Murph doesn't talk to me. He's more interested watching the shit outside the window and I'm bored beyond all fucking hell. It's a long train ride from London to York, but he makes it feel like the longest fucking thing ever, anywhere. I bet even the Eurostar's more bearable than traveling with him, and half of that shit's in a tunnel.

But we get off at York, and he leads the way. Because I don’t know where the fuck I’m going. Murph’s bouncing as he walks. We're not touching.

I try not to think about King's Cross. What happened.

We get to a brick building. There's a white hallway and Murph talks to someone and everything happens so fucking fast. Before I know it, we’re in this huge room full of trains. Goods and passenger cars, steam trains, electric, foreign. One spins on the far side of the room.

Murph lights up. More than King’s Cross. More than anything I’ve ever seen. He’s been waiting for this moment for God knows how long. He gasps and bounces in places. He’s just...so excited.

Like a puppy going to the park for the first time.

He gasps again. This one's bigger and breathier. If that makes sense. And it's that kind of sound that someone makes when they're about to die.  “It’s the Shinkansen,” he whispers, and reaches out to touch a white train with blue on it. It looks like an airplane. He doesn’t touch it, though. Then he whines and trots over to this big blue train with yellow stripes.  “It’s the Deltic.” He does this for all of them around the one spinning train. Meanwhile I’m just following after him, because fuck if I know why all these trains are here.

My tour guide's seriously the fucking worst.

After an hour and a half of aggressive mumbling, taking pictures, squatting to look through the wheels, and circling the entire room, Murph looks at me, wide-eyed and still chuffed.

I'm walking like a fucking zombie. I’m done here. I don't know what's happening anymore.

“Did you see that?” he asks. Murph points to something, but I don’t have the strength to turn my head.

“Yeeeees.”

“Did you see this?” he asks. Murph’s pointing to a dark red locomotive with gold lines that make me think it’ll be able to blow through the fucking wall and speed away. “That’s Duchess of Hamilton. I said that already, right?”

I don't know. “Yeeeees,” I moan.

“Come on. Don’t you think this is interesting?” he asks, putting down his phone. “Like, over a hundred years of transportation and engineering innovation and design are all under one roof.”

Okay, the way he says it makes me interested. But I still say, “I don't know shit about this. My tour guide fucking sucks at explaining stuff.”

“Oh,” is all he says. Murph’s eyes drop down to the floor and then he takes my wrist, grinning broadly. “Well...”

“...well, what?”

“I guess we have to start all over,” Murph says. He’s about three seconds away from looking like the Cheshire cat in creepiness. He’s excited.

I’m fucking scared and tired. Mostly because I don't want to go through this shit again.

Murphdrags me over to a train that looks like a barrel on a cart. It's yellow and the white chimney thing is almost as tall as me. He lets go of my hand and gestures to the train. “This is the Rocket. It isn’t the first steam locomotive, but it was the first successful one.”

“Why?” It just looks like a brewery on wheels.

That's a good idea.

Wait, no. Explosions. Probably.

“There’s a lot of things that made it successful.” Murph points to the fat side tube thingys. “The cylinders aren’t vertical, like most trains before. This gave it better pulling power than others. The pistons...” He gestures to the metal rods attaching the wheels to the cylinders. “...are connected right to the wheels. It was such a good design idea that every other locomotive has this. Even with more wheels, they were connected by pistons straight to the cylinders.”

I look around. Cylinders connected to wheels via pistons. Every train with those big wheels got it.

“Any questions?” he asks, hands behind his back.

“This isn't a school trip,” I point out, glaring.

“This is true, but I know more than you.”

“Fuckin' rude, Murph.” I smirk, still.

“What’s that?” he asks, pointing to the black square thing behind the yellow boiler. Murph’s not looking. He’s staring me down.

I don't fucking know what it is.

“Think back to when you watched Thomas the Tank Engine,” he encourages. Except Murph’s got this snug-ass grin on his face and I want to smack him.

But jokes on him. I watched Postman Pat. That is, when Mum had the fucking telly in working order.

“That’s the, uh…” I wave my hand around like I’m trying to find the word.  “...it’s...thingy.”

Murph raises his eyebrows. “Thingy.”

“Thingy.”

He leans forward. “Firebox.”

“No, it’s thingy.”

Murph snorts and takes my hand. “We go this way.”

“But I wanna go that way.” I point to the thing he called Deltic.

“We're going on a walking tour through locomotive history.” He pulls my hand, but I don’t move. “Come on.” He tries again, but my feet stay planted. “Tommy,” he says, pulling at me again. At one point, he’s pulling me and he’s just leaning back as far as he can without stumbling. It takes a good two minutes before Murph stands back up straight.

“You're not that strong.”

Murph lets go of my hand. “I mean, I'm fine to go through history again. If you'd like to join me, I'm heading that way.” He smiles, turns, and walks off towards the still-turning train on the far side of the room.

Well now I’m just bored again. Like, I was bored before, but now its just frustrating.

And what’s worse is that I’d rather be bored with him than be bored sitting somewhere alone.

So I warily follow after him.