Page 64 of Leaving the Station

The only place I felt like going during the day was the greenhouse. If Randall suspected something was wrong, he didn’t show it. He’d greet me with a kind smile and give me updates on the plants and what needed tending. I tried not to think too much about how this was a position for student workers only. That if I stopped going to class entirely and someone figured it out, I couldn’t keep coming here.

I spent most of my time with theAmorphophallus, though it looked no different than it had a few weeks earlier. Still, I watched over it as if the simple act of my observation could make it flower.

Being in the greenhouse was a tactile experience; it was the only thing in my life that felt real. When Randall wasn’t looking, I whispered comforting words to the plant or touched it gently.

“Take all the time you need,” I told it. “I believe in you.”

They were words I could’ve stood to hear.

At that point, I was back to seeing Alden only at night, though it was by my choice, not his. The roles were reversed—he wanted to spend time with me in the daylight, and I couldn’t handle it.

The autumn sun felt like a thousand surgical lamps that illuminated the parts of myself that I could no longer stand.

If I wasn’t with him, though, I had to be alone with my thoughts. So, going to his dorm felt like the path of least resistance, like water carving and shaping millions of years’ worth of rock to form a canyon.

“Hi,” Alden said one night, legs splayed out on his bed.

“Hi,” I said. I could barely look him in the eyes anymore.

It was 1:54 in the morning, six minutes before the first of two repeating hours. We were about to enter Daylight Saving Time.

He had a deck of cards in his palm, though after a minute he put it down.

But I wanted him distracted, so I said, “Let’s play.”

He shuffled, and I closed my eyes to listen. I loved the crisp sounds of cards sliding past each other, swapping places and then neatly realigning.

When the shuffling stopped, he laughed a little, breathing sharply out of his nose. “Are you awake?”

I opened my eyes, and Alden was smiling, his face soft. He onlybrought out his playing cards when he wanted totalk.

“Deal the cards,” I told him. I didn’t want to talk.

He dealt us each ten cards, which meant we were playing gin rummy. I’d never once beat him, which used to feel like a joke between us but was now another reminder of the ways I couldn’t compare to him.

Alden’s watch beeped.

“Happy two a.m. number one,” he said.

“Happy two a.m. number one,” I repeated.

The cards lay untouched in front of us.

“Hey,” he said, an unfinished thought.

“You go first,” I told him quickly, motioning to the cards.

Our conversations used to flow smoothly, but since my haircut, that had changed.

“The person who didn’t deal goes first,” he said.

I pulled the ten of diamonds off the discard pile. I didn’t need a ten of diamonds, but I absorbed it into my hand. It felt better to make an active choice rather than take my chances with the next random card off the top of the deck.

It was his turn, then, and he was beautiful, sitting there with his cards. My hair was now shorter than his, though it was hardly a competition as he hadn’t gotten a haircut yet this semester. His bangs were long enough to tie back in a bun; he probably would’ve let me braid them if I’d asked politely.

After about ten minutes, Alden said, “Gin,” and the game was over. We played three more rounds, and I lost them all.

“Good game.”