CHAPTER THREE

2013

"What?" I snapped into the phone when I answered it; who in the Hell felt the need to call me at this hour? Then I looked at the clock, okay so it was after noon and I was hung over the bourbon, but I was still pissed. The bourbon hand't been enough to stop the dream from coming last night.

"Shane?" I groaned and barely managed not to hang up on the young voice that had called me.

"What do you want?" I ran a hand over my face, I might need to shave today.

"Mom was gonna call you, but I wanted to." I winced at the mention of the woman who had two sons but managed to hate one whilst doting on the other. I wasn't the one she loved. I was the mistake that happened when my parents were drunk one night in college. Both of them were from rich families so the second I was born I was shoved off to the side with a nanny whilst Mom and Dad continued to live up their lives as if I didn't exist, only bringing me out for social events because people knew I existed. Until I was 11, then they decided they wanted to start a family and be parents... "There's a Christmas party and they want you to come." The little boy continued, oblivious to the inner turmoil his very existance caused me.

"No they don't." I scoffed, sitting up and glaring at nothing in particular. Today was not a good day to wake up.

"Sure they do. Mom says she wants the whole family there." It was so hard to hate the kid when he was so stupidly innocent. But, other times he was so easy to hate because he's the one that our parents wanted, chose to be around, loved. He's never known what it's like to wake up on his birthday alone in the house and not know what country his parents were in, to know what it was like to wait by the door with the phone in my hand and wait all day for one of them to call and say they remembered my birthday. They never did remember.

"She doesn't want me there." I corrected, "and I don't want to be there, she just thinks I have to be there because she was unfortunate enough to give birth to me."

"Come on, Shane, pleeeeaaaassseee?" Trevor whined, but today it wasn't cute, it was just annoying. Why didn't the kid understand that I wasn't a part of that family?

"How 'bout we make a deal?" I suggested, getting off the couch and heading for the kitchen. "I'll go to the stupid party and pretend to be a good little boy... When Hell freezes over." And then I hung up on my 8-year-old perfect little brother and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge with about four aspirin. "Fuck this." I muttered, heading back to the couch and grabbing my laptop off the coffee table. It was Monday, I should probably do some sort of work tday, but the day was already half over so I couldn't be bothered.

I'd gotten emancipated when I was 15 - 9 months after that stupid ass train nightmare - and had managed to get a percentage of my trust fund released to me, which I'd used to by an abandoned building in the city. After some paint, construction work, and electrical wiring - done by myself because no-one would take a 15-year-old kid seriously - I'd opened a music store with a recording studio in the back by the time I was 16.

2008

"Are you okay?" I muttered to the shivering girl still on the floor of the train after the stupid ass 'conductor' creeper dude had left after I yelled at him. "Hey?" The girl wasn't responding. Sure it was probably stupid to jump off the train and grab her, I practically kidnapped her. But, I couldn't just leave a kid out in the snow to get frostbite and die, I may be a jerk, but I wasn't that much of an asshole... Unlike the conductor who was just going to leave her there. "What are you idiots staring at?" I snapped at the dozen or so kids who were crowded around staring at us. They all immediately turned away making me smirk a little to myself. "Here." I sighed, grabbing the girls hand and pulling her up onto a seat so she wasn't on the floor.

When she was sitting on the seat next to me I could see tear stains on her face, and more droplets sparkling in her big blue eyes. Her hair was honey brown and cascading around her in soft waves that framed her face. I don't know why I had the overwhelming urge to see if her hair really was as soft as it looked. She was younger than me - everyone except the conductor was younger than me so far - probably about 10 or 11.

"I'm Shane." I introduced myself when she didn't say anything. What if there was already something wrong with her.

"Miley." A soft, country-lilted voice whispered, her blue eyes finally blinking and registering something. "Where am I?"

"On some weird ass train." I shrugged, relaxing a little now that she was talking. "That creeper dude was gonna leave you in the snow, but unlike him I didn't really want some innocent kid to die of frostbite." I explained, watching her eyes widen as I talked. "What were you doing out there anyway? Don't you know it's dangerous? You could have at least taken a jacket." As soon as I started talking again I noticed that she clamped up, her whole body seemed to stiffen and shy away from me.

"Attention!" A voice came through the speakers in the compartment. "Attention please!" It was the conductor. "Would anyone like some refreshments?" Everyone started cheering and saying yes. Didn't these idiots know not to take anything from creepy old men? A second later the door burst open and I was assaulted with harsh thumping and clapping as a group of men stormed through. Singing. Of all things they were singing.

The conductor was singing over the speaker about hot chocolate as the group of men stormed through the compartment with cups and a giant portable hot chocolate machine. What in the Hell sort of drugs were these people on?

My attention was away from the Miley girl long enough for her to slip past me and start to head for the back of the compartment, towards the doors that would lead to the next one. As she moved on of the weird singing men tried to shove a cup of drink in my face, but I got up and pushed past him. The dude was really persistant, following me with the cup, singing about it.

"Seriously, Dude, stop it." I snapped at him, following after Miley.

The singing hot chocolate guy noticed Miley as well, which prompted him to shove the drink in her face, expectantly waiting for her to take it.

"Get lost!" I tried to push him away from her, but he ignored me and pressed closer to Miley, which made her stumble back in fright and collide with the trolley that had the big metal steaming hot thing on it. I watched in slow motion as the trolley rolled into one of the other singing guys who put his hands on the sizzling hot metal to stop it moving, which made him yelp and push it back towards Miley who was frozen on the spot. "Miley!" I panicked and for the second time in ten minutes, grabbed her and pulled her close to me, her small body fitting into my arms easily. The trolley rolled into the guy that had been trying to force hot chocolate onto us. He screamed like a toddler when a few drops of the brown liquid spilled onto his hand, he turned on the spot and tried to run away. The cup in his hands was carelessly tossed to the side, barely missing me and Miley, but spilling onto another of the singing men. he first guy who had been trying to pressure Miley and I got his foot stuck on the tablecoth of the cart, pulling the heater with him as he tried to run.

I turned away and tried to cover as much of the small girl in my arms as possible when the giant metal heater tipped and all the boiling hot contents inside spilled over the other three - formerlly - singing hot chocolate servers.

Before even half a minute was up the comprtment went from obnoxious singing and thumping to the agonised screams of six men with severe burns and the wails of frightened children whilst I tried to protect the shivering girl with the prettiest blue eyes I had ever seen who happened to also have to prettiest name I had ever heard.

2013

I blinked as reality slowly invaded my senses again. It was getting worse; the memories weren't even waiting for me to go to sleep anymore. I hadn't been able to stomach drinking hot chocolate since that night. The mere smell of it brought back the memories of the agonised screams of second degree burns blistering those men.

That had been the first thing that went wrong on the Polar Express. The conductor hadn't even done anything to help the men who were burnt, he didn't get the engineer to stop the magical train near a hospital to get them to a doctor; he just kept going. The waiters were ushered out of the compartment and told to keep quiet. When the train eventually did stop at its destination the natives had whisked the men away, glaring and muttering about the conductor as they went.

I closed my computer and got up, I couldn't think about this right now; my therapist was on holiday for another week and I didn't trust the freak that was supposed to be his replacement whilst he was gone. My guitar was sitting carelessly on my bed - where I hadn't bothered sleeping last night - but that didn't make me feel any better; the thunderous stomping and claps of the burnt waiters echoed through my mind again.
Though, one of the few good things that happened that night was the music; Miley had sat in my lap in an empty compartment and told me about her mother as her fingers wandered over the strings of a guitar. This was that very same guitar, I hadn't been able to let go of it when the train dropped me off back in the park in the middle of the night on Christmas morning. Sometimes if I looked close enough I swear I could still see Miley's tear drops on the polished wood and hear the sweet little melody she'd played that night.

Polar Express

I did end up going to one of my stores before the end of the day. One of them; the newest one out of four. In the three and a half years since I opened the first one when I was 16 I'd opened another three stores. Moderately sized music stores with instruments of all kinds, CD's, records, record players - one of them even had an old gramaphone - and all of them with recording studios attached. Most of the time the studios were used by rich kids with no talent and too much money who would try and break into the music scene, but there were a handful of actual singer and musicians who used them on a regular basis which gave the shops a really good reputation.

Today was one of the days where an actual musician had decided to record. I'd gotten the call from my manager so I had drag my hung over, depressed ass out of my apartment and over to the fourth store. I didn't know who wanted to record today, but I made it a habit to at least make an appearance when someone high profile wanted to use one of the studios.

I wasn't prepared! Not in the least was I prepared for the sight that met me when I walked into the upstairs half of the store where the studio was. The singer was already here with her group. Her manager was sitting at the controls, Brody - my stor manager - was sitting in the corner observing. All I could do was stare at the singer in the soundproof booth.

All honey brown hair, tan skin and big blue eyes!

2008

"Shit!" I swore, slowly turning back to the chaos of the rest of the train compartment. The girl in my arms was still shaking, all the kids were making noise, the stupid ass singing hot chocolate guys were in various stages of screaming in agony. The door at the front of the compartment slammed open making everything freeze for a second. The conductor was here and he looked pissed. "Come on." I held Miley's hand tightly and pulled her after me as I fled the carriage, jumping over the open tracks speeding beneath us into the next compartment at the back of the train. "Are you okay?" I turned to the girl who seemed small for her age when we were in the quiet, dark space.

"Are they gonna be okay?" The girl looked up at me with those wide blue eyes that were filled with fear.

"They'll be fine." I assured, trying to sound sincere, though I knew that they wouldn't be. They were probably burned quite badly.

"You saved me twice now." The girl marvelled and for some reason I felt myself get red. I was usually the last guy who would help anyone unless it helped me as well, but I'd saved her twice now inside of half an hour with absolutely no personal gain to take from it. "Thank-you."

"Whatever." I muttered, walking away and staring out the window. Miley seemed to take my sudden change in mood as a rejection so I heard her sigh and patter her bare feet over to sit on one of the chairs in the compartment.

"Where is this train actually going?" She asked after a long, silent moment.

"Dunno." I shrugged, not turning around. "The creep in the hat insists it's going to the North Pole, but I'm pretty sure he's on some freaky mind tripping drug as well so I don't believe him for a second."

"Then why are you here?" Her voice was soft and had a country lilt to it with a bit of a husky undertone.

"Someone had to make sure he doesn't murder everyone on board." I rolled my eyes, finally turning away from the window to see the girl in a chair that made her look tiny with her knees drawn up to her chest and her fingers clenched around her bare toes. I sighed as I looked at her, feeling like a jerk. I pulled my hoodie over my head so I was left in my green tee and tossed it at him.

"Huh?" Miley looked confused for a second.

"Put it on or you're gonna freeze to death." I told her, sitting in the chair next to hers and staring at her pointedly until she complied.

"Thank-you." Her smile was shy and sweet and I felt like a total pussy when my stomach twisted with butterflies.

"Sure." I couldn't help but smile back; a real smile, with teeth and everything. It felt like a long time since I'd actually smiled.


So that's the FIRST thing that went wrong on that Christmas Eve 5 years ago. What else do you think happened?

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