets.“Goodnight, Audrey.”
“Goodnight. Sleep well. I love you.” Audrey winks, then shuts the door behind her.
Alex rolls over so she can see the window. The clouds have receded; the stars are visible—tiny dots of light that wrap around the sky in a web of brightness.