Page 54 of Leaving the Station

“What part of me doing Science Olympiads makes you thinkIwas cool?”

“Of course you were cool.” He said it with a bone-deepcertainty. “You’re so chill; you have all these other friends. You’re just... You’re awesome, Zoe.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re cool too.”

I wanted to launch myself into an apple tree.

I’d been having fun. We were jumping. Jumping was fun.

This conversation was not fun.

This was how it went. One moment, we were hanging out, and the next, he would say something slightly terrible, and I’d be reminded that he was my boyfriend, and that he saw me as his girlfriend.

He grabbed my hand, which was too sweaty for the crisp day, and laced his fingers in mine.

A couple walked past us, and the guy nodded to Alden, while the girl gave me a tight smile. They were holding hands too, but neither of them seemed to be on the verge of a panic attack.

They looked like an archetypal straight couple.

What did Alden and I look like?

There were queer people in relationships that appeared straight to the outside world, of course, but those happened with the knowledge of all participants.

I owed Alden more than I was giving him. I knew it then, and I know it now.

With my hand in his, Alden pulled me close, and I let him. His scent—sour and strong—mixed with the smell of rotting apples around us.

I leaned away, but he kept a tight grip on my waist and pushed my hair behind my ears, even though it was already back in a ponytail.

“I’m falling for you, Zoe Tauber.” It was one of his romantic statements. He said it in a way where I knew he had a vision of how cinematic it would sound.

I wanted my life to seem majestic and grand and thrilling too. And maybe it did, to an outside observer.

But I was too close.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he added when I hadn’t. “But I thought you should know.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling silly.

A group of boys a few years younger than us ran past, and I had a strong desire to run with them, like a domesticated horse who spots a herd of wild ones in the distance and feels a primal pull.

That was how I wanted Alden to see me—like another guy.

The moment I thought it, I knew it was true. It was the only true thing in the entire world.

He was falling for me, and I was falling for the way he looked, the way he acted.

For the body he inhabited.

But if I told him this, if I was somehow able to articulate the mess of thoughts in my head, we’d have to break up. And if we broke up, we couldn’t keep hanging out.

Maybe the good of dating Alden outweighed the bad. And the good was so good: card games late into the night, pressed flowers in a dark room, jumping like fools in an apple orchard across the country from the only home I’d ever known.

So I took the path of least resistance: I squeezed his hand, andhe did the same in return. We were trying to convey entirely different messages with that simple gesture.

Tuesday, 10:00 p.m., Approaching the Twin Cities, MN

“Folks, we’ll have a thirty-minute smoke break in St. Paul,” the conductor announces. “That’s right, thirty whoooole minutes. I don’t care what you do—get drunk, get high, skinny-dip in the Mississippi River—as long as you’re back on the train at half past.”