Page 18 of Leaving the Station
It’s also when I realized that I liked girls.
I shouldn’t have been exposed to the general public while I was going through puberty, growing into my body Hulk-style; I was absolutely miserable.
Not much has changed, except that my hair is cropped and my parents don’t know yet.
And, well, a few other things too.
I was such a good little girl—that’s what my parents would tell their friends. I spent more time with adults than with anyone my age, and they complimented my maturity and lamented the fact that their own kids acted like, well, kids, rather than whatever I had going on.
I finish the last of my already-stale Kettle chips and stare at my face in the window until the whole is lost to the parts—all I see is my large nose, my dark eyes, my down-turned mouth. My short patchy hair that I should’ve let a professional cut but chose instead to hack with a pair of fabric scissors in the middle of the night.
And then it’s almost lights-out, and I figure I should at leasttryto sleep, so I head back to my coach seat. Luckily, Guy Fieri’s already fast asleep under a Chicago Bears blanket.
Most other people have pillows and blankets, but I didn’t have the foresight to bring either, so I grab my jacket from my bag and ball it up behind my neck. The seats recline, and there’s a little footrest, and it’s not horrible. But after tossing and turning for half an hour or so I pull out my phone and open Tetris.
I manage to beat my high score three times, until a womanwith fuzzy socks and a fleece wrapped tightly around her taps on my shoulder.
“Excuse me, miss,” she whisper-yells. “Could you turn that screen off, please? It’s interrupting my REM.”
I quickly put my phone face down on my lap. “Sure, sorry.”
She walks away without another word. A few people around us stir, looking dazed. I have to imagine that her shuffling down the aisle and reprimanding me was more disruptive than me silently playing Tetris on my phone, but now I’m too embarrassed to stay here.
So, I grab my book, earbuds, and phone and return to the café car. It’s nearly midnight, but there are a few people still sitting in the booths, bleary-eyed and restless.
This time nearly twenty-four hours ago, I was in my dorm, frantically packing my things. That feels like it happened in another lifetime. Yesterday.
Mere hours before that, I was with Alden.
I play Tetris to stop myself from thinking about school; the falling blocks become meditative the longer I watch them. Maybe there are Tetris competitions—I could do that. I’ll be a Tetris vagabond, going from tournament to tournament. I make a mental note to look up whether competitive Tetris is a thing once I have service again.
“You have to do a T-spin,” a voice behind me says.
I turn around, startled.
There, peering over my shoulder, is Oakley.
Five
Monday, 11 p.m., outside of Cleveland, OH
“Oh, hey,” I say, trying to sound casual. I slide my phone into the front pocket of my overalls, suddenly self-conscious about my Tetris abilities.
“You have to do a T-spin,” Oakley repeats.
“A what?” My heart is racing.
“A T-spin,” she says, leaning forward. “You know the T-shaped block?”
I nod, unsure whether or not I’m dreaming.
“You create a slot for it then spin it into place. Here, I’ll show you.” She holds out her hand. When I continue sitting like an absolute lump she points to my pocket and says, “Your phone.”
I give it to her.
“You can’t get areallyhigh score without a T-spin,” she says as she moves to my side of the booth so we can both see the screen. She has me type in my password, then navigates to the Tetris app and proceeds to intricately set up the pieces so that there’s a perfect space for the T-shaped block. Then she rotates it 90 degrees and itfalls into place with a flash, clearing two rows. “A double T-spin is worth more than a Tetris.” She hands the phone back to me.
“How did you know that?”
