Page 11 of Leaving the Station

“Of course,” I told him.

“Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about it. About the tower and about, like, time.” It was late and we were in our usual spots

in the student union, on opposite sides of our couch.

“Oh yeah?” I didn’t know where he was going with this, but he sounded serious.

“So, it’s like this: without marking time, we’re just floating through life.

” He was speaking quietly, and I leaned forward so I didn’t miss a word.

“But the tower ringing every hour lets us know that time is moving forward, that it’s actually progressing.

It lets us assess our life and how we’re spending our days—you know? ”

“Okay, Mr. English Major,” I joked, but his face was serious.

“I’m trying to tell you something.”

I stilled. “Okay?”

“I feel like I’m, well, time ,” he said. “And that night we spent together? I don’t know, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since. You’re

the clock tower, Zoe. You mark my days; you give them meaning and structure. You are my time.”

I could tell it was a line. I would’ve cringed at it in a movie, but somehow it worked when he said it. I wanted to believe

that I was his clock tower, that I mattered to him. That there was a reason I was here, in this student union, not studying

to become a doctor.

“I wanted to kiss you that night,” he said. “But I’ve been waiting because I didn’t want to rush you.”

“I wanted to kiss you too,” I whispered.

Because even if I didn’t know it at the time, it was true.

I liked him.

But there was more in that like that I didn’t quite know how to name.

Maybe it was because I could see myself in him, a more masculine side of me. We were the same height, we had the same build.

Even our hair color was the same.

But the like was there above it all, coursing through me as he held my hand.

Then, because I needed to know what he would say: “What have we been doing, Alden?”

“I thought we were kind of... dating?” He looked so hesitant, so boyish. “You’re not seeing anyone else, are you?”

“No,” I said quickly.

“Me neither.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

We both let our gazes drift to the rest of the Straight; at this point everyone was gone for the night except for some kid

passed out on their laptop.

An eternity later: “Can I kiss you now?”

I nodded. I had stopped breathing.

“Okay.”

He stood up. I followed. “Let’s make this a no-judgment kiss, all right? It can be practice.”

I nodded again.

Then he stuck his tongue down my throat. It was warmer and thicker than I’d imagined a tongue could be. Like a large worm

or a small snake.

It wasn’t bad or good, just a new sensation.

He held my hips, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, the way I’d seen girls do in movies. We kissed for a while, and it

got better the longer it went on.

With that, the seal had been broken; we were well past due for this kiss.

Afterward, we stayed up all night talking and kissing. It was nearly six in the morning when I got back to my dorm.

I collapsed onto my bed, wired. I ran a hand through my hair, which was coming loose from its ponytail.

That was my first kiss.

Tuesday, 1 p.m., Chicago, IL

Once Oakley’s had her fill of the ghost church, she shepherds me to a place where we can order take-out deep-dish pizza for

lunch.

“There’s this spot right by Union Station,” she says, and once again leads the way.

The restaurant’s packed, and when we make it to the front of the line, we each order an individual six-inch, deep-dish pizza

and get out as quickly as possible.

“Oh my god, why is this so heavy?” I ask, doing a biceps curl to adjust the bag in my hand.

“Maybe you’re just weak,” Oakley says as she holds her bag with ease.

“Excuse you, I’m very buff.”

“Yeah, you’re practically a bodybuilder.” She points to my noodle arms and I swing my too-dense pie into her leg in response.

“Careful with that thing; you’ll knock me out.”

We make it back to Union Station before they’ve announced our track, so we pick up our suitcases and camp out in the center

of the Great Hall.

There are a bunch of people milling around who were on the first train with us. I spot Aya in the distance, doing laps, getting out her little-kid energy. And there are Clint and Virginia, napping next to each other.

“This is not pizza,” I say once I’ve opened the container and taken a bite. “This is casserole.”

“You’re from Seattle; you can’t talk,” Oakley says, sawing at her slice with the plastic fork and knife from the bag.

“It’s not like there’s good pizza in Eastern Washington either.”

“Yeah—I mean no, there’s not,” she admits. “But I just spent four months in New York City eating pizza by myself every day,

so I’m something of an expert.”

I turn to Oakley, the bite I took burning the roof of my mouth. “By yourself?”

She shrugs. “At least I got good pizza out of it.”

She’s trying to sound nonchalant, but it’s not working.

“What did you do all day?” I ask, not wanting to let this go. “If you were by yourself?”

“I told you.” She says this in a harsher voice than I’ve heard from her. “I ate pizza.”

“Right, but now you see my predicament,” I tell her, trying to ease the tension. “I’m thinking eating a pizza takes maybe

five, ten minutes, max. So what did you do for the other twenty-three hours and fifty minutes of the day?”

“I walked around. Read a lot of weird things.” She stabs her plastic fork into the mass of cheese. “Did you know that there

was a poet in Victorian England named Michael Field who was actually two lesbians?”

“No.” She’s being obtuse, and she knows it.

I try to shake the image of her eating pizza alone out of my head, but it’s stuck there. I need to know more about Oakley’s time in New York.

But then again, if I keep digging, she’d be within her right to direct questions back at me.

“Well,” I say, pointing to my lunch to distract from the awkward pause. “I wasn’t saying that this isn’t good. It’s buttery

and cheesy and shit, so obviously it tastes great. But it’s simply not pizza.”

“Don’t say that too loudly or they’ll come for you,” Oakley says.

“Who?”

“ They ,” she repeats.

“Ominous.”

“As it should be.”

We chat and eat for a few more minutes as the deep-dish “pizza” sinks to the bottom of my stomach like a brick.

Aya waves to me from across the hall, then sprints over at breakneck speed. She runs up behind my chair and grabs my shoulders,

using them to spring into the air.

“Ow,” I say automatically, rubbing my back where her little viselike hands had taken hold.

“Very buff,” Oakley murmurs under her breath, leaning into me.

“Hi, Zoe!” Aya says, walking around the chairs so we’re facing each other.

“Hi, Aya!” I point to Oakley. “This is Oakley.”

Aya waves, but she looks suspicious. “Are you two girlfriends?”

Oakley laughs so loudly that it echoes around the room, which turns into choking as she coughs up a chunk of cheese.

“Ew,” Aya says, backing away from the cheese chunk. She looks between us again. “So, are you?”

Oakley’s still coughing, and my heart is beating too fast.

“No,” I tell her quickly. “We’re definitely not.”

I turn to Oakley for backup, but she’s staring down at her lunch.

“Oh, okay,” Aya says. “It would be cool if you were. I only asked because my best friend, Cayden, has two moms.”

“Nice,” I say, my voice approximately three octaves higher than normal.

“See you on the train!” And with that, Aya’s gone, back to running in circles, leaving only destruction in her wake.

“Sorry about her,” I tell Oakley.

“Don’t apologize,” she says. “That kid is iconic.”

“Agreed, but I mean about what she said about us being girlfriends.”

“So?” Oakley shrugs.

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Nope,” she says, standing up. “We’re not girlfriends; we just met. She can think what she wants.”

“I guess that’s true,” I say, and the “I guess” is doing the heavy lifting there.

She plays with the chain of her necklace. “But we could hang out more, you know? On the next leg of the journey.”

“You actually want to hang out with me?”

“Unless there’s someone hotter than you,” she says, not quite meeting my eye. “Then I’ll ditch you for them.”

I nearly choke on my own saliva until Oakley adds, “Kidding, kidding.”

After a long moment I say, “Sure, Oakley. Let’s... hang out.”

She nods, and it’s settled. My train companion: a mouthy, blond ex-Mormon with too much information stored in her huge head.

Let’s see how this goes.