Train Runner

Chapter 1

I slide into the laundry mat, my bag bouncing on my hip from the flask that's in it. Sitting there is my sister Ruby - "Ruby the washer", as the men downtown call her. Boy, do I want to smack them when they call her that she is just a girl my younger sister too! She smiles up at me from behind the counter.
    "Hey, Frankie, how're the trains going?" she asks me, looking at my clothes. Standing up, she walks towards me from behind the counter "Do you need any help with the clothes? You look like a..." she giggles a bit, "Well, you look like a train wreck! With those loose pants and untied shoes. Your nice white shirt is ruined now!" she pauses again "oh boy mama's going to be as mad as a conductor when the trains won't start!"
    I roll my eyes, unamused. "Really Ruby, a train joke? When I work at the train station?" She erupts in giggles again and I sigh.
    "Well of course Frankie! Why not?" she asks her jokes as terrible as always, making me blink and frown.
    "Don't worry about washing my clothes, Ruby. And tell Toni to come home quick, okay?" I tell her, walking to a wall lined with dryers stacked on top of one another. I slip a dollar coin into the slot, the dryers creak open, and I take my cap off. My hair falls down, not reaching past my shoulders. I look over my shoulder and after seeing her nod, I smile back.
    "I will, Frankie, and tell Lucy I said hi!" she says, walking back around the counter. Her eyes dart down to the dark abyss I'm about to step into, knowing that she can't go down there but still wanting to.
    I nod at her, walking in and down the steps the dryers closing behind me. The dollar coin tinks down the steps and a smile crosses my face as I hear the noise it makes. I pass a door, music thumping from the band playing inside, The Cleaners, that's is name my family's speakeasy. I can hear voices shouting, most likely my mother yelling at another drunk cat, 'That poor man', I sigh. I fiddle with the strap on my messenger bag. The door opens from the end of the hallway and outcomes Lucy, my older sister, with one huge container filled with something like bugs,  I hope. "Ay, Lucy, need any help?" I ask her.
    She nods, handing off the container off to me "Thanks, Frances, don't drop that and help me take it over to my lab if it could even be called a lab. More like a cave with some chemicals and stuff yes, that works better." she says, mumbling the last part as we walk down the hallway into a room with some light from the light bulbs, hooked up to random cords and wires around the room.
    I stand by her desk trying not to drop the container. Trying to avoid tipping over some green and brown cylinders and one with what looks like a bug in it, I think to myself 'boy does she like bugs?'.
    "Um, Lucy, what's in that one cylinder?" I ask, looking at her and finding a huge chair in the corner of the room to put the container on.
    "Hm? Oh, that's a bug that I found in the garden. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, though," she says, sitting down. She grabs a burner and puts one of the brown things on it. "It looks sweet," she continues, "Plus, I found all those other bugs too." She looks at me over her shoulder, and I nod at the bugs in the container as they start to look more like beetles and snakes. "And how's the running going, along with the job you got yourself in, hm?" Her voice bounces off the walls, hurting my ears.
    I flinch and look at her, raising my eyebrow and leaning on the wall. "Running been good. Charles gave me this to give to you, by the way." I say, trying to take her focus off of my job by pulling out a small crystal bottle from my bag. "He says it's made of crystal glass, whatever that means," I say, handing it to her. "Plus, he told me that the gin inside of this thing is real, like actual gin, not the bathtub gin that you make." I chuckle.
    She smiles and looks at it before setting it down on the mahogany table that Benjamin, her father got her. "Well then, we must have a thief here that got into your bag, because someone took a swig of this." She sighs, looking at me.
    I turn pink and blush. "Yes, there must be," I mumble, shifting from foot to foot. Lucy rolls her eye, looking at me, and I break. "Fine! I took a swig of the gin and it's much better than the stuff you make!" I say defensively.
    "Come on, Frankie, you know that you can't drink. For heaven's sake, you're 13! It's gonna ruin your liver, and you know that." She says, looking at me like Mom would when she found me sneaking a cookie. I let a sigh escape my lips and nod weakly.
    "I know, Lucy-Juicy, but Charles offered me a sip and, well, I took it! Plus, it's been the third time I've taken a drink at all in my life," I say weakly, holding up my hands.  She nods, shaking her head and mixing some stuff into the brown cylinder on the burner.
    "All right, Frankie. Go now, and no more drinking okay?" She says, looking me in the eyes taking her eyes off the cylinder for one second. As the brown cylinder lights on fire she yelps "AH!", and I slip out of the room at the commotion caused. You could hear her shouting from outside.
    I run down the hallway, stopping for a second by a door and frowning, then running back to Lucy's makeshift lab. "Hey, do you know where the gin is that I need to take? Because Charles is expecting it soon, and I got to go now if I want to make the first train to NYC."
    Lucy nods, pointing to the suitcase hidden under a coat in the corner of the room that I didn't see before. I walk over to pick it up and drag it outside the room waving one last goodbye to Lucy.
    "See you tomorrow - or, no, I'll see you in a week!" I say, rolling the suitcase out of the room and down the hall to the steps. I snatch the train ticket off the table on the side of the door and run up the steps, dragging the suitcase with me. "Bye, Ruby!" I shout and run out the door, not waiting for her to respond.
    I run into Toni, coming from somewhere, probably the field right next to the shoe shiners stand. Right before I head to the station downtown.
    "Hey-o Frankie-o! Where ya going?" he asks, jumping around me, and I sigh.
    "Toni, you know where I'm going right? On the Lake Shore Limited from Chicago, straight to New York, okay?" I say frowning at him and his antics.
    He returns my frown, looking at me. "Yeah, I know, but why do you have to go so soon? You just got back!"
    A sigh escapes my lips and I ruffle his hair. "Don't worry, Toni. I'll be back before you know it!"
    "Be back before Christmas! And don't forget that you have to deliver half the money that Charles gives you to the orphanage!" he says tracking mud back inside.
    A sigh escapes my lips as I shake my head. 'What? It's not even close to Christmas, and it only takes me a week or two to get there and back. And I know that I'm not bootlegging for the fun of it" I think as I make my way to the station. On the way, I run into a man and he shouts a bit at me, but I walk away. "Stupid people, stupid train, stupid Prohibition Act," I grumble "making my job a lot harder than it needs to be."

Chapter 1 done!