Page 38 of Leaving the Station

I nod, and Oakley kisses me harder than she has before, biting my lip and leaving me bruised and wanting more.

“This isn’t the last time we’re going to get to do that.” She grins as she starts throwing her clothes into her suitcase.

“Why are you being so chill about this?” I ask her, worried. “You were so set on going back to the church.”

She barely looks up at me as she says, “Because I prayed on it yesterday.”

I stare at her. “You did?”

“It’s what my parents would always tell me to do when I had to make a tough decision as a kid, and it’s what I wanted to do

yesterday, after our fight.”

“So what happened?”

She takes a breath, and I know she’s about to tell me a story. I sit back on the bed, ready to listen.

“Mormons believe that we live a premortal life,” she says, and I appreciate that she didn’t add, Did you know?

She’s learning. “It was a life where we all lived with our Heavenly Father, and it’s part of His big plan of happiness for us.

Then we get a physical body so that we can have experiences that God wants us to have, that we couldn’t have any other way.

We’re supposed to learn what’s right. We’re supposed to sin—do things we know are wrong—so that we can repent and understand the proper path and then rejoin Him. ”

She stops packing and sits next to me, putting her hand on my thigh in a way that now feels familiar and comforting.

“When I prayed yesterday, I waited to hear a voice, a confirmation, anything.” She squeezes my leg. “And I did. I don’t know

if it was my own thoughts or if it was the Spirit or the conductor or someone else entirely. But I heard a voice, clear as

day, that said that caring for someone is not a sin. The voice said that what we did wasn’t wrong at all. Because a sin is doing something you know is wrong, but Zoe, I know this is right. Every part of my body knows it.”

It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. That being with me is right, that what we’re doing is holy.

“I agree,” I tell her, putting my hand on top of hers, then leaning in and kissing her cheek, and her forehead and her other

cheek and her nose and her lips.

She laughs at each kiss, then pulls me back down onto the bed. “We have to get off the train soon,” she says.

“Or we could just refuse to leave.” I hold her against me. “They’ll have to drag us out.”

“I like that idea,” she says.

But just as we start making out again, the train slows to a stop.

“Folks,” the conductor says. “Once again, on behalf of the whole crew, I want to thank you for riding with us. It’s been a pleasure and an honor.”

“MORE than an honor,” Edward says, taking over the loudspeaker for the last time. “Thank you to my friends, new and old, for

everything you’ve given me.”

I smile at that and silently thank him one more time too.

I throw my stuff into my suitcase and then, when everything is packed, Oakley and I stare around the room.

“I’ll miss her,” I say, gesturing to the bunk beds.

“I won’t,” Oakley says. “I want to make out with you on a California King.”

My face reddens at that, but I tell her, “I want that too.”

As we step off the train, my legs are stiff and my body aches and I need a shower, but I feel better than I have in a long

time.

The air is humid on the platform, and it smells like evergreens and mist and home.

“Wait,” Oakley says, grabbing me in the middle of the platform and kissing me.

“You’ll text me?” I ask as we pull apart. “Keep me updated about your life?”

“About everything,” she promises. “I can even update you on my poops if that’s what you want.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Too bad,” she says as she wheels her suitcase down the platform, toward the station house. “It’s already happening.”

“Fine,” I tell her as I catch up.

Right before we walk through the doors of the station, she turns to me once more.

“We can talk as much or as little as you want,” she says seriously.

“But I want to text you good morning. And I want to hear your voice at night. And when I come back to Seattle— when , not if—I’m going to make sure your dreams are sweet. ”

“Okay,” I tell her, because that’s all I can say over the beating of my heart.

Finally, we step through the doors. She looks back at me one more time before she runs over to her mom, who, like I expected,

is blond and pretty and wraps her in a hug.

At the other end of the station is my dad, who waves as he walks over to me.

“Have a good trip, bubala?” he asks.

“Not bad,” I tell him.

We have a lot to discuss, but for now, I want to live in the glow of what Oakley said to me. I want to feel the ghost of her

lips against my mouth for as long as possible.

Right before we’re about to leave, I turn around to find Oakley looking back at me.

She waves, and I wave back.

“Who’s that?” my dad asks.

I think about lying, about bending the truth. But I’m about to come clean about everything, so I might as well start with

this.

“Someone important,” I say. “We’ll talk about her later.”

And with that, we leave the station and head toward our car in the light rain of a Seattle morning.

When I look down at my phone, I have a text:

Oakley: miss you already

Me: you can’t miss me

because im right here

for as long as you want me to be