Page 101 of Leaving the Station
The sun’s rising now, and there’s a soft glow over the Cascade Mountains as we pull into the station.
Oakley doesn’t know what Virginia’s about to do, and I maneuver both of us to the door so that we can run off the moment we know the plan worked.
“Oh, dearie!” Virginia calls to one of the conductors who’s passing through the car and waking people to ask if they’re getting off at Leavenworth. “I’m not feeling too well.”
The conductor hurries over and bends to check on her.
I try not to look too interested as Virginia clutches her chest and moans convincingly.
When the train stops, the conductor speaks into his walkie-talkie. Then, a voice comes over the loudspeaker: “If there are any medical personnel on the train, please report to the observationcar. I repeat, if there areanymedical personnel, please report to the observation car.” Then, the voice adds, “We will be stopped in Leavenworth slightly longer than expected as we attend to this... situation. Apologies for the inconvenience.”
Chaos descends after that, with everyone craning their necks to try to catch a glimpse of Virginia, who’s now rolling around on the floor. She’sdelivering.
I glance at Oakley. She’s staring at Virginia, who winks at both of us, and then the train doors open. Oakley turns to me, confused.
But there’s no time to explain. I jump off, hoping fervently that Oakley’s following me. Thankfully, she is, and I usher us into the cab I called. Once the door is closed the driver speeds us to the center of Leavenworth. Oakley’s staring out the window, at the Cascade Mountains in the background and the early-morning light rising over the faux-Bavarian village situated in the middle of Washington State.
“I’ll meet you back here in thirty minutes,” the cab driver says as he pulls into the center of town, glancing at his phone.
“Thank you,” I say gratefully.
I checked my bank account to make sure I had just enough to pay everyone helping with this deeply unhinged plan. I promised him a week’s worth of my greenhouse salary in exchange for the ride when I spoke to the dispatcher on the phone earlier.
Leavenworth is just waking up as we get out of the cab; most of the shop windows are dark, and only one or two people are on the street, walking their tired-looking dogs. There are alreadyChristmas lights everywhere, sparkling on trees and benches and lampposts. Like Oakley, I’ve never been to Europe, but maybe it’s like this, with quaint streets and brick buildings and mountains looming over everything, framing the landscape with their grandeur.
Or maybe it’s nothing like this at all. That would be okay too.
I turn to Oakley, who’s staring at all of this in awe. She runs her hands along a sign for an old-fashioned candy shop (a “shoppe,” of course), then spins to face me. I’m thrilled to see that she doesn’t look mad. She looks almosthopeful.
Which means that now is the perfect time to enact the final piece of the plan. I need this to work; I need to show her how much this trip has meant to me.
I knock on the door of a nearby café—one that I called earlier along with the taxi driver, just as they were opening—and a barista brings out a basket of chocolates and an accordion. She places the basket on the ground in front of us, then props the accordion onto her legs. She clears her throat, then starts singing a song in German, the notes breaking the stillness.
“I brought Europe to you,” I tell Oakley over the music.
Her eyes are reflecting the pinks and blues of the sky as she holds a gloved hand to her cheek.
“You told me yesterday you wanted to go there,” I continue. “That you wanted to do so many things in New York that you weren’t able to do.” I shake my head. “You gave me some of the best days of my life, and I wanted to give you something in return.” I rub my hands against my forearms, the friction warming me. “Soyes, this is my attempt at a grand gesture. Maybe a romantic one and maybe not. But a grand gesture nonetheless. I want to give you everything, even if it’s just for the next hour. That’s more than enough for me, Oakley.”
I had more of a speech prepared, but looking into her now-teary face, I speak off the cuff. “I’ll never understand what it’s like for you, to come from somewhere where they won’t accept all of you. Where theycan’taccept it. And I should never have questioned your decision to go back. I mean, I’m going home too, back to a city I haven’t always loved, with people who haven’t always made me feel at home. We’ll both be back in a place that feels safe, and if not safe, at least familiar.”
“Zoe,” she starts.
“No,” I tell her, “I have so much more to say.”
She laughs at that, wiping her nose with a gloved hand. “Can I tell you something first?”
I want to say no, because I’ll lose momentum on my grand, improvised, romantic speech, but more than anything, I need to hear what she has to say.
“Okay.”
“I’ve felt like a failure my entire life,” she says plainly.
“What?” I ask. The accordionist has been playing through all of this, and I remind myself to tip her approximately 400 percent for agreeing to my bizarre request.
“At first, I felt like a failure of a Mormon, because I always asked the wrong questions,” she tells me. “Then, I felt like a failure in my schooling, because I was never satisfied with what myparents taught me. Then, and maybe most of all, I felt like a failure in New York, because I told myself it’s where I would finally fit in, that I would have a place to call my own with people who understood me.” She looks over at the accordion player, who has the decency to at least pretend to not be listening. “I felt like I was marked by my religion, thatthat’swhat stopped people from getting too close to me. That they thought I wasn’t actually queer, because I had grown up in a church that wouldn’t accept them. But then I came on the train, and I met you, and you didn’t discount me just because I talked about Mormonism. Youwantedto have those conversations. And it didn’t hurt that you’re also extremely cute.”
My face heats, and I’m hanging on to her every word.
