Continued...

Chapter 22 - Train roller coaster

I opened my eyes to the daylight. The morning sun shone on my bed and warmed my feet. The curtains were drawn back. The air smelled fresh and soothing. I crawled out of bed and search for my friends. They were still in bed. I slumped into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I didn’t what to wake Maya for a flannel so I used my hands with the soap the hotel provided. I looked in the mirror and saw my straight ginger hair sat in a tangled heap on top of my head. It was hell brushing it but I got there. Only my hair was curler then usual. Gina came in after with a big Afro and came out 2 seconds later with her hair all glossy and straight. How did she do that? I wanted to stay in Texas it was so peaceful there. I was glad that we were behind a little I mean by now we would be in Guatemala City. Well today I wanted to get to Brazil quicker. I checked my watch. It was 7:00am. It was really kind of early when you’ve travelled so far so I decided not to wake the other. I couldn’t get back to sleep again so I searched the room for something to do. The basket was still there, tipped upside down from my little check up last night. I climbed out of bed and felt the crisp chill in the room. We’d left the air conditioning on all night. I got a feeling that something wasn’t right about the air conditioning being on but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It probably just one of my dumb thoughts that I couldn’t get out my brain. Honestly you’d think that you could keep control over you’re brain but it kept on thinking horrible thoughts. I put my hands over my ears to block it out which was kind of stupid. How can you block you’re mind out by holding you’re ears? I looked around the room for a distraction. I found a little bookcase in the corner. There weren’t many books but I found one. It was the Guinness book of world records. It was an old book but I still read it. It contained loads of great stunts and stuff in it. I wondered if we could be in there. The title could be: The Youngest People To Travel From America To Brazil In Less Than 3 Weeks. I loved it. Anyway I was kind of missing everyone back home too. I broke out of my daydream and thought to myself: what are you talking about. It is great! Finally a fresh new start.

I carried on reading. There was loads of information about Oklahoma. Like the worlds biggest tomato was grown there and the bone of the largest dinosaur was found there too. I day dreamed some more about walking over the ground back there and being so close to a dead dinosaur. All of that sort of stuff was fine there but when I turned the page I was in the weather section. Oklahoma has got the biggest wind speed ever there and the largest tornado went there too. And then remembered the film the ‘the day after tomorrow’ I’d watched with my granddad. I started thinking about granddad was I laid my head down. He called me Kissy Karen because when I was younger I never went to bed without a kiss. I drifted to sleep and dreamt of a tornado coming here and destroying the City. Mum and dad didn’t know where I was so they had no idea and then I froze to death in the hotel. Then it went black and I saw my family dressed in black. A grave read the words out: Our brave little Karen. RIP.

Nicole she was nudging my cheek gently but hard enough for me to wake up.

“What’s wrong,” She asked soothingly. I realised that I had woken her up some how.

“Why are you up so early?” I asked.

“You were crying in you’re sleep,” She answered “are you o.k.” she repeated.

“Yeah fine,” I grumbled pulling myself up.

Then I remember last night.

“What did you see that day?” I asked her looking her straight in the eye.

“Nothing” She quickly answered.

“It’s just you and me” I assured her.

“I promise you there’s nothing to tell,” She cried.

“Well there has to be something,” I begged dying of curiosity

“No, nothing” She snapped and she got up and locked her self into the shower room. I cried in desperation (If there was such a word). At first I thought she’d locked her self in there but then I heard the patting of the shower against the floor. I sobbed on the bed for 15 minutes or so. Then we all got up and ready to leave. I wanted to get to Salvador as soon as possible so we cheated and caught a train all the way through Mexico and into Columbia. I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t see Mexico but I wasn’t going to take this chance with a mysterious man on our backs. I wrote another letter to mum and dad telling them I was nearly at my destination and I’ll write back when I got there. Obviously I didn’t tell them about this little problem with Nicole. I was just signing the envelope when the train suddenly jerked forward and screams where heard. We felt the coach behind us bang into then tip and us. Our coach then followed. Women were screaming and babies and kids were crying. I ducked my head to my stomach and prayed this wasn’t happening. But it was. The train had crashed. And was taking us down for one last scare.

Chapter 23 – where’s the driver?

I clung onto the railing so hard that my knuckles went white. I was biting my lip so that it bled. The train didn’t tip over. Thank god. It tipped on the right tip of the bottom then as if by magic slammed back down on the ground giving us all a chuckle of relief and just because the fact we’d been so scared we nearly wet ourselves. A big chubby man with a weird looking moustache then looked into our window and carried on walking down the path. Good job though because from outside the window I could see that we hadn’t crashed. We were there. The bizarre driver had given us the most scariest time of our lives. We stumbled down the train steps that lead us out the train. We were talking about it non-stop. It made my lips sore but it still was really fun. Well our journey was nearly over. We were in Columbia practically next door to Brazil. I just couldn’t believe we’d last this long! We decided to shop some more and have a day off. We did just that as an award for being so brave and strong. Then we went to a pub and had tea. Thanks to Maya! And we spend most of the night drinking J2O. We had different tastes. Sophie and me had orange and passion fruit, Maya had apple and melon and Nicole and Gina had some sort of cranberry flavour one. I’ve always hated cranberry. When we finally decided to leave it was about 11:00pm. It was far to late to book a hotel so we pitched up the tent. We were too tired to find out where we were but the next morning we certainly did. We were in a park of some sort. I scrambled for the map and looked for some sort of road or something to pin point where we were. Nearby was a train station but other than that there was nothing. The streets were empty and the place looked abandoned and I was totally bewildered. We couldn’t find a name of this train station or the road we were on or anything for that matter. We checked the times of the buses but there was no signs or anything. Weird I thought. Of course we all needed the toilet from last night so we sneaked into the train and went to the toilet. The train had a sour stench inside and looked rusty and old. There was something strange about the train. It was empty! Was this place working? We hurried in and out of the toilet. When all of us had been we started our way to the door, which was still open. A sudden jerk made us all fall forward on the floor. What was going on here? The train started to move making us all fall other one another and bang into the walls. I banged my head on one of the dusty windows. In the window I managed to see buildings rapidly passing. We had to stop this train! I scrambled to my feet and tried walking to the other end of the room. Well I got to my feet at least! I grabbed onto the chair railing and pulled myself along. I had to close my eyes because the air from the open door was getting into my eyes. THAT WAS IT!!! The door! I could climb out and climb on top of the train. The jump into the drivers bit and unmask the driver! I knew this was going to be hard but it was one of those things that had to be done. How would I of ever got here if I didn’t take that chance? I opened my eyes to see Sunny jump out of my bag and walk slowly to the still open exit.

“NO!” I cried through the noisy air, which was banging into our ears. Too late. Sunny was sucked out the door and blow away. I don’t know if I was crying or the fact the wind was blowing in my eyes but sunny was the first member to of gone. I didn’t give up on my plan though. I carried on sliding across the floor carefully holding onto the railing incase I let go and plunge back the other side of the room. I slowly made my way to the door and tried to climb out of the window careful as to not fall. The wind whipped my hair back violently. I stumbled out of the exit and clung onto the side of the train. I pushed my self up to the top. It wasn’t very high so I did it with ease. I managed to get on to the roof of the train just in time for the low bridge to push me of the train.

Chapter 24 - Dumped

It may seem that the adventure was over. I’d been taken fully off the train and was lying at the side of the railway. Well I wasn’t down yet. I reached my head up and wiped the mud of my face. The train was still whizzing past. I struggled to my feet. My back was giving a sort of aching sharp pain if you know what I mean. Well the sight of the train taking my friends away made my actions true. I dragged my feet along and grabbed hold of the handle on the train. I don’t know why it was there. It looked like a simple ladder going up to the top of the train. This time I made sure it was safe to go up. It was. My back was killing me but I still went up. I climbed on the top of the train once again and crawled to the driver’s part. It wasn’t as easy as it seems. It really kills you’re fingers. After what seemed ages I got there. I wondered how the others were. I jumped into the drivers seat from an opening on the roof. No one was there! Someone had turned the train on and left us on it. I reached for the handle, which would stop the train. I yelped in pain. The handle was red hot. I looked closer and saw that it was just above a fire. I cradled my burnt hand and thought of plan B. There was no way I was going to do that again. I hatched an idea. There was probably better ideas but this was a life and death matter. I ran to the others and told then my idea

“You want us to jump!” Gina yelled over the noise

“We have to!” I yelled back, opening the door.

We stood in a line and waited until there was a soft place to land. We were in a rainforest of some kind. There was a meadow of long grass. That was our only chance. I gulped. I counted to three and we landed in heap on the floor. The grass was covered in dew. Gina and Sophie were on top of me. I was on Maya was on top of Nicole. Sophie was on top. I took no time pulling myself up and noticing the area around us. Where were we? And anyway. Who had started that train? We were lost. I sat on the wet grass fiddling in my bag as fats as I could but it didn’t make any difference, I still took a long time because my hand was shaking so much. Finally I found the world map. We couldn’t figure out anything from that so I looked at an atlas, which showed us Brazil. I tried to round up the distance when went. I was sure we were in Brazil and I positively knew we were lost in a rainforest where bears and puma are live. I didn’t know much about the creatures in Brazil but some of them aren’t nice. I gulped. I tried to remember our work in geography back at school. I couldn’t. The others were talking amongst themselves trying to figure a way out of here like me.

“What about sunny!” Gina suddenly cried.

That got my attention straight away at the sound of Sunny’s name. I stood up and told them what I’d seen. They all listened carefully and bowed their heads as the bad part came. Tears slowly filled their eyes making them swell and swell until they burst bringing tears of sorrow down their pale cheeks. I’d forgotten about her. And now she was gone. I sat back down on the floor and remained silent for a really long time. As our tears dried leaving our cheeks a cracked feeling I tried to think of a way out of here.

“Where are we?” Gina asked.

“Amazon” Sophie whispered putting down her map.

“Does anyone remember about rainforests in geography” I sniffled.

“What?” Nicole asked sniffing up.

“Geography” I repeated.

“Karen, what are you talking about?” Maya growled under her breath.

“Well miss said that most of the dangerous animal’s would be in the centre of the rainforest. Right?” I explained.

“So” Sophie grunted.

“Where are we? If we’re nearer to the edge where safer,” I told her hoping it would bring back memories.

“Well miss said the centre of the forest is like a hole in the middle of the tree’s…” Gina started but her voice trailed away. She slowly turned around, looking absolutely terrified. She started breathing heavily.

“Gina?!” I asked worriedly “what’s wrong?”

I grabbed her shoulder and shook her. Her eye’s looked right past me.

“K-Karen?” she whispered, “we’re in the centre of the rainforest!”

(to be continued)