Page 31 of Leaving the Station
An eternity later: “Can I kiss you now?”
I nodded. I had stopped breathing.
“Okay.”
He stood up. I followed. “Let’s make this a no-judgment kiss, all right? It can be practice.”
I nodded again.
Then he stuck his tongue down my throat. It was warmer and thicker than I’d imagined a tongue could be. Like a large worm or a small snake.
It wasn’t badorgood, just a new sensation.
He held my hips, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, the way I’d seen girls do in movies. We kissed for a while, and it got better the longer it went on.
With that, the seal had been broken; we were well past due for this kiss.
Afterward, we stayed up all night talking and kissing. It wasnearly six in the morning when I got back to my dorm.
I collapsed onto my bed, wired. I ran a hand through my hair, which was coming loose from its ponytail.
That was my first kiss.
Tuesday, 1 p.m., Chicago, IL
Once Oakley’s had her fill of the ghost church, she shepherds me to a place where we can order take-out deep-dish pizza for lunch.
“There’s this spot right by Union Station,” she says, and once again leads the way.
The restaurant’s packed, and when we make it to the front of the line, we each order an individual six-inch, deep-dish pizza and get out as quickly as possible.
“Oh my god, why is this so heavy?” I ask, doing a biceps curl to adjust the bag in my hand.
“Maybe you’re just weak,” Oakley says as she holds her bag with ease.
“Excuse you, I’m very buff.”
“Yeah, you’re practically a bodybuilder.” She points to my noodle arms and I swing my too-dense pie into her leg in response.
“Careful with that thing; you’ll knock me out.”
We make it back to Union Station before they’ve announced our track, so we pick up our suitcases and camp out in the center of the Great Hall.
There are a bunch of people milling around who were on the first train with us. I spot Aya in the distance, doing laps, gettingout her little-kid energy. And there are Clint and Virginia, napping next to each other.
“This is not pizza,” I say once I’ve opened the container and taken a bite. “This is casserole.”
“You’re from Seattle; you can’t talk,” Oakley says, sawing at her slice with the plastic fork and knife from the bag.
“It’s not like there’s good pizza in Eastern Washington either.”
“Yeah—I mean no, there’s not,” she admits. “But I just spent four months in New York City eating pizza by myself every day, so I’m something of an expert.”
I turn to Oakley, the bite I took burning the roof of my mouth. “By yourself?”
She shrugs. “At least I got good pizza out of it.”
She’s trying to sound nonchalant, but it’s not working.
