Page 44 of Leaving the Station
“This is the greatest bridge of all time,” Aya says, knees folded on her seat.
“Oh yeah?” I ask. “Why’s that?”
I love that she’s a child with a favorite bridge.
“It’s a swing bridge, and before it existed you needed a ferry to get across the Mississippi River.” She jumps up from her seat. “But that was in the way olden days.”
“What’s a swing bridge?” I try to sound interested, but the longer Aya speaks about bridges, the more I wish I could talk to Oakley alone about her time in New York.
But Oakley had quickly moved on from that conversation, and maybe that’s for the best. I don’t need to know about her life before this train trip. She’s just the blond girl I met in the dining car.
If I keep thinking that, maybe I’ll convince myself it’s true.
“I think you can figure out what a swing bridge is,” Oakley says in response to my question. She sticks out her hand and pivots it at her wrist joint. “It’s a bridge that swings.”
“Exactly,” Aya adds, sounding smug.
“Love that you two are ganging up on me now.”
“We’re not ganging up on you,” Oakley tells me.
“My dad always tells me and my mom that we’re ganging up on him,” Aya says. “Like, girls ganging up on boys.”
Based on how Aya’s saying it, I’m not sure if her dad says this as a joke or because he’s an asshole, but either way, don’t love that.
Then Aya adds, “And my friend Cayden—you know, the one I was telling you about who has two moms—he says that when people do that kind of stuff, like they’re annoying you or whatever, it means they have a crush on you.” She finally inhales, but she’s not done speaking. “And he says that when someone’s kind of mean to you, that’s how they tell you they like you. Like how my dad does with my mom sometimes. That’s what Cayden said.”
It’s official: I want to punch Aya’s dad.
Still, I couldn’t help but smile at her monologue, and I try tohide my expression behind my hand as Oakley’s face turns serious. “And do you believe Cayden?”
“Well, yes.” Aya shrugs. “He’s pretty smart.”
“Listen.” Oakley leans forward, and Aya does too, so their heads are close together. “When you love someone, you don’t have to pretend to be mean. You can tell them you love them every single day. You can compliment their outfit or their hair or whatever else you like about them.”
“Um, okay,” Aya says, leaning away. “I’ll try to remember that for when I’m, like, forty.”
“Please do.” When Oakley sits back, her posture loosens and the urgency from the previous moment is gone as quickly as it arrived.
Oakley and Aya talk about their favorite Percy Jackson characters and if they would join Artemis’s hunt (yes for both of them). I have to admit that it’s cute, but I’m thinking about Oakley’s serious tone, about the way she tried to impart this information to Aya like it was the last thing she’d ever do.
After we cross the bridge, Aya gets bored of the observation deck and runs down to the snack car to bother Edward.
“All right,” I say when Aya’s gone. “Are we gonna talk about that? Also, we’re on the same page about Aya’s dad, right? He needs to get a knuckle sandwich.”
I hoped Oakley would laugh at my use of the phrase “knuckle sandwich,” but her serious expression returns.
“You know how I told you I have five siblings?” Oakley asks.
I frown. “What does that have to do with Aya?”
“I have fiveoldersisters,” Oakley says again. “And all of them are married. I watched them find their husbands. They would come home one day and say they’d met some righteous returned missionary, and weeks later they were talking about marriage. I watched my sisters become subservient; I watched them be belittled by men they’d sealed themselves to for all of eternity.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want that for anyone I care about. I don’t want Aya to think that’s what love has to be.”
I’ve never met someone who holds love in such high regard, like it’s a basic human right, next to food and water, to have people who love you unconditionally and who you love in the same way.
I nod, unsure of what to say, but after a while of staring out the dark window, I do what I do best: I deflect. “I know this is going to sound like another smooth-brain thought, but I wish I could turn off nighttime for the train ride,” I tell Oakley. “There’s so much I want to see that I’ll never be able to because of the schedule. Aya didn’t even get to see the swing bridge in daylight!”
“No, that makes sense,” Oakley says. “I want to see everything too.”
