Page 10 of Leaving the Station

Oakley walks briskly next to me, rolling her giant pink suitcase behind her down the platform, the air outside the train cold

and fresh.

“That’s a pretty big suitcase for someone who’s just going home for Thanksgiving,” I say, struggling to keep up with her and

her sleek, blond ponytail.

She nods at my suitcase in turn, which is roughly the size of a large eight-year-old. “What’s that saying about the pot calling

the kettle black?”

“Touché.”

At the end of the platform there’s an archway that separates the tunnel from the station proper; it’s decorated with hand-traced

turkeys and vulgar graffiti.

But when we make it to the other side, I stop short.

“Shit,” I remark as I get my first glimpse of Union Station’s main hall. It’s giant, with a domed ceiling that’s at least

three stories high. Marble columns line the periphery. “This is so beautiful.”

Oakley huffs, and I frown, my eyes ready to roll at a moment’s notice. “What?”

“It’s just that everyone in the US is weirdly obsessed with classical architecture.”

“You don’t think this is cool?” I gesture to the giant gilded hall.

“Haven’t you noticed that every important building in the country looks like a bad imitation of ancient Greek architecture?”

“What, because of the columns?”

“Well, yes, that’s part of it, but also the scale of the building. The architects wanted to give America some semblance of

legitimacy. They were trying to situate it in an extended historic timeline that it’s not a part of.”

“But...” I gesture around the room again, as if my waving arms will help Oakley see its majesty. “Look how big it is! That

has to count for something.”

“Isn’t that sort of a smooth-brain way of thinking? Like, ‘ooh room’s big, so it must be important.’”

“Are you calling my brain smooth?”

“Not yours specifically. I’m just saying that the size of a room shouldn’t be a measure of its architectural significance.”

“Excuse you, I’ll have you know my brain has many folds,” I tell her, which might be true anatomically, but it’s not how I’ve

been feeling lately.

Oakley’s brain, on the other hand, must be made entirely of folds. Deeply annoying, too-smart-for-her-own-good folds but folds

nonetheless.

“So,” Oakley begins, turning to me but not quite meeting my eyes. “What are we doing for lunch?”

She sounds nervous, and I try to hide the smile that creeps onto my face. She wants to hang out with me. She wasn’t just saying

it to get rid of Guy Fieri’s evil twin.

“We could eat in the station?” I suggest. “I don’t want to lug my suitcase around.”

“I’m sure there’s a place where we can drop off our bags.”

“So if we find a place to put our bags, you want me to walk around with you and have lunch? Outside?”

“Do you have a better way to waste four hours?”

I have plenty of ways to waste four hours. I’m an expert at it.

But I find, as I think about it, that I want to waste this time with her.

“Yeah, I do,” I say, taking a breath. “But sure. Let’s go waste four hours.”

I’ve never been to Chicago before—it’s freezing, and I’m underdressed.

“Why didn’t you bring gloves?” Oakley’s bundled in a peacoat, topped with a white cable-knit hat with a matching scarf and

gloves.

She looks polished and preppy. Meanwhile, I’m wearing a light shell over my day-old overalls and flannel.

“I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d be walking around Chicago!” I shiver, and Oakley burrows farther into her jacket.

“Did you not look at the itinerary?” she asks.

“No, not really.” I booked the train so last-minute that I only checked to make sure it would get me to Seattle. I didn’t focus much on what would happen in between.

She eyes me suspiciously. “So you’re taking a cross-country train ride and you don’t even know where it’s stopping?”

“I know where it’s stopping, just not for how long,” I admit.

I don’t want her asking too many questions about the logistics of my trip, because if she does then she might want to know

the reason I’m taking the train in the first place.

And I can’t have that.

I like that Oakley doesn’t know me or why I’m riding the train. The expectations she has of me are only based on how I look and

what we’ve talked about, and both my outfit and our topics of conversation have been very queer, so it feels right. She knows

a part of me that I’ve been stifling for months.

“Where are you taking me?”

When we left Union Station, Oakley said she had a place in mind, so I let her lead the way, which may or may not have been

a mistake. She’s been guiding us for half an hour or more, with no sign of stopping.

“You’ll see.”

We’re silent again for a few minutes as we walk and Oakley checks the directions on her phone.

And then she pauses in front of a church.

“It’s here,” she says, pointing at the large beige, brick building.

“You wanted to see... a church?” I jump in place, trying to warm myself up.

“No,” she says, pointing to a second-story window. “I wanted to see a ghost.”

I’m beginning to think that Oakley took me here to murder me and/or engage in some sort of occult ritual, but then I examine

the window more closely. Or rather, the space where a window should be.

“It’s a ghost church,” she tells me, walking down the street and turning the corner. I run to catch up. “Look.”

We’re standing facing where the side of the building should be, but all that’s there are exposed steel beams and overgrown

grass.

I shiver, though I’m not sure if it’s from the cold this time. It’s a skeleton of a church, like a set piece from a Hollywood

lot that was only meant to be filmed from the front.

There’s nothing inside, just a crumbling brick foundation and a badly burned crucifix nailed to the inside of the one remaining

wall.

“This is unbelievably creepy,” I say, turning to Oakley, but she’s already walking toward the church, through a gate that

should probably be locked. I follow reluctantly.

It’s almost too quiet within the church grounds, as if even the sounds of the city are scared to pass through the hollow shell

of a building.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I say. It’s one thing to trespass into an old, definitely haunted church. It’s another to trespass

into an old, definitely haunted church when you’re a Jew.

It’s ominous, like I might be smote if I take another step.

“If you shouldn’t be here then I definitely shouldn’t be,” Oakley says, bending down to pick up a chunk of stone that must’ve fallen off the building.

“At least you were a Christian at some point.”

“You know you’re allowed to go inside of churches. You’re not going to burst into flames because you’re Jewish.”

“Maybe not, but it kind of feels like I might.” I’ve been inside a church a couple of times, once for an old teacher’s wedding

and once for an interfaith event that the church was doing with my synagogue, but both times I felt deeply uncomfortable.

“Okay, but here’s the thing,” Oakley says. “I don’t think the religious power of a church is in the building. Like, this”—she

points to the hollow interior of the former church—“isn’t a religious space anymore.” She rubs a hand on the exposed brick

of the inside wall, and I look around to make sure no one’s about to arrest us and/or condemn us to eternal damnation. “The

English word for church is a rough translation of the ancient Greek word ecclesia, which basically means an assembly of people.”

“I feel like you’d do well on Jeopardy! ,” I say, trailing anxiously behind Oakley as she explores the grounds. “You know too much.”

“Oh, I know I’d do well,” she says casually. “But anyway, that’s all it means, ecclesia, assembly. It doesn’t matter that we’re here,

walking around the grounds of this church, because it’s nothing. It’s not a spiritual place anymore; it’s only a building.

And it’s barely even that.”

“But that’s not true,” I insist, and it feels good to push back.

“Like, for Jews, we still have a fast commemorating a temple that was destroyed thousands of years ago.” I look up and try to figure out how to explain what I’m feeling.

“I don’t know if I believe in God, like I told you, but I believe in tradition.

I like being a part of a ceremony that people have done for thousands of years.

And that includes being in a physical space—a synagogue, a temple, what have you. ”

“Wow, okay, brag,” Oakley says. “Not everyone comes from a religion as old as yours.”

I roll my eyes and point to the charred crucifix. “I stand by what I said, though. It’s deeply creepy.”

She shakes her head. “Feel how you want.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

I reluctantly smile at her.

She smiles back. “You want to know what churches are good for?”

“Not particularly, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Free food and well-maintained public bathrooms,” she says, and when I look over at her, her face is more serious than it

was before.

“I’ll never say no to a public bathroom.”

“Exactly.”

I like talking to Oakley like this. Half of what I’ve been saying aren’t even thoughts I’ve had before. But being with her

opens all these faucets in my brain, and ideas come flowing out: ideas about the nature of religious spaces and buildings.

About tradition and ceremony.

I didn’t have this at Cornell.

All I had, after a while, was Alden.

Nearly a Month into College

If I didn’t kiss him, it wasn’t real.

That’s what I told myself, even though Alden and I spent every day together, talking and flirting and hanging out. At a certain

point I knew we would have to break the seal. To do something to signify once and for all that we were both into each other and wanted to date.

I was seeing the Tees less and less and him more and more, but I still made excuses when I couldn’t hang out with them. I

didn’t come right out and say, “I’m spending time with a boy I have a crush on,” because that would invite questions about

my sexuality, which I wasn’t prepared to answer.

Then Alden broached the topic himself.

“Remember that night in the clock tower?” he asked. “When we first hung out?”