Page 51 of Leaving the Station

“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? Arethosethe 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. “Pleasedon’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,youhave 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?”