Page 17 of Leaving the Station

A conductor comes around telling us that there was a mechanical issue in the kitchen, and apologizing for the late dinner

hour.

“It’s European!” he keeps repeating while dabbing at his flop sweat with an Amtrak-branded napkin.

Oakley gets two free reservations with each meal (a perk of her wildly overpriced sleeper car ticket), and when it’s time

for us to head to dinner, I leave my phone in her room.

I haven’t looked at it since I got the text from Alden.

In the dining car, the first people we see are Mike, the Canadian from the scavenger hunt, and Aya’s mom. The two of them

are chatting and sitting close.

Oakley convinces the waiter to let us sit with them, and she waves to Aya’s mom as she slides into the booth.

“Where’s Aya?” Oakley asks.

“She’s back in our bedroom,” Aya’s mom says with a smile that looks like it’s taking a great deal of effort. “She stayed up

too late reading and passed out on the sofa. I tried to wake her up for dinner but she was out cold.”

I smile at that, thinking about the spitfire that is Aya being too sleepy for dinner.

“I’m Oakley, and this is Zoe,” Oakley says after that. “I don’t know if we’ve properly met.”

“I’m Nanami,” Aya’s mom says. “And trust me, I’ve heard quite a bit about the two of you.”

“I’m sure,” Oakley says, so wonderfully un-shy.

I nod to Mike, who’s sitting across from me. “What’s up?”

At this, his cheeks redden, and Oakley and I exchange a look.

“Nothing much,” he says after too long of a pause.

The awkwardness lasts until the waiter comes by with the menu, and though the options are only slightly different from the

first leg, they feel fancier.

“For all those in sleeper cars, we’re offering our three-course menu tonight,” he says. “This includes your choice of appetizer,

entrée, and dessert.”

I order a salad for my appetizer, pasta for my entrée, and a lemon cake for dessert.

“I’ll have the same,” Oakley says. “But I’ll do the chocolate mousse.” She turns to me. “That way we can try a little of both—if

that’s okay with you.”

“Of course,” I tell her, taken aback.

“If I get a bottle of wine, would you all split with me?” Mike asks.

“Absolutely,” Nanami says immediately.

“We’re too young,” I tell Mike, my dormant “good kid” behavior returning with a vengeance. “But thank you.”

“I always forget about the drinking age in the US.” He clucks his tongue. “You’re a bunch of prudes.”

“I agree,” Oakley says, and though I shouldn’t be, I’m surprised by her saying this.

“Well, more for us,” Nanami tells Mike, who laughs so loudly that everyone else in the dining car stares at us, including

Clint and Virginia, who wave.

“I’d like to propose a toast,” Nanami says when the wine arrives and Oakley and I have our water in front of us. “To men who

aren’t shitty.” She raises her glass to Mike, and we all toast with plastic cups.

“Do you have a lot of bad men in your life?” Oakley asks Nanami, who is sipping her wine. .

I nudge Oakley under the table. It’s an invasive question, but when Nanami nods, I have to remind myself once again that the

rules of etiquette are different on the train.

“Well, only one,” Nanami says. “Aya’s father.” None of us say anything as she sucks air in through her teeth and dabs her

cloth napkin at the corners of her eyes. “We’re getting a divorce.”

Oakley reaches her hand out and Nanami grabs it. “Are you okay?”

Aya’s mom shakes her head, and my heart hurts: a little for her and a little for Oakley’s kindness. They both sit there for

a while, looking at each other. I feel like a third wheel, or a fourth, defective one, along with Mike.

Nanami can’t bring herself to speak, and the silence feels endless.

“I know what it’s like to leave something behind,” Oakley says finally, and I freeze. “Something that’s felt like the only truth for your entire life.”

I want Oakley to say more—I always want her to say more—but she takes her time. When she speaks again, she doesn’t seem to be directing her thoughts at Nanami

or really at anyone in particular.

“Maybe it’s not this way for everyone,” Oakley continues, “but it’s like you start to understand how your life could’ve been if you hadn’t believed all the lies you’d been fed.

But there was no way not to believe them, so you were trapped in this world of fear and conformity, and you’d heard every Sunday for your entire life

that it was the end of times and Jesus’s return was imminent, so it was your job to value the truth in everything you did

to hasten His return but only if it was their truth. And now you know all of that was just meant to scare you into paying your tithing and meeting all the standards of

the Church, but you still can’t let go of the beliefs because if you don’t have those then everything else in your life will come crumbling down.”

Nanami releases Oakley’s hand, and I want to do more than what I’m doing now, which is staring at her.

Even in the silence, I’m drawn to Oakley. I want to be by her side while she recounts this story to anyone who will listen.

It’s a familiar feeling: the desire for more than I can have.

Finally, Nanami says, “Now I feel silly for crying about a man.”

“Don’t,” Oakley says fiercely.

“I shouldn’t even have brought it up,” Nanami says. “All I wanted was an hour away from all that. I feel bad enough about Aya spending so much time with you two.”

“No,” I insist, happy to contribute something , “Aya’s amazing.”

“I know.” Nanami rubs her temple and Mike rubs her back. “Which is why I feel so bad that I haven’t told her.”

“Haven’t told her what?” Oakley asks.

Nanami takes a breath. “That I’m divorcing her dad. And that we’re not going back to New York. We’re moving to Seattle.”

“Wait,” I say. “What?”

Before Nanami can respond, Oakley says, “She’s on the train to Seattle and she doesn’t know that she’s moving there?” Her

sharp jaw is set in a hard line, and the intense compassion that shone on her face before is gone.

“I think it’s best to let her have this trip,” Nanami says. “She’s been so excited about it, and I didn’t want to take that

away from her. It hasn’t felt like the right time,” she adds, and then takes a sip of wine.

“When’s the right time?” Oakley asks, her voice rising. I might’ve held myself back, but she’ll do nothing of the sort. “When

the ‘trip’ is over and you’re not heading back to New York? When she has to enroll in an entirely new school? When she finds

out she’s not going to live with her dad anymore? Are those the right times?”

Nanami blinks back tears, and Mike stares daggers at Oakley.

“Stop that,” he tells her.

In her rage, Oakley’s scooted closer to me, and her shaking body is pressed against mine. I grab the hand she has in her lap, and she squeezes my fingers so tightly I wince.

“You have to let Aya in on this,” she tells Nanami, who looks more than a little shell-shocked. “My whole life I’ve had things

hidden from me—and when I discovered everything I didn’t know, it was the worst feeling in the world. You have to give Aya

agency in her own life.”

She looks out the window, and I’m thrust back to the moment I first saw her on the train. When she was a random mean (hot)

blond girl.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“You think you’re protecting her,” Oakley continues, “but you’re only hurting her by hiding the truth.”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Nanami says without looking at us. She pushes past Mike, and as she’s about to open the door to

the next car, she turns to us, her eyes bloodshot. “ Please don’t tell Aya.” The desperation in her voice is almost too much to bear.

“We won’t,” Oakley says, her voice cold. “But at some point, you have to.”

Before I can fully close the sleeper compartment door, Oakley starts up again.

“I can’t believe she’d do that to Aya.”

“I know,” I say quietly, nodding and sitting in one of the seats by the now-pointless window. It’s too dark to see anything

outside, so I stare at Oakley’s reflection.

“She needs to tell her.”

“I agree.”

“Aya’s going to resent her if she doesn’t say anything.”

“Totally.”

At this, Oakley finally looks at me. “How are you so chill about this?”

“I’m not,” I tell her. “I feel horrible for Aya. But I also get where Nanami is coming from.”

“You understand hiding something that big from someone you care about?”

“Yes.” I’m surprised it comes out so easily and with no qualifications. But it’s true.

Of course, I’m thinking of Alden, though Oakley doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know anything about him, which is increasingly

feeling like a lie by omission.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be so worked up about this.” Oakley sits opposite me and leans forward so that her knees are almost touching

mine. “But it feels personal.”

At first, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I need to know. “Why?”

She sighs. “I’ve spent the past six months living my life in a way where the only thing I’ve cared about was knowing the truth.

Finding answers. ” She shakes her head, and a strand of hair falls in front of her face. “And because of that, things have sucked, but it’s

meant that I’m not living a lie. I’ve now read every single book I was told not to my whole life, all the ‘anti-Mormon’ literature

my parents warned me about. And you know what that ‘anti-Mormon’ literature has been? History. The truth. ” She blinks hard at this. “So when I see someone who’s lying for their own convenience, yeah, it pisses me off.”

“What did you find?” I ask, and when Oakley gives me a confused look, I add, “You said you only cared about finding answers—what were they?”

She closes her eyes. I know now that when she does this, she’s formulating a response in her head.

It’s funny what you can learn about someone in a couple of days.

“That deconstructing the beliefs you had about the religion you grew up in means losing all the good parts too.” She’s looking

down at her hands. “That it means I don’t have a path laid out before me like I once did, or the hope of an eternal family.