Page 3 of Leaving the Station
I was across the country from home; there was anonymity here. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was wearing a dress that day—a cute one and a go-to of mine in high school. It didn’t even feel wrong; it was stretchy and comfortable, perfectly molded to my body.
So maybe it was fate that I was seated next to these three queer people and not some random premeds with something to prove. It was the universe telling me that I could do what I wanted to do, wear what I wanted to wear. That the plans I had weren’t for nothing.
When the mascot finished dancing and the dean finished speaking, everyone funneled out into the lobby for “light refreshments.”
“Wanna go to a diner instead?” Rex asked. “I have a car.”
I nodded a bit too aggressively.
The four of us piled into Rex’s ancient Toyota Corolla and drove across town to a run-down Greek diner. We took videos of each other trying to fit as many fries as possible in our mouths. Autumn won with thirty and insisted she could’ve kept going if we hadn’t made her laugh.
I was amazed and proud of myself for how quickly I had found a group of friends. I imagined a future with them in it: living together post-college, going to each other’s weddings in ten years.
I may have been a tad overeager.
Monday, 7:15 a.m., Approaching Croton-Harmon, NY
Most people have settled into the ride by now. This leg of the journey runs along the Hudson, whose waters are dully reflectingthe cloudy sky. I grab a seat in a booth in the nearly empty café car and turn to face the river, open my book to a random page where the main character is fighting her primal lust for a soldier, and promptly ignore it.
It’s the first calm moment I’ve had since I bought my ticket. Other than walking (which I considered), the train is the slowest way to get back to the West Coast for Thanksgiving break. That’s why I chose it.
I’ll go all the way across this terrible country, from sea to shining sea, by rail. I could’ve left from the Syracuse stop, which is much closer to Ithaca, but I figured if I was going to be on the train for days anyway, I might as well be completist about it, so I took the bus down from Cornell in the middle of the night.
The longest train ride I’ve been on before was from Seattle to Portland, which is just over three hours. All I knew about this route when I booked the ticket was that I couldn’t be in Ithaca for one second longer, but I also didn’t want to be in Seattle right away. I needed a liminal space to think through the life choices that brought me here.
Now I’ve bought myself four days of time, which isn’t much, but it’s enough to try to figure out what I’m going to do once I get home.
The journey will be so slow that I’ll barely make it home for Thanksgiving dinner, which is great because then I won’t need to fight with my parents about how it’s a holiday celebrating genocide or how I’ll never live up to their expectations and we can all avoid each other until we descend to the kitchen for cold,greasy leftovers on Friday morning.
Not only that, but the Amtrak website warned that, for the most part, there’s very little cell service.
That was what really sealed the deal.
I stare out the window again. That’s all there is to do, all that’s expected of me.
It’s almost pleasant, until my phone lights up on my lap.
I swipe the notification away before I can read who it’s from, then turn my phone off for good measure. I don’t want to know what anyone is trying to say to me.
What I want is to be an entirely different person, one who made at least one correct choice at some point in the past. But even on the train, I’m still myself. I’m the one person I can never escape.
A small child scoots into the booth across from me. I wave and smile. She stares.
She’s long and gangly, though I can tell she’s younger than she looks. When I was a little kid people thought I was years older than I was because of my height. It’s her face that gives it away, the same way mine did. She has round cheeks that aren’t stretched out like the rest of her.
She’s silent for a long time, staring. It’s unnerving.
Finally, she speaks: “Did you know that former President Richard M. Nixon created Amtrak?”
Two
Monday, 7:30 a.m., Still near Croton-Harmon, NY, Just a Bit Closer than Before
“What?” I ask the long child.
“You know, Richard Nixon?”
I hold up two peace signs and lower my eyebrows, reluctantly remembering the US history class where I learned about him. “This guy?”
