Page 19 of Leaving the Station

Once Oakley cooled down after dinner, I dragged her back to our usual seats—a little bit because I wanted to hang out in the

observation car and a lot because I didn’t want to be alone after what I told her. She didn’t push me to keep talking about

my thoughts on my gender—or lack thereof—and I haven’t brought it up since. It was a sleeper-car confession, not fit for public

consumption.

When the train pulls into the Twin Cities, I settle into my seat.

“You’re not getting off?” Oakley asks.

“I’m perfectly happy here,” I tell her, motioning around the observation car. “In my kingdom.”

She bounces up from her seat. “Nope. Come on.”

And when she walks away, I can’t help but follow.

“There’s a park by the station I want to check out,” she says as we huddle against the cold.

We stopped by the sleeper car to grab her jacket and gloves, but all I have is the same shell I wore in Chicago.

“You have a park you want to check out?” I ask. “It’s freezing cold.”

She looks me up and down. “You didn’t bring enough layers.”

“Who are you, my dad?”

“Just a concerned citizen.” She removes her overlayer and hands it to me. It’s a puffy coat, under which she’s wearing a fleece—she

was prepared. I was not. “Take this.”

“I’m not wearing your jacket,” I say as a huge gust of wind blows past and nearly knocks me over.

“You sure about that?”

I take the jacket. “Fuck you.”

She has a shit-eating grin on her face, but it’s worth it for the warmth of her coat.

The park follows the Mississippi River and features a cobblestone path interspersed with fountains and trellises.

Oakley stops us in front of a fountain that’s illuminated from below. Her skin twinkles along with the lights as they blink

on, off, on, off. Then she pulls off her gloves, reaches into the fountain and flicks her fingers at me.

I scream at a volume I didn’t know I could produce.

“I’m not having a water fight in negative-one-thousand-degree weather,” I tell her, wiping the freezing fountain water off

my cheeks. “You’re on your own.”

“Fine,” she says, pouting. “I guess I’ll skinny-dip in the Mississippi River by myself, too.”

I cross my arms. “Have fun getting an incurable fungal infection.”

“I will.”

She’s smiling now, and there’s some part of me that’s ridiculously happy that I’m the cause of her happiness. This doesn’t

feel like those glimmering moments with Alden when I could see a different path for us, one where we were two dudes goofing

off.

When I’m around Oakley, I don’t feel self-conscious about who I am or how I’m perceived. With her, I’m just an underdressed

person with a bad haircut, standing in an empty park.

“Back in New York I went on a date with a girl who would swim in the ocean off Coney Island every day.”

I didn’t think I would be jealous, hearing about a date Oakley went on with someone else, but I am. I hate this open-water

swimmer. She probably has great shoulders.

“We didn’t go on a second date,” Oakley says after a moment. “She ghosted me.”

“Sorry,” I say, though inside I’m perversely delighted.

“I never went on a second date,” she adds, looking out onto the river.

“Was it because you won’t drink coffee or because you’re a know-it-all?” I joke, but her face is deadly serious. I stand up

straighter and speak softer. “How is that even possible? You’re...” I trail off. There are many ways I could finish that

sentence, such as “gorgeous ” or “stunningly gorgeous ” or “ a stunningly gorgeous genius.” But in the end, I use the only words that encompass all that. “You’re Oakley.”

She shrugs. “No one ever asked.”

“ You could’ve asked them. ”

“I wasn’t used to that,” she says. “I was used to being pursued. I went on, like, a thousand dates in high school, once I

turned sixteen. But that was with Mormon boys who my parents approved of.”

“It’s hard,” I say after a beat, like I know anything at all about her life, “to be the pursuer.”

I’m not sure if what I did with Alden counts as pursuit, and I’ve never dated a girl; I’ve never done anything with one.

“It is,” she agrees. “But I thought, I don’t know... that maybe being in New York would be easier. That there would be

rules to this kind of thing. But it wasn’t, and there weren’t.”

The more Oakley tells me about her time in New York, the sadder I feel. She ate pizza alone. She never went on a second date.

“But was it easier than Ritzville?” I don’t want her to stop talking.

“Of course.” She laughs humorlessly. “But there’s no comparison. In Ritzville I couldn’t be out at all. And I used to imagine

New York as this queer utopia with lesbians running around topless through Central Park.”

“And was it?”

“Honestly? Kind of.”

I laugh at that. Oakley doesn’t.

“That doesn’t mean I did any of that, mind you,” she says. “I felt like a bird who got pushed out of the nest too soon.”

“That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Sure,” I say. “I mean, I grew up in a city known for being super queer and with liberal Jewish parents and it was still hard.”

I don’t know fully what I mean by “hard,” and Oakley doesn’t rush me to finish my thought.

“I never felt like I had to hide who I was,” I tell her. “But that didn’t make it any easier. Maybe it made it even harder because it felt like everyone else had it figured out and I didn’t.”

“Exactly!” Oakley looks at me then, and her face is alight with what I now know is her this idea is exciting to me and I want to talk about it more expression.

She steps closer, moving into the glow of a streetlight; she’s radiant. “I’ve known I was queer since I was a little kid.

I knew it from the moment my bishop’s wife first smiled at me once her husband accepted his calling. So I thought that when

I went to New York I could quickly put those feelings into action. I thought I’d be able to prove to myself and my family

and my ward, my community, that none of it was a blip, that I was who I’d always said I was.”

She’s huddled close to me now; the cold caught up to her after relinquishing her jacket. I pull my arm out from where she’s

pinned it to my side and wrap it hesitantly around her. As I do, she leans in so that she’s curled against me, the way the

tiny girl from the orchard might’ve curled into her giant boyfriend.

Hopefully there are enough layers to keep her from hearing how fast my heart is beating.

“When I got to New York, all that confidence I had in my identity went away. To everyone else, being queer wasn’t a big deal.

But for me, I needed it to be everything, or it couldn’t be anything.

” She shakes her head, frustrated. “What I mean is, if being queer can’t be a core part of who I am, then what’s the point? ”

“It’s—” I start, but she cuts me off.

“I know what the point is. But I didn’t know how to exist in this new life, and no one else knew what to do with me either.

I was like a baby. An ignorant baby.”

There was so much else to say, but I settle on, “Babies aren’t ignorant.” It was silly, but I had a point. “They’re just new

to the world. Sometimes a baby has to touch a hot stove before they find out it’ll burn them.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

Now we’re back to familiar territory. The conversation before was too intense—I don’t want to think about Oakley floundering

at anything. She’s so competent.

After another minute, I convince her to get back onto the train and not jump in the river (she threatened it a second time).

It’s now nearly lights-out, which the conductor reminds us by shouting over the intercom.

“So, I have bunk beds,” Oakley says when the conductor’s done. “And you could sleep in the top bunk. If you didn’t want to

stay in coach.”

“Yeah,” I say, trying not to look surprised or scared or a combination of the two. “I mean, sure. That sounds good. But what

if one of the conductors sees?”

“Does it matter?” Oakley asks. “If they say anything about you being in the wrong section, I’ll fight them.”

“You’re ready to fight anyone on this train, though.”

“Correct,” she says. “I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“Like with Guy Fieri.”

She looks confused. “Who?”

“Guy Fieri, the creepy man.”

“No, Guy Fieri’s amazing. He’s officiated hundreds of queer weddings.”

I shake my head. “First of all, how do you know—Actually, don’t answer that. Second of all, not the real Guy Fieri. I mean the man from Chicago who kind of looked like him.”

She gets a serious look on her face then. “Well, he was being weird to you. Obviously, I was going to step in.”

It’s the word obviously that gets me. If Alden had said that, I would’ve felt uncomfortable. But coming from Oakley, I feel warm, protected.

“So, are you going to stay in my room or not? The top bunk is all yours.”

“Um, yeah.” I nod. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome.”