Love and Other Train Wrecks

by Leah Konen

  “We have to get the bus,” I say. “That’s what we came back for anyway. It’s no different than if the train had still been here, not moving. That was our plan. We can still catch the four.”

  “It is different,” she says. “Because if you hadn’t had your stupid idea, we’d be going exactly where we need to go right now.”

  In a flash, I see Rina, wonder what she’s doing tonight. Wonder if I even stand a chance anyway. If she’ll love my story or think it’s too little, too late.

  When I don’t say anything right away, Ammy reaches for her suitcase, grabs it, and starts walking, whipping it over the desolate steel tracks. I make sure there’s no train barreling down the tracks and follow. “Ammy,” I say. “Come on. We’re in this together.”

  She turns. “In this together? I’m only in this because you completely misled me!” Her voice falters for a second, but she seems to call the anger back.

  “You don’t even know where you’re going,” I protest.

  “I can use maps just as well as you,” she says bitterly, without looking back. “Probably a kajillion times better, actually. Because anyone who has a brain knows that the train was going north, so if we came out of the back of the train and took a right, obviously we’d be going the wrong way.”

  Her words hurt. She’s right. It’s so clear, I should have known. I run ahead, turn, and stop her before the next patch of trees.

  “So why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.

  She sighs. “Because I didn’t know where in the world we were going! I didn’t know we were supposed to go away from the river.”

  “I got confused by the map,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever,” she says. “Just move.” She’s so much taller than Rina is. I have almost a foot on Rina, but only a few inches on her. We’re practically eye to eye, and hers are puffy and tired. Outwardly, she’s angry, with her clenched fists and her deliberate walk and her raised voice. But when I look at her big brown eyes, all I see is hurt and disappointment.

  And something else . . . fear?

  She doesn’t know how this is going to turn out, and it’s not only because we missed the train. I’d bet everything on it.

  The eyes are a window to the soul, that’s what the overly used proverb says, but I’ve always preferred Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s version: “Her eyes are homes of silent prayer.”

  Never has the line been so apt as it is now, I think as I look at Ammy.

  I put my hands on her shoulders. “I messed up,” I say. “And I get it. I’m so sorry. I was only trying to help.” I feel her shoulders relax the tiniest bit, and her eyes flit briefly to the ground. I drop my arms to my sides. “I thought it would work. I thought we’d beat everyone else to Hudson. I wouldn’t have asked you to come with me if I didn’t.”

  She shrugs away from my grasp, but she doesn’t say anything.

  All I want in the whole world is to get Rina back. That’s why I’m here. But I want to help Ammy along the way. I do. And it’s not just because of karma. It’s because she’s the kind of person who seems like she would never ask for help. And that’s always the kind of person who’s most likely to need it. I know that because I’m that way, too.

  “We’re in this together now, and it’s not a good idea for us to split up.” I venture a small smile. “We’re not in a bad horror movie.”

  She lets out the smallest of laughs.

  My smile grows wider.

  She stifles her laugh quickly. “I’m still mad at you,” she says.

  I shrug and reach for her suitcase, determined to make the four o’clock bus if it kills me.

  Surprisingly, she lets me.

  AMMY

  3:43 P.M.

  WE WALK STEADILY, NOAH LEADING THE WAY. WE must be going the right way this time, because I have service, even if it’s spotty, and I can actually see a bus station on the map and our little blue dot moving toward it. Not to mention, we’re walking east—you know, away from the river. Which is just basic logic, and I know he knows I’m right on that one. I felt bad seeing how hurt and embarrassed he was when I called him out on it, but still.

  The woods are sparser on this side, and Noah moves faster, his long legs stretching out in front of him, like he’s on a mission—which he is, I guess. I have to walk pretty fast to keep up, but I’m okay with it, because time isn’t exactly on our side right now.

  He doesn’t say anything, and for that I’m grateful. Because he’s the kind of person you could totally find yourself opening up to, telling all your secrets if you’re not careful. It’s his stupid eyes. A sweet little animal’s eyes on a big bro-y guy. All round and I only want to help you kind of eyes, the ones that crease at the corners and practically invite you in. It’s downright unnerving.

  And I don’t want to tell him everything. Because I know what happens when I start talking about my parents. People pity me, at least people who aren’t Dara and Simone. It’s humiliating.

  And then I inevitably cry. Which is even worse.

  And I’m not the kind of girl who goes crying to the big strong guy when shit goes wrong.

  I steal a glance at my suitcase, which Noah pulls swiftly behind him.

  At least I’m really trying not to be.

  I feel a buzz in my pocket, and I realize I haven’t given Kat the updates since I told her I’d be on time. I pull out my phone. There are two messages.

  I look at my mom’s first.

  I never meant for it to turn out this way

  I don’t say anything back, then open Kat’s, a weight already sitting in my stomach. I hate to disappoint her.

  Arriving soon?

  I text back right away.

  No, back to being late. Crazy storm.We left the train and now we’re headed to the bus.

  Umm, girl, who is we ;)

  No one. He has a girlfriend, anyway.

  Which is kind of a lie, but it also kind of isn’t.

  So is there any way you’re going to make it for the ceremony? I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeed you

  Doing my best

  Ok keep me posted, pleeeeeaaaaaaaassseeee make it!!!

  P.S. Mom is freaking out about her dress but if you need a ride I’ll try to steal away

  OK, will keep you posted

  Peace, sis

  The word hits me right in the heart, and I feel this tug, like a magnet drawing me up to that stupid farmhouse and my stupid new family.

  When I came back to Virginia after my trip here last summer, Mom insisted that I go through every single detail of every single moment, and I found myself pretending that it had been just horrible, even though it wasn’t. Because I was Team Mom.

  And I still am, I tell myself.

  It’s only that Team Dad just feels so much easier sometimes.

  Especially when it makes me a sister, even if I’m a fake one.

  Noah turns to me then, so quickly that I almost run right into him, and for a second our faces are only inches apart. I remedy that right away, taking three quick steps back.

  “Everything okay?” he asks.

  I nod, shifting my weight from foot to foot. Realizing for the first time that after walking more than point nine miles, twice, in inch after inch of snow, my shoes are damp.

  There’s protection in here, with the trees as cover, but all it takes is one look up to see that the snow isn’t thinking about stopping anytime soon.

  “Well, good,” he says, though he doesn’t seem to quite believe me. “Because I’m pretty sure we’ve reached civilization.” He smiles, like God’s just sent us down manna from heaven. Or one of those parachute packages from the Hunger Games movie. (Yes, I watched the movies, and they were just okay.)

  He takes a few quick steps ahead, and I follow him out into an open field.

  And there it is.

  “A road!” I say. “Actual freaking asphalt.” I run up to it, leaping onto it. It’s slushy and gross from where cars have driven past, and jumping in it makes my shoes even damper, but I don
’t care one bit. The yellow line that cuts it in half is like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

  “God,” Noah says behind me. “Get out of the road. It’s a blind curve.”

  I step back, and I turn to look at him. “Sorry,” I say.

  He just shakes his head.

  He’s one of those people who’s always looking out for others, who’s always worrying about stuff. How does he even know I wasn’t looking? (I wasn’t.)

  Still, something about it is nice.

  He looks back and forth and then crosses, and I follow him. We walk along the shoulder for about fifty feet or so, and then we turn onto a smaller road.

  With a sidewalk. And a 7-freaking-Eleven. Praise the Lord. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see one of those, the green-and-orange sign, the dingy glass like a beacon guiding the way.

  Noah follows my eyes. “What, do they not have 7-Elevens in Roanoke?” he asks. “You look like you’ve just seen the face of God.”

  I laugh. “Right now, it might as well be.”

  And then I try not to think about how he remembered not just where I’m from but the exact name of my city, which I mentioned when we first started walking. I try not to think about how, for some reason, that makes me happy.

  “Fancy a corn dog?” he asks.

  I shake my head vehemently. “I don’t want to do anything to risk us not getting on that bus.”

  “I know,” he says. “I kid. I kid.” He swerves my suitcase past a pile of trash bags on the sidewalk. “Who knows, maybe we’ll laugh about this one day? That’s what people always say, isn’t it?”

  I raise an eyebrow, reach out my hand to take my suitcase back now that the road is smoother, now that we have a magical thing called cement sidewalks, but he shoos my hand away.

  “I’ll hold the laughter until I’m on that bus, thanks,” I say.

  “Fair,” he says. There’s a liquor store awning above us and it gives us a brief, welcome break from the snowfall. “But don’t tell me you won’t log this one away to tell Ammy Jr. That time you wandered out into the snow with a stranger, got lost, nearly got shot by some guy in the country, and still found your way home. It’s almost romantic, like an old movie or something. . . .” His voice trails off as we cross the street.

  And I think about what I thought going onto the train. How it would be romantic.

  In a weird way, I guess it is.

  Noah is a total romantic, I realize. I mean, I knew he was sappy—hello, cheesy flowers—but this is a different kind of romance. The desire for the world to be magical all around you. Not everyone’s like that.

  My mom’s always been that way. Half the time I think it’s what makes her life so difficult, her anxiety so bad.

  Because she could never be happy with the actual world she had. She never really wanted it until after she lost it.

  “Come on,” he says, not letting the subject drop. “You’ve got to agree.”

  I look to the right, and I see hints of a cute main drag, the kinds of things you’d imagine in a small town in the Northeast. Brick storefronts. Vintage signage. A movie theater that looks like it’s been turned into some kind of bar or music venue.

  He’s right (though I won’t tell him that). And for a second, I can’t help it. I think of the way his hands felt on my shoulders, the way his hazel eyes caught mine as he steadied me, trying to calm me down, the way I was close enough to see a smattering of freckles on his eyelids, cracked skin at the edges of his pale lips. The way the fleece hat sat lopsided on his head, revealing only a tiny bit of his face behind bundles of Gore-Tex and nylon.

  Stop it, I think, cursing myself for thinking of him that way at all. The cold must really be getting to my head.

  But I can’t help it—I think of that movie, the one my mom loved to watch with me: It Happened One Night. This thirties film by Frank Capra about this rich heiress who is fleeing a bad marriage or something and meets this guy on a bus, and the bus breaks down, and they set off together, and then—well—you can imagine the rest.

  But that’s all beside the point, because romance is off-limits.

  Dara and Simone and everyone else might think I’m crazy, but I am not about to go there.

  I’m not going to be like my mom. With the obsessive questions, the insistence that I tell her everything about my dad’s new life. The absolute refusal to let him go. The way she still has pictures of the two of them strewn around the house, even though her new passion is telling me round the clock just how much she hates him.

  The yelling at me when I suggest ever so subtly that maybe she should talk about something else for a while, when her anxiety gets the best of her.

  It’s not her fault that she is the way she is sometimes. But it doesn’t make it any easier for me. It doesn’t change the fact that I wish sometimes she could just be more of a mom.

  But the thing is, I’m not going to be like my dad, either. Telling myself that love conquers all like a freaking twelve-year-old.

  Because everything’s been a mess since my dad “fell in love” with Sophie.

  He lost his marriage.

  My mom lost her mind.

  And I, well, I lost them both.

  Noah’s words about this being all romantic are hanging in the air, and so I make sure to shut them down. “It’s actually more like a Lifetime movie,” I shoot back, even though it’s been too long for the joke to really stick. I force a laugh. “You know, where a guy takes advantage of a nice girl and leads her off into her eventual demise. . . .”

  He smiles and stops at the next crosswalk, waiting for a car to pass. There’s that lopsided grin again. He’s gotta be the only person in the world who could make waterproof Gore-Tex fabric look good.

  “We’re almost there,” he says. “Are you still going to sit with me, or have you grown altogether weary of my presence?”

  I keep my eyes locked ahead, waiting for our walk sign. “Again, all discussion will happen once we are on the bus and safe.” I steal a look to the side, and he looks a little hurt, like he thinks I’m serious. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I won’t leave you alone on the bus.”

  “Phew,” he says dramatically, as the light turns and we cross. “I was worried. Especially since my Kindle is dead.” He winks. He’s such a nerd—a bro nerd, but a nerd all the same.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Three forty-nine,” he says. “Plenty of time. We’re only a couple of blocks away.”

  “Do we have to get tickets?” I ask.

  Noah nods, maneuvering my suitcase safely over a patch of ice on the sidewalk. “Don’t worry. I’ll get yours. I owe you, after all.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t asking. . . .”

  He turns to me and smiles, and the snowflakes on his eyelashes glisten in the winter sun. “I wasn’t asking, either.”

  And I roll my eyes—because you have to roll your eyes at something like that.

  But inside, I’m smiling. Just a little.

  NOAH

  3:50 P.M.

  I’VE NEVER FELT THIS WAY ABOUT AN EYE ROLL before, but for some reason, it’s amazing. It’s like she puts me in my place but makes me feel all warm inside at once. It’s something about the way she does it. Like she’s making fun of me but is somehow on my team all the same.

  God, I need to stop analyzing eye rolls.

  Rina, I remind myself. Rina, Rina, Rina.

  When Rina disagreed with me, it never felt like we were on the same team.

  But that’s because they were bigger disagreements. I wasn’t ready to be the guy she needed. Not then.

  But I am now.

  Hell, I just trekked through miles of wilderness with a stranger. I dare her to tell me I can never just go.

  I check my phone again. “That’s it,” I say. “Up ahead there. That sign.”

  “Time check?” Ammy asks.

  “Three fifty-one. We’re good.”

  A snowflake lands on her lips, and she presses
them together, like she can taste it.

  She smiles, and I notice for the first time that her mouth is quite small, her lips not thin but not thick, either. She’s got the kind of mouth that some idiot doctor in Beverly Hills would suggest plumping up with collagen injections. The kind of mouth that’s perfect the way it is.

  I turn away.

  There’s a brick building up ahead, past a stretch of crappy delis and gas stations, with a tall sign that’s cracked and blank from this side. It says Hudson Bus Lines on the other, I’m sure of it.

  We’re almost there.

  A car whips by, going too fast for this weather, leaving tracks in the icy snow. It’s one of the few vehicles on the road. People, normal people, the kind who don’t decide to travel up to Hudson to make a grand gesture in the middle of a huge-ass winter storm, are inside now. They’re with their families, watching The Twilight Zone on Netflix. Breaking their New Year’s resolutions. Trying to figure out if anyone will deliver pizza in this weather.

  I wonder what Rina is doing right now. I imagine her up in her room, on the wrought-iron bed that looked like it belonged to a Victorian princess. God, that bed creaked awfully. Made it exceedingly difficult to fool around.

  Is she reading? She certainly wouldn’t be one to touch Murakami, more like a book of monologues. Rina wants to be an actress, and she’s got it, the presence, the expressions, that way she has of making her voice carry.

  Is she looking up acting programs, deciding where she wants to go next year?

  Or is she relaxing? Taking one of her super-long naps? I think about that last week together at Lake George, right after graduation; sometimes I’d come in from the beach and she’d just be conked out in bed in the middle of the day. In the sun leaking in through the windows, it was all there right in front of me. All of her. The minuscule scar on her chin from where she fell into a coffee table when she was little. The bud of a pimple from slathering on sunscreen every day. The way her eyelashes looked more blonde than black when she wasn’t wearing mascara.

  The way her face when she slept looked downright angelic.

  Bryson told me she wasn’t good for me early on. I’d taken us a back way to the movie theater, because I thought it would be faster. We got there late, no seats left but the very front row. Rina huffed and sighed through one and a half hours of superhero action.