A Penny on the Tracks
Alicia Joseph
© 2017 Alicia Joseph
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
978-1-945805-32-5 paperback
Cover Design
by
Bink Books YA
a division of
Bedazzled Ink Publishing, LLC
Fairfield, California
http://www.bedazzledink.com
“When a train runs over a penny, the penny changes form, but it can still be a penny if I want it to be. Or, I can make it be something else.”
Lyssa and her best friend Abbey discover a hideout near the train tracks and spend the summer before sixth grade hanging out and finding freedom from issues at home. Their childhood innocence shatters when the hideout becomes the scene of a tragic death.
As they're about to graduate from high school, Abbey's family life spirals out of control while Lyssa is feeling guilty for deceiving Abbey about her sexuality. After another tragic loss, Lyssa finds out that a penny on the track is sometimes a huge price to pay for the truth.
To Rosa, thanks for the childhood memories.
They’ll live forever in my heart.
To Laurie, thanks for making this book better than it was.
To Tony, thanks for always encouraging me and for never letting me give up on my writing.
To my family, thank you for your endless support.
Prologue
1993
I JERKED FROM my sleep while the phone was still buzzing its first high-piercing ring. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It read 4:17 a.m. I knew something was wrong.
The second ring was abruptly broken up, and my mother’s muffled voice carried into my room. I was already sitting upright in my bed when my bedroom door squeaked open, and my mother’s slight figure appeared as a shadow near my door.
“Lyssa? You up?” she asked.
“What’s wrong?” My voice was no louder than a whisper.
My mother made her way into the dark room. I couldn’t make out the expression on her face, but her movement was stiff and hesitant.
She turned on the lamp and sat down beside me. Her face was pale and she let out short, shallow breaths. It seemed difficult for her to look me in the eyes.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”
My mother looked at me with pain in her eyes. “Lyssa . . .” She smoothed her hand gently across my arm. “Abbey’s dead.”
I took in her words without an ounce of denial. The reality of what my mother had told me was instant.
My best friend was dead.
TWO DAYS LATER, I was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, when my mother walked into the room in her nurse’s uniform, a piece of paper snug between her fingers.
“This was stuck inside the screen door when I got home. Looks like the mailman tried to deliver a package, but it needed a signature. Did you hear the bell?”
I slowly lifted a spoonful of Frosted Flakes into my mouth and shook my head.
“Were you sleeping when he came?” she asked.
I looked at my mother and noticed the deep concern in her eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Have you eaten anything besides cereal today?”
“I don’t feel like eating anything at all, but at least I can eat a little bit of this.”
My mom slid into the chair next to me and put her hands over my arms. “Oh, honey. I don’t even know what to say to you anymore.”
“What can be said that would change a thing?”
“I was going to visit Abbey’s mom today. I don’t know if she’s in any condition to understand what’s happened. Mrs. Kasper told me they’re going to start electric shocks on her. That’s how bad she is.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for her?” I dropped my spoon into the bowl and spots of milk spilled onto my fingers. I wiped my hands across my gray sweatpants with my high school logo stitched along the sides of the legging—the ones I always wore for P.E class.
Just two weeks ago, Abbey and I were standing in the school gymnasium, waiting to be picked for a dodge ball game.
And now she was dead.
My mother squeezed my hand. “I know she wasn’t always the greatest mom to Abbey, but mothers, we do our best. She just lost her only child. I don’t know what I would do, how I would live if something ever happened to you.”
“It’s different with you, Mom. You’re not insane,” I said. “That crazy woman will never know the difference.”
“She’s not crazy, just sick.”
“She’s a fuckin’ lunatic.”
“We’re waiting on Abbey’s father to decide on when the service will be.”
“Fuck that cocksucker, too!” I shoved the bowl away from me, spilling a puddle of milk and cereal in the middle of the table. I moved to get up but my mother held me by the shoulders.
“Please, the mouth.” My mother dropped her hands from me, but didn’t move her eyes from mine. “I understand how you’re feeling. I really do. You have so many emotions running through you right now. All of them are valid. Aside from losing a parent, I don’t think anything makes a person grow up faster than losing your best friend when you’re eighteen years old. You must feel your entire childhood’s been ripped from you. It’s especially hard with Abbey because I know every single one of your childhood memories has her in it.”
I covered my hands over my face and sobbed. My mother draped her arms around my shoulders and held me tight. “You’ll get through this. You have too much life ahead of you not to.”
I didn’t want to cry anymore, but I didn’t know how to stop. I wiped my eyes and face. I turned my attention away from myself and motioned toward the piece of paper my mother was still clutching in her hand. “What needs to be picked up?”
She looked at the note as though she had forgotten it was still in her hand. “Oh, this. It doesn’t say what it is. I have to go over there. If you’re gonna be okay for a little bit, I’m gonna change and head out to the post office before they close.”
“I’ll go,” I quickly said.
She looked at me, surprised. “Are you okay to go?”
“I need to get out, even if it’s just for a little bit.”
She kissed me on my forehead. “Okay.”
I WALKED INTO the post office, note slip in hand, and was stopped by three girls huddled around an open newspaper with Abbey’s face on the front page. My best friend’s death was headline news.
A girl with a long blonde ponytail stood in the middle of the group. “She was killed by a train. She jumped right in front of it,” the girl said.
“How do you know she jumped in front of it?” a chubby girl asked.
“Because, stupid,” the first girl replied. “How else are you gonna get hit by a train if it doesn’t skid off the tracks?”
“She could have already been standing on the tracks, waiting for it to come by,” the chubby girl said.
“Either way, she let herself get run over by a train,” the blonde responded.
The third friend, the tallest of the three, pushed her dark-framed glasses high on her nose. “That’s horrible. I wonder why she did it.”
“I wonder what she looked like after. Probably all bloody and body parts missing I’m sure,” the blonde said.
“Heather!” the chubby girl yelled. “That’s so gross!”
“Yeah, that’s really bad, Heather,” the other girl said, and her glasses slid down her nose. “She was probably really sad, and that’s why she did it.”
&nbs
p; The blonde girl let out a heavy sigh. “I’ve been sad lots of times, but I never thought about jumping in front of a train, or,” she glanced at her chubby friend, “standing on the tracks waiting for a train to run me over. That’s insane.”
The girl with the glasses glanced in my direction, and I watched her eyes widen as they landed on me. She quickly put her head down and whispered something to her friends.
Within seconds, three pairs of eyes were gaping through me as I stood, unmoving, in the doorway. Though I didn’t know the girls’ names, I recognized their faces. From their reaction, I could tell they knew Abbey was my friend.
I had avoided thinking about the very thing the three teenagers were talking about. I had fought the urge to imagine what the last moments of Abbey’s life were like.
I couldn’t do it with Derek, and I certainly couldn’t fathom it with Abbey.
But now, thanks to those girls, the image was in my head. My best friend’s death was afternoon gossip told with a casually entertaining tone that made me ill. I wanted to punch the blonde-haired girl in the face and body-slam her to the ground, but I couldn’t move.
The reality that it was Abbey’s death, my Abbey’s death, the girls were describing still stunned me.
It wasn’t until the bell on the door rang as another person entered that I came back to life. I stepped out of the way and looked again at the girls. The only one looking back at me was the girl with the long blonde ponytail. She held a tiny smirk across her face while showing no embarrassment or regret that I had overheard their insensitive conversation about my best friend. Her friends, who couldn’t bear to look at me anymore, seemed to have felt some discomfort, some shame. The ponytail girl seemed to be daring me to have a problem with what she said, but I didn’t have any fight in me.
I turned and walked out the door, its bell ringing hollowly.
The package, whatever it was, would have to wait.
I SAT ON my couch, looking out the window. A handmade decorative pillow, given to my mother by an old neighbor I’d despised while growing up, tucked tightly against my chest.
I gazed out to the streets that, for a long time, Abbey and I believed to be our own. I closed my eyes and imagined us riding around the streets we knew so well, with the freedom to go as far as our legs could take us. Those days didn’t seem so long ago.
Across the room, my mother talked to me despite my not giving her any indication I was listening.
“They found Abbey at the same place where that teenage boy died years back. Do you remember? Way out back by the tracks. Why would she think to go there? Do you know the place I’m talking about, such an isolated spot?”
I knew the place well and so had Abbey. It was our Hideout. But my mother didn’t know that because I never told her. It was Abbey’s and my secret.
“I remember at the time a couple of the other nurses at the hospital telling me they recognized the boy,” my mother continued. “They’d seen him around the neighborhood.” She paused. “But he didn’t look familiar to me. Did you know the boy I’m talking about? He would have been a few years older than you.”
I had known the boy well, and so had Abbey. His name was Derek, but I never told my mom I knew him, not even at the time of his death when his body ended up in her ER. I never said a word. The memories of Derek and our Hideout had, for a long time, been left for Abbey and me.
But now those memories were left only for me.
And I wasn’t ever going to let them go.
Chapter One
1986
WHEN I OPENED my eyes I knew it was too early to wake up for the day. The space around me was mostly dark, only a faint burn of the dawn’s early rays slipped through the slit of my bedroom shades.
I closed my eyes, rolled over onto my side, and tugged the sheets tightly across my shoulders and over my ears. I let out a satisfied groan as my tired body relaxed into the cozy bed, ready to fall back into a deep sleep, until, suddenly, a loud crash echoed throughout the small house.
I lifted my head weakly from the pillow as my mother’s murmured curse words under her breath resonated throughout the quiet house. I pushed myself out of bed and walked down the short hallway leading to the kitchen.
There, I saw my mother on her hands and knees, wiping up remnants of a broken coffee mug with a wet rag. She was dressed in her white nurse’s uniform.
“Shit! I’m gonna be so goddamn late,” she muttered to herself.
“I can clean it,” I said, stifling a yawn.
She spun around and let out a deep sigh when she saw me. “I’m sorry I woke you, hun. Damn cup slipped right out my hand.” She stood up while holding the rag with the shattered pieces carefully in her hand. “I think I got it all, just check the floor again later. I don’t want you cutting your foot.”
“Okay.”
She smiled at me and then turned and walked to the garbage. She tossed the towel into the bin. Her long dark hair, pulled up into a thick bun, sat on top of her head. I had the youngest mom of all the kids my age, but when she wore her hair up like that, she looked even younger than her twenty-seven years.
I had my mother’s pale white skin and her full hair, though mine was a light shade of brown. I didn’t much care for the pastel look, but was glad for the hair.
“What are you gonna do today?” she asked.
“Hang out with Abbey, I guess.”
My mother glanced anxiously at her watch. She needed to leave, but I knew she hated saying goodbye to me. “Be good. And no riding in the street.”
“We don’t ride in the street.”
She lowered her gaze at me and when she repeated in her no-nonsense tone, “No riding in the street,” I knew the old lady next door had ratted me out. “I have to go.” My mom kissed me on my forehead. “I’ll call you on my break. Love you.”
I BALANCED THE weight of my body on my back foot and dug the heel of my high-top sneakers deep into the thick gravel. I wound my arm like a major league pitcher, and with all my strength, I launched a rock, almost the size of my head, at a passing train. The rock landed against the moving steel, and the cargo it carried, with a loud thud.
“Damn it!” I slapped my hand against my thigh. “I wanted to smash the glass.”
I quickly turned to search the brush for a rock as good as the one I’d just wasted a terrible throw on and noticed Abbey was still holding her own rocks tightly in her hands.
“How come you didn’t throw yours yet? Throw ’em before the train’s gone.” I turned to continue my hunt, then looked back at her. “And aim for the windshield.”
“I can’t,” Abbey said.
“Then aim for whatever you want.”
“No, I mean I can’t throw it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t,” she insisted.
“Just do it!” I yelled.
“But I don’t want to!”
I peeked down the tracks, checking if the train was near the end. It wasn’t. We still had time, but not much. “Hurry up and throw it!”
Abbey hesitated while gripping a medium-sized rock in each hand. She took a couple steps closer to the passing train and chucked the rocks, one at time, at the cars mounted onto the train.
I cheered loudly after one of the rocks hit its target with a loud crash. “Did you hear that?”
I looked down the track again, but this time, I could see the caboose. The train was coming to an end. “Come on! Let’s hide in the woods so no one sees us.”
We squatted near the edge of the grass, just inside the woods, behind a thick tree trunk.
“That was a bad idea,” Abbey said. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
I laughed and told her to shut up. “It was fun.”
Once the train passed, we popped out of the woods and watched it disappear down the tracks.
“How come you always make us hide at the end?” Abbey asked.
“In case someone’s in the caboose and—”
“Unloads a
salt gun on your asses,” a voice behind us finished.
I turned around and saw Derek standing near the brush, a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips. His faded blue jeans were torn at the knees and a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt, underneath a worn jean jacket, tugged against his lean waist.
“Don’t even get her started,” I warned. “No one’s gonna unload a salt gun on our asses. They don’t even have a salt gun.”
“Then why do we run?” Abbey asked.
“Like I was saying before I was interrupted.” I paused and gave Derek a hard look. “In case someone’s in the caboose and gets a good look at us.”
“A good enough look to shoot your asses full of salt, you mean.” Derek smirked at me.
“See!” Abbey threw her arms in the air. “It’s true! That guy really does have a salt gun, doesn’t he, Derek?”
Derek pushed a strand of his long tangled brown hair away from his eyes and sat atop a large rock. He leaned his elbows against his knees, his skinny body crouching forward. “It’s what I heard. But keep it up and soon you’ll know for yourself.”
“Shut your trap, Derek.” I pointed my finger at him.
Abbey shook her head. “I’m not doing this anymore.”
“Don’t listen to him. Does he look like he knows anything?” I argued.
“Then don’t listen to me.” Derek took a long drag off his cigarette and let out a deep exhale of smoke. Off to the side, near his feet, a dirty black-and-white bandanna lay in a twisted mess across the gravel. I recognized it as one that Derek used to wear. The old bandana must have slipped from his back pocket one day and he never bothered to pick it up. “Get hit with rock salt and feel the burn when that shit tears into your flesh.”
“Shut up!” I rushed at him, but he dodged my efforts to grab him.
“That’s it,” Abbey said, determined. “We are definitely not doing this again.”
Derek flicked his cigarette in the direction of the tracks.
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