Page 24 of Leaving the Station
Ihadn’treally had a queer crush. There were girls in high schoolwho I thought were cute, and there were TV shows I watched more for the actresses than the plot.
But there wasn’t a name I could give, because the only one that came to mind was Alden.
“That’s so valid,” Shelly said, and the conversation moved on.
They were all so nice to me, so considerate. And yet I felt like an impostor in their presence.
So when I got a text from Alden asking if I wanted to meet at the Straight, I jumped at the opportunity.
“I’m not feeling so well,” I lied, excusing myself from Rex’s dorm room.
The Tees told me to feel better, and Ididas I stepped outside into the late-night air.
Alden was sitting on what I’d begun to think of asourcouch, shuffling a deck of cards.
“Hey,” he said, grinning when he saw me.
“What’s up?”
“You ever been to the bowling alley?” he asked.
“I thought that was just a place they bragged about on tours,” I said. “No one actuallygoesthere, right?”
“We could!” He sat forward, like an excited puppy.
“Doesn’t it close at ten?” It was nearly midnight then.
“Not if you know the custodian.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Doyouknow the custodian?”
“I do.” He pulled out his phone. “He’s my uncle.”
“And why haven’t you mentioned this before?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t seem relevant.”
“You mean like when we snuck into the clock tower and your uncle could’ve busted us?”
“But he wouldn’t have,” Alden said. “He’s a cool uncle. I call him Big Paul.”
“How come?”
“Because my cousin is Little Paul,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
He pressed his uncle’s contact after that and put him on speaker. He said we could go into the bowling alley for fifteen minutes while he was waxing the basketball court upstairs, but after that we had to get out.
“And don’t fucking touch anything,” Big Paul added.
“You got it, boss,” Alden said.
We ran from one side of campus to the other, with Alden in the lead. He moved through the world with such ease, and when I was with him, I could too.
I was finally able to admit to myself that what I felt toward him was a crush, but that word was so amorphous.
“Crush” could mean anything.
But whatever it was, I liked it.
