Page 31 of Leaving the Station

Coach is worse than I remembered.

My seatmate won’t stop coughing, then snoring, then coughing again—a vicious cycle—and I can’t find a comfortable position

no matter how hard I try.

But this is the best option, because if I go back to the observation car I risk running into Oakley. The only thing to do

is stay here, in this dark car with the other coach passengers who I’ve barely gotten to know at all on this trip.

Maybe they’re wonderful people, or creeps like Guy Fieri Lite, but I’ll never know one way or the other, because I spent the

whole trip getting to know a girl who can never be with me, who never wanted to be with me in the first place. She just wanted one last go at being queer, and I was the easiest target.

My whole life up until now has been escaping to find the next best thing—the next best class to take, the next best school,

the next best label, the next best identity, the next best anything .

But what if there’s nothing better? What if Oakley was my best thing, and she never even wanted to be with me in the first place?

Even if she did, nothing could’ve happened. She’s rejoining the Mormon Church.

I pull out my phone and play Tetris for the first time since the beginning of the trip. I try to set up a T-spin, but I don’t

remember the strategy Oakley showed me. So I do what I’ve always done: stack the blocks four high until I get a Tetris.

There’s only one stop in Idaho, and when we get there, the conductor tells us that we have five minutes. It’s not a smoke

stop, but I run outside anyway, desperate for fresh air.

The brick station house has its lights on, and I’m tempted to run inside and stay there. I could make a nice life for myself

here in Idaho.

But no. The train would definitely leave without me this time, and I couldn’t blame the conductor for doing it. They only waited because of Aya.

Aya.

Nanami is never going to let me hang out with her in Seattle. And the worst part is, I’d love to see her. I want to listen to her talk about trains or whatever else she finds cool that day.

I don’t have any siblings, and I thought, perhaps naively, that she could be like a little sister.

But it’s not like she has a phone. I can’t text her. All I know is her first name and that she has an aunt in Seattle and

that her mom hates me, because she hates Oakley.

Oakley and I have been a unit on this trip. Nanami probably thinks I agree with everything Oakley’s told her.

So Aya will just be one more casualty of caring about someone on a four-day trip.

I climb back onto the train, where one of the conductors shakes her head at me. I raise a hand in apology, then head back

into coach. When I get there, though, I’m more restless than before. I force myself to stay in my seat, but my legs are shaking

and my seatmate is coughing and I can’t be in here any longer.

Maybe it’s a bad idea, but I head back to the observation car, trying not to think about how I’ve now ruined my life twice

in the span of a week.

One Day before Thanksgiving Break

I stood outside my dorm without going in. My whole body hurt for various reasons, and the best thing for me would be to go

to sleep, but I couldn’t.

So, I went to the one place that would calm me: the greenhouse.

I had a key, and Randall had told me I could come whenever I liked. I’d never taken him up on this until now.

When I got there, everything was still except for whirring fans. The nearby plants in the main conservatory swayed in the

artificial breeze. Leaves rustled against each other, and the systems that kept the plants alive popped and hissed in the

background.

I could finally breathe.

I took in huge gulps of humid air, then walked over to the Amorphophallus . I didn’t have the energy to talk to the plant like I normally would, so I just glanced inside its pot. The shoot was even taller now, growing upward in segments that became progressively narrower.

The tiny sprout of the Amorphophallus taunted me.

What good had I done for this plant? Sure, I’d taken care of it nearly every single day for months, but even after all of

my hard work and love, I was never going to see it bloom.

Everything I’d done this whole semester was pointless.

I’d spent three months lying to myself about who I was, about my gender, my sexuality, my wants and dreams, and now I was

facing the consequences.

I arrived at Cornell with some amount of hope, and I was leaving with nothing.

I wanted to rip the small shoot out of the pot and tear it to shreds. It was a frightening impulse, one that came from somewhere

primal and small.

Instead of hurting the plant, I screamed until it felt like my already-raw throat was being ripped to shreds.

The most depressing part—and there were many, many depressing parts—was that all of this could’ve been solved if I’d stuck

with the Tees.

There were two versions of me floating in the ether, two Zoes who would never meet. One of us stayed friends with the Tees.

That Zoe spent their whole first semester exploring their gender and sexuality. That Zoe wouldn’t have alienated Autumn when

she was just trying to be nice.

But I was the Zoe who chose to date Alden.

I paced the greenhouse for hours, wondering why I’d done this to myself.

Randall had taught me that most of the plants in the greenhouse had evolved so that they produce both pollen, which is like plant sperm, and eggs. He had said it as an aside, as an interesting fact to share with visitors if they inquired about plant reproduction.

But all I could think was that the plants were lucky. They didn’t have the human defect of needing another organism for the

survival of their species.

I went back to my dorm and searched for train schedules. I found this route, which would leave from the city a day and a half

later. I bought a coach seat with the money I had made from the greenhouse.

After that, it didn’t take long to pack my things.

My whole life fit into a backpack and a large suitcase. I didn’t have posters up in my dorm, or mementos of a first semester

spent with people I’d been learning to love.

I had textbooks I’d rarely opened, clothes I hated, and bedding that I wanted to burn.

It all fit without protest.

The room was empty, but I still had thirty-six hours of waiting, and only one real thing left to do.

I pulled a piece of paper out of one of my many empty notebooks and grabbed a pen that was still full of ink from my unused

pencil case.

On the paper, I wrote a note to Alden. It was a cowardly thing to do, to not text or call, but just then, a coward was the

only thing I had it in me to be.

My heart beat frantically as I scratched the letter onto the page.

Dear Alden,

Maybe you don’t know this, or maybe you’ve been kind enough not to mention it, but you’re my only friend here. Thank you for

showing me parts of campus I never would’ve seen without you. Thank you for bringing me to the clock tower and the library

and the bowling alley.

Do you know what I saw in you that first day, in the Straight? I saw myself. Or who I wanted to be.

You were a window into a life I never knew was possible. I hope I was good for you too, even when I was shitty.

Which is what’s making it about a thousand times harder to tell you that I’m a lesbian.

Or maybe I’m not a lesbian exactly, but that’s the best word I have for it right now.

I really, really like you, Alden. You’re smart and funny and weird, and you’re almost scarily good at card games. But as desperately

as I wish I could, I can’t want you the way you want me.

And for that I’m so, so sorry.

This is the ultimate “It’s not you, it’s me.” It’s always been me.

I hope one day we can be friends, which is a cliché thing to say but I’m pretty sure I mean it.

I’ve included the copy of your key—please throw it away; I don’t want you to get expelled.

A little bit yours,

Zoe

It took many hours and a hundred failed letters to get that much onto the page. In earlier drafts I tried to explain to him the complexities of my gender, of how having sex with him wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t right. But this was what I’d landed on.

I folded the paper in thirds with the key inside and wrote Alden’s name on the front, then snuck through campus under the

cover of darkness for the second time that night.

I didn’t technically have access to his building, so I waited a few minutes for someone to come out, then I slipped inside.

I ran up the same staircase that we had climbed just hours before. That must’ve been a different century or a parallel universe.

When I got to Alden’s floor, I held my breath and walked slowly to his room. I pressed my ear against the door. I didn’t want

him to wake up while I was there; I couldn’t handle seeing his face.

After a minute of listening, once I was sure he was sleeping or else not there, I slid the note under the door and bolted.

I didn’t tread lightly like I had coming up to his room. I ran like I was being chased by a horror-movie villain. The stakes

felt higher than that.

I locked myself in my dorm then to wait for the shuttle that would take me down to the city, and turned off my phone.

If Alden tried to contact me, I didn’t want to know.

Thursday, 1:30 a.m., Somewhere in ID

Alden has texted me a grand total of thirteen times during this trip, which feels like an omen.

I’m counting them now, forcing myself to read each text, to take in the words he wrote, even though it feels impossible.

This is why I’ve had my phone on airplane mode: I couldn’t face Alden, the boy who was falling for me.

The messages began innocuously enough. The first: We should talk. Then they became more frantic. Are you okay? Where are you? Why aren’t you answering?

Then, finally, What the hell, Zoe?

With these texts, I have to face what I’ve been running away from this entire trip, which is that, to him, we’re not officially

broken up. I never said anything to his face. I never even said it explicitly in the letter.