Last Train Home

by Megan Nugen Isbell

  “Oh, you’re right,” I began, not bothering to introduce myself as she’d requested. “I don’t know how I missed you with that rat’s nest you’ve got going on on your head,” I said sarcastically and she gasped and stared at me with an expression I could only describe as flabbergasted.

  “What’d you say?” she sneered at me through squinty eyes.

  “Ya know, I’ve got an excellent deep conditioner and a flat-iron that might help with that…situation you’ve got going on,” I said, gesturing to her hair.

  An eerie silence settled between us and the air was suddenly heavy, as if we were standing on the surface of Venus. I never broke my stare and she never broke hers. It was like a scene from a movie, totally overdramatic and unnecessary.

  “You just made a big mistake,” she threatened and flung her hair as she and her groupies continued down the hall. I watched as the crowds seemed to part for her. I guessed it was more out of fear than admiration. She had completely broken the stereotype that Midwesterners were nice. That girl was an outright bitch.

  “I see you met Adrienne.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Adrienne Bennett and her disciples Dana Daley and Kristen Roberts.”

  I turned around to see a friendly face, the complete opposite of what I had just encountered. She was short and cute with light brown hair that was cut into a stylish bob. Wispy bangs draped her forehead and she reached up and brushed them out of her eyes.

  “I’m Holly.”

  “Hi,” I said as I continued to watch Adrienne and her cronies.

  “Don’t worry about her. She’s a bitch and no one likes her, even though she thinks everyone adores her.”

  “Yeah, that was kinda the impression I got,” I said, turning my attention back to Holly.

  “You’re new here?”

  “I thought that was obvious.”

  “It was. I just didn’t want to assume.”

  “You would’ve assumed right. I’m Riley.”

  “And how did you find your way to Carver?” she asked and I could tell by her voice that she loved this town about as much as my cousin.

  “My mom grew up here and three weeks ago she just decided to up and move home,” I said, not bothering to tell her the whole story as I adjusted my back pack to my other shoulder.

  “And what do you think of our precious town?” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Let’s just say I miss Boston.”

  “Boston? Now I really feel sorry for you.”

  “Thanks for making me feel better,” I laughed and I knew Holly was cool. She might even be friend material.

  “Let me take a look at your schedule,” Holly said, reaching out towards me. I pulled the folded piece of paper from my pocket and handed it her.

  “We don’t have any classes together, but we can meet up at lunch if you want,” she said, handing it back to me.

  “Yeah, sounds good.”

  “Okay then. I’ll see you at lunch. I usually sit at the table closest to the back door.”

  I nodded and smiled as Holly walked away. I still hated it here, but at least she’d been nice, especially after the encounter with Adrienne. I pulled my cell phone out of my backpack and looked at the clock. The bell was about to ring, so I headed to my first period class. It wasn’t hard to find since the school was small with a population of maybe five hundred. There had been five hundred in my senior class alone in Boston.

  I walked into the half-full classroom and approached the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. All of the side conversations seemed to stop when I stepped inside and I could feel their eyes staring at me. The teacher, who according to my schedule was named Mr. Barry, was an old man with white hair and a bushy mustache worse than my Uncle Mike’s. He was wearing a tweed coat that looked older than I did. I would’ve bet anything that Mr. Barry had been teaching at Carver High forever and maybe even had my mom in one of his classes.

  He looked up from the newspaper he was reading and stared at me peculiarly.

  “Can I help you?” he asked with a raspy voice that exuded grumpiness.

  “I’m Riley Regas. I just transferred here,” I said quietly, handing him my schedule.

  He looked it over and then handed it back to me. He turned around and grabbed a textbook from the shelf behind his desk and pushed it towards me. I picked up the tattered book and tucked it under my arm and stared out to the sea of old desks. Everyone was looking at me curiously and I hesitated, not quite knowing where I should go.

  “There’s a seat over there,” Mr. Barry said, pointing a gnarled finger towards a seat in the corner in front a chubby boy with bad skin and greasy hair who looked up at me and smiled. I walked over and draped my backpack over the blue plastic chair before smiling back at the boy and sitting down. I tried to shrink away in my chair as the classroom began filling up and I was royally annoyed when I saw Adrienne walk in. She was flinging her hair again. It was a wonder her wrist didn’t break. She looked up and must’ve seen me watching her because she glared in my direction and then made her way to her seat in the middle of the classroom.

  The seats around me were soon filled too, first by another blonde girl. She was about the bazillionth blonde I’d seen since walking into the building and I was beginning to think they only produced blondes here, except for the few genetic freaks that had managed to sneak in, myself included. The whole place was so…white, it almost made me uncomfortable not to see a variety of skin tones. The blonde girl had eyed me as she sat in the seat beside me. She didn’t look mean, just surprised to see an unfamiliar face. My suspicions of the blonde majority continued to grow as yet another blonde sat behind the first one. She also looked at me curiously before cracking a weak smile. I was almost relieved when another pigmented person walked in. A cute boy with the dark brown hair walked over and sat in the seat behind the second blonde.

  The bell rang a minute later and Mr. Barry stood up and I was surprised when everyone actually stopped talking. I doubted these hicks actually took education seriously. I was certain they were just biding their time till they graduated and got a job at a gas station and married their cousin.

  I noticed Mr. Barry was looking in my direction and I began praying he wouldn’t introduce me. I always felt sorry for the new kids and the spotlight the teacher put on them their first day. This was only first period and I didn’t want to imagine having to introduce myself six times. I realized my prayers had gone unanswered though when Mr. Barry opened his mouth.

  “We have a new addition this morning,” he said with feigned enthusiasm. “Would you stand up and introduce yourself, Kiley.”

  Was he serious? Did he just call me Kiley? Now, not only would I have to introduce myself, but I’d have to correct his error too.

  I swear I felt a gust of wind blow past me from the movement of twenty heads all turning at the exact same moment. I could feel their eyes on me and I reluctantly stood up as my heart started pounding. My palms started to sweat and my throat was instantaneously parched when it had been fine a second before. I swallowed hard and was grateful when the moisture returned to my mouth.

  “I’m Riley Regas,” I said, looking out at my classmates, a sea of blondes…dark blondes, light blondes, platinum blondes and strawberry blondes. There were a few brunettes and even one redhead peppered throughout, but overall, the room reminded me of Children of the Damned.

  “And where are you joining us from, Miss Regas?” Mr. Barry asked.

  “I just moved here from Boston, well actually Newton, a suburb of Boston,” I said and I noticed my classmates looking at me with even more curiosity now, as if Boston was on the outer reaches of the solar system rather than on the East Coast. I looked briefly in Adrienne’s direction and she was smirking at me once again.

  “Boston?” Mr. Barry said, sounding suddenly interested. “Did you live there long?”

  “My whole life.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have a lot to share with us over the course of the
semester, seeing as how you grew up where so much of our young nation’s history took place.”

  I nodded and then sat down dreading the thought of having to give some kind of presentation on the Freedom Trail or something. I prayed I wouldn’t be Mr. Barry’s new class pet….that he wouldn’t somehow try to live vicariously through my Boston heritage since he had spent his whole life stuck in this hellhole of a town, where the only thing of historical significance was the tallest stock of wheat ever grown.

  ****

  The rest of the morning continued on exactly as first hour had, except my other teachers were a little more welcoming than Mr. Barry had been. They had seemed genuinely happy to have me in their class, or so I thought…perhaps they were just better at faking it. In one way they weren’t different from him though, because they all made me stand up and introduce myself while my classmates all stared up at me with the same glazed expressions. There were a few people who had more than one class with me and they seemed just as excited about hearing my introduction again as I was in giving it.

  When the bell rang after fourth period chemistry, I was ready for lunch. No one in my classes had been overly friendly to me. No one had jumped at the chance to hang with the new girl, so I was anxious to get to the cafeteria and find Holly, the one person who had actually been welcoming to me, and maybe David. He had to be nice to me. He had no choice.

  I went to my locker and put my books away before grabbing my lunch and walking to the cafeteria. When I stepped inside, I instantly noticed the terrible acoustics of the plain, rectangular room. The noise seemed to bounce around like an out of control rubber ball, creating a garbled mess of voices. The walls were white. The floors were white. Even the long tables were white. It was as drab as everything else in this town.

  I sighed as I stood in the doorway, accepting my fate. I began searching the room for either of the two familiar faces I knew in this place, and I was relieved when I saw Holly sitting with her friends across the room, just as she said she would be. We made eye contact and she waved me over.

  “Hey,” I said when I reached her.

  “Sit down.” Holly scooted over so there was room for me at the end of the table.

  I looked around and smiled at her friends. They looked at me awkwardly and then I saw their gazes shifting to Holly, obviously waiting for her to explain who this stranger was, and why she was sitting with them.

  “This is Riley,” she said, introducing me.

  “The one from New York, right?” another blonde girl said and she smiled enthusiastically at me, as if I was a museum exhibit.

  “Boston, actually,” I corrected her.

  “Boston…New York…same thing as far as I’m concerned,” she laughed and I was amused by her ignorance.

  “Were you in one of my classes?” I asked her and she shook her head. “Then how’d you know about me?”

  “I think everyone knows about you. No one ever transfers here, so it’s big news when someone does. You’re kinda like an instant celebrity,” she said, taking a big bite out of her apple.

  “That’s Mandy, by the way,” Holly said, pointing at the talkative girl who smiled and waved. I could tell just by the two minutes I’d known Mandy that she was the energetic one of the group. Everyone else seemed very laid back. “And this is Laura,” Holly said, gesturing to a fellow brunette, who’s curly hair was pulled up into a puffy ponytail. Laura smiled at me too and then began picking at her bag of Fritos. “And this is Brandon,” Holly said, motioning to the boy across the table from me. His hair was dark blonde, nearly brown, so I wasn’t sure I could count him in the blonde majority. I decided to put him on the dark side since we were definitely out numbered. Brandon nodded and half-waved at me. I opened my lunch bag and unwrapped my sandwich. I pieced at it as they all continued talking about stuff and people I had no idea about. I suddenly realized what it felt like to be the outsider, to have no friends, to not get the inside jokes. I wished I was back in the cafeteria of my old school in the company of my friends who knew everything about me. I wanted to be back where I fit in. I didn’t want to be in a place where I was just pretending and biding my time till I could get the hell out of Dodge.

  I pulled out my cell phone and flipped it open. I sent a text to my best friends, Natasha and Courtney, asking them what they were doing. I put the phone back in my pocket and waited for them to respond. I looked around and saw the dark haired boy that sat near me in my first period class, walking towards us.

  “Scoot over,” he said, pushing Brandon until there was room for him at the table. He sat down across from me and then looked up. He cocked his head to the side as if he was trying to place where he knew me. “Boston, right? First period Constitution?” I nodded and he held his hand out to me across the table. I reached out and shook it. “I’m Jesse Baylor.”

  “Riley Regas.”

  “I know. I got your bio in class,” he said, releasing my hand and opening up his Coke.

  “Yeah, that was kinda mortifying.”

  “You did fine. But Barry seemed pretty interested in you.”

  “I sensed that.”

  “He’s a history buff and as you probably figured out, Carver’s not the most interesting place.”

  “He’d just better not ask me to do a presentation or something.”

  “He probably will,” he said, smiling at me as he ran a hand through his thick brown hair and then turning back to the group.

  “We’re still coming to your place tomorrow night, right?” Laura asked. Jesse nodded and looked over to me.

  “You should come too, Boston.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Jesse’s birthday,” Laura told me.

  “Really?” I asked, looking over to Jesse and he nodded.

  “We’re just hanging out at my place, riding four-wheelers and stuff.” I thought I felt my face curl up in uncertainty and then he laughed. “What? You didn’t ride four-wheelers in the country back in Boston?”

  “Uh…no. Can’t say we ever did that.”

  “Then you’ve been missing out. The invitation’s open if you wanna try.”

  “Sure. I’ll give it a try,” I said, thinking I had nothing better to do, unless I wanted to spend the night doing a jig-saw puzzle with my grandmother, since I was still technically ignoring my mom. I jumped as I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out and read a text from Natasha. Her school day was almost over and she gushed about how much it had sucked since I’d left, leaving her to deal with our overly clingy friend Courtney. I started laughing and texted back how much I missed them too, but that some of the hicks were actually being fairly decent to me.

  “What’s so funny?” Jesse asked and I looked up to meet his gray eyes.

  “Just a friend back home,” I answered and quickly shut the phone, shoving it back in my pocket.

  “Complaining about us already?” he asked.

  “No,” I lied and then my eyes caught the image of Adrienne and then Dana and Kristen, who seemed to make sure they stayed at least a foot behind their leader. They reminded me eerily of The Plastics in Mean Girls. Jesse turned to see what I was looking at and then shook his head.

  “That’s Adrienne. You don’t even need to know about the other two.”

  “She knows Adrienne,” Holly chimed in. “Riley had a run in with the queen this morning.”

  “Yeah? How’d that go?” Jesse asked.

  “Um…she’s a bitch,” I laughed.

  “Just stay out of her way and you’ll be fine,” Holly said and my eyes continued to follow Adrienne discreetly as she sat at a crowded table. “That’s the popular table,” Holly continued as she rolled her eyes. It was obvious she was not a fan. “None of them really like each other, but they stay together because they know they can’t survive without one another.”

  “They’re not all as bad as Adrienne,” Laura told me.

  “What about her sidekicks?” I asked.

  “One on one Dana and Krist
en aren’t bad, but they have zero confidence so they stick to Adrienne like glue,” Laura continued.

  “We all went to school together our whole lives and Adrienne was actually nice until our freshman year, but then she got those huge boobs and all the guys starting following her around with their tongues hanging out,” Mandy said, before Jesse interrupted her.

  “Hey, I resent that. I never followed her around.”

  “C’mon, Jesse. You know you noticed!” Mandy exclaimed.

  “Of course I noticed. Who wouldn’t notice? You’re a chick and you even noticed.”

  “Well, yeah we all noticed because you all walked around like zombies.”

  “She’s exaggerating,” Jesse said, looking over to me.

  “I am not!”

  “She’s not,” Brandon said, finally joining our conversation. “She’s hot.”

  “You’re pathetic,” Mandy said, rolling her eyes.

  “Maybe I am, but she’s still hot.”

  “And she’ll never even look at you,” Holly teased.

  “You girls are just jealous,” Brandon said with a smirk.

  “What?” Holly, Mandy, and Laura all shrieked at once and I started laughing.

  “Do you want to die or something, dude?” Jesse asked him.

  “We are so much hotter than her,” Laura said defensively.

  “Yeah, and when was the last time any of you went out on a date?”

  I felt my hand fly up to cover the smile on my mouth as I gasped at what Brandon had said. I looked across the table at Jesse who had burst out laughing and was looking away as he tried to regain his composure. He turned his eyes to meet mine again and they looked as wide as mine felt.

  “You are such a jackass,” Laura said glaring at him. I looked at Mandy and Holly, whose eyes were shooting daggers at Brandon, but he didn’t seem fazed at all.

  “On that note, I’m outta here. See you spinsters later,” Brandon snickered, as he grabbed his stuff and walked away.