Page 2 of Leaving the Station

“What?” I ask the long child.

“You know, Richard Nixon?”

guy?”

“Um, maybe?” she says. “Like, the old president who sucked or whatever.” She rolls her eyes and I try not to laugh as she

continues. “So, he signed this law, and then the government got to own the railways.”

“How old are you?”

She crosses her arms. “Why do people always ask me that?”

“Would it help if I told you how old I am?”

She nods.

“I’m eighteen.”

“I’m nine,” she says.

“That’s half my age.”

“Duh.”

“I’m Zoe,” I tell her.

“That’s a good name,” she says approvingly. “I’m Aya.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Aya,” I say. “That’s a good name too.”

“Thanks, it’s Japanese,” she tells me. “That’s where my great-grandparents are from. Did you know that Japan was the first

country to have rail lines that were made just for high-speed travel?”

“I didn’t.”

“It’s true! The first-ever bullet train was the Tōkaidō Shinkansen. But ‘bullet train’ isn’t its official name; it’s just what they call them in English. The old slow trains from before the Shinkansen that went from Tokyo to Osaka

took six hours and forty minutes. But guess how long the Shinkansen took?”

I know from previous experience speaking to children that I should highball the number. I don’t want to upset this child who

has deemed me worthy of her train facts.

“Five hours?” I guess.

“Four!” she says, her face lighting up.

“That’s so cool.”

She goes on to tell me about how, in 1997, the Shinkansen was only delayed on average eighteen seconds from schedule, when

a tall woman walks into the café car with a worried look on her face. The look eases slightly when she spots Aya.

“There you are,” she says, smoothing Aya’s hair, which is shaped into a classic childhood bowl cut. “What did I say about

wandering off?”

“To not do it,” Aya mumbles.

“Or at least tell me where you’re going.” She glances at me, and her eyes are bloodshot. “Sorry about her.”

“No no, not at all.” Aya has been the first person on this train that I’ve actually liked talking to, and I tell her as much.

Her mom leads her in the opposite direction then, toward the sleeper car, and as the door slides open, Aya turns around and

waves to me. I wave back.

Clearly, I’m not the only one trying to avoid my parents.

I ease back into my seat and let my eyes unfocus. In this first hour of the trip, I’ve had more conversations with strangers

than I’ve had since the first week of college. But maybe this is what’s meant to happen on a long train ride. We’re going

to be sharing this small space for at least a few hours, possibly days. We need to build some train solidarity.

And I don’t mind the conversations like I usually would, because the people I’ve been speaking to don’t know anything about

who I am off the train. To them, I’m a way to pass the time. They’re not my college friends, who I’ve done a fabulous job

of disappointing.

And they’re certainly not my parents, who’ve pushed me my whole life to be the person they want me to be.

It was a constant, from when they had me quit dance in third grade to “focus on my studies,” all the way up to the day my

dad dropped me off at college.

I did everything right, from kindergarten to senior year, but recently something broke inside me. All I can do is stare at my phone and play Tetris. I don’t know what happened, but being alive feels a thousand times harder than it did last year.

I went to college to be a doctor, and now, less than four months later, I have no idea who I am or what I’m going to be.

But my parents are contributing what they can to my college fund so that I can be Dr. Tauber.

They should use that money to buy a condo in Florida or whatever it is old Jews with disappointing children do.

Day Four of College

It was the third time in as many years that I had been forced to learn about the electron transport chain.

I had a hard time figuring out why I needed to know this. I didn’t think that doctors gave this much thought to basic biological

processes. It couldn’t have been relevant to them as they were saving lives or shaving bunions or what have you. Electrons

moved, our cells made energy, and none of it mattered.

Once I came to the realization that nothing we were learning in Intro Bio would be of any use to me in the future, I stopped paying attention.

It was the second day of class.

The girl next to me bounced her leg under her desk as she carefully transcribed the professor’s every word. Instead of listening

to the lecture, I studied her leg. When she was anxious, it bounced faster. When she was focused it was slower. Sometimes,

it barely bounced at all.

I recorded my observations in the margins of my notebook. I figured I was doing science, and that had to count for something. I didn’t have a control group or consistency or government funding, but neither did Darwin.

Or maybe he did. I didn’t know.

When the professor dismissed us, I shoved my pen into my backpack and ran out of the classroom. I was going to meet Rex and

Autumn and Shelly at Jansen’s Dining for dinner.

I felt decently good about my chance of having real friends. We even had a group chat, called “Tees Have More Fun,” since

all of our last names began with T.

Rex: freaking out ...

they’ve got tomato bisque here

Autumn: sending out a news alert rn

Shelly: more like a bisque alert

I smiled down at my phone as I ran out of the classroom.

Zoe: be there in a sec !!!!

Due to an unfortunate asbestos-related incident, my biology lecture was temporarily being held in the student union, nicknamed

“the Straight,” (after a dead investment banker, not a sexual orientation, which thankfully I googled before asking anyone)

so in order to get outside I had to walk through crowds of people ordering large quantities of coffee or handing out flyers

for hyper-specific clubs.

The crowds didn’t matter too much in the end, though; I never made it to dinner that evening.

Because there, in the lobby, was the most interesting person I’d ever seen.

I know that sounds like a nice way of saying he was unattractive or weird to look at, but that wasn’t true at all. This kid

was objectively good-looking—even a lesbian could think that about a boy, and I was. Thinking that about him, that is.

And a lesbian.

He was wearing a brown crewneck sweater that matched the color of his hair, which was bouncy and dynamic. He smiled widely

at his own jokes in a way that was ridiculously charming, and while he didn’t have a dimple, he had a birthmark on his cheek

that changed shape when he grinned.

But it was more than his appearance; there was something intangibly magnetic about him.

I should’ve been on my way to dinner with my new friends, who were bantering about bisque. I really did want to go, but I physically couldn’t pull myself away from this boy.

He was standing in front of a group of people strewn over chairs and couches, commanding the crowd with the expertise of a

televangelist.

“So, Dickens, right?” he said to the group, his hair bouncing with each syllable.

He was doing some sort of presentation, and everyone gathered there was eating it up. I wasn’t listening to what he was saying.

I watched his hands as he gestured, watched his mouth as he grinned goofily.

I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but when he was done practicing his presentation—for a class, it must’ve been—I approached the group, squatting next to someone who was sitting at the edge of the crowd on a large worn armchair.

“Who is that?” I asked the Armchair-Person.

“That’s Alden,” they said. “He lives in my building. He’s actually so funny.”

“Cool,” I said, not taking my eyes off Alden as he sank into the couch in front of the TV to allow someone else to practice

their presentation.

I sat there for two hours and learned about everything from nuclear fission to stoicism. When the group dispersed, Alden stood

from the couch and stretched.

We were the only two people left, and I wasn’t sure if he’d even noticed me. It was too late to go to dinner now—I had about

fifty messages asking where I was and if I was okay—but for some reason I couldn’t let this boy go. I needed him to know I’d

been here the whole time, waiting.

So I twirled my long thick ponytail around my palm and took a deep breath. “Cool presentation,” I said, then wished I hadn’t.

Cool presentation?

It was a terrible opening line, and he knew it as well as I did.

Not that it was an opening line.

When he smiled, it didn’t look like he was humoring me. He seemed genuinely happy. “Thanks.” He sat back down on the couch,

which emitted a cloud of dust. “It’s for my Victorian Novel class.”

“That sounds tedious,” I said, then quickly added, “Sorry, no, it’s—”

“I like it.” He shrugged, and I was relieved that he’d put an end to my fumbling. “I don’t know if I’m for sure going to major in English, but the professor told us we could have class outside when it’s nice. What are you studying?”

“Mostly bio.”

“Sounds tedious,” he said.

I laughed. “I’m Zoe.”

“Alden.”

I sat on the couch then, with a full cushion between us. As we spoke, he pressed his legs to his chest, and I did the same,

his mirror.

He told me more about his first days at school, and I told him about the girl in my bio class. He laughed at that, which felt

remarkable.

I’d never experienced this before: talking to someone where it felt like everything I said was interesting and right and true.

It was miraculous.

When I finally checked the time, it was one in the morning.

“Oh my god, it’s so late.” I turned my phone around so he could see my lock screen.

“Or maybe early?” He stood from the couch. “There’s somewhere else that should be open. Well, open as in they sometimes forget to lock it. Care to join?”

I nodded. Even then, I knew I would go wherever he asked.

The somewhere Alden had mentioned turned out to be the clock tower, the giant obelisk at the center of campus that marked the hours with

kitschy songs played on clanging chimes.