Train Hunters

Building Tension

Grace watched curiously as Simon paced back and forth adding various strings to the cork board that he was working off of. The introduction of the cork board had replaced their former method of research and conclusion drawing which had been the white board covered in unintelligible writing. Pictures of the locations they'd visited with notes written by Grace were now how they tried to establish a pattern. And now Grace sat and watched as Simon struggled to make a useful connection.

"We're close, I can feel it," he began "There's just something we're missing." he said tiredly as he stared at the board. Grace, taking a form of pity on him got up from her chair and put her arm on his shoulder.

"Why don't we wrap it up for the day?" she asked. Simon looked as though he was considering it before waving the idea off.

"We're really close Grace I can feel it, you can go home if you want but I've got to figure this out." he said before removing a pin holding a string and moving it over a different picture. Grace sighed to herself. She knew that Simon wasn't exactly good at taking care of himself, he'd let his physical and mental health go to shit if he thought it would be beneficial to finding the train. Grace sat back down and turned towards Simon's computer.

"What's your password?" she asked casually not at all expecting an answer.

"It's Honeycomb with a capital H." he said calmly. Grace entered in the password and was surprised when it worked.

"Dude you just let me into your computer? You don't want to clear your search history first?" she asked jokingly. Simon turned away from the board and addressed her.

"Nothing to hide, nothing to clear." he explained. "What did you want it for anyway?" he asked as Grace went onto Google.

"I'm going to check the view counts on our last two videos, and read the comments." she explained. Simon sucked the air in through his teeth to indicate that she was making a mistake.

"You know you're not supposed to read the comments." he reminded her. Grace mostly ignored him in favor of checking the numbers. The videos were both doing well, they gained a sizable following and the videos were all fairly popular. Grace scolded down to the comments despite Simon's warning though most were positive or joking.

"This one says, 'Simon is hot but in the same way as the emo kid from Horton Hears a Who'." she read, barely containing her laughter. "It has 2.5k likes." she added, still laughing so hard breath escaped her. Simon looked over at her, concerned, before she caught her breath.

"I'm glad that you got a kick out of that one." he muttered.

"I'm going to like it." she said before doing just that.

"What, no don't like it. You're on the channel account." he said. Grace ignored him as she kept scrolling past the uninteresting comments. There were a few asking if they were a couple, something which Grace also elected to ignore. She likely would have continued for quite a while longer had she not gotten a text from her mother.

"Where are you?" the text read. It was at that moment that Grace remembered that she'd promised that she would go to dinner with her parents that night in order to discuss future prospects in terms of college.

"Ughhhhh." she groaned, annoyed at the current turn of events. Simon gave her a curious look and she explained the situation. "I told my parents I'd have dinner with them tonight and I completely forgot." she explained. Simon nodded.

"That sucks." he said sympathetically.

"I know." she responded before starting on a text in response. "I am at the library with Simon. We are both studying." she lied. Grace held her breath and hoped that her mother wouldn't ask for proof.