Page 6 of Leaving the Station
He was doing some sort of presentation, and everyone gathered there was eating it up. I wasn’t listening to what he was saying. I watched his hands as he gestured, watched his mouth as he grinned goofily.
I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but when he wasdone practicing his presentation—for a class, it must’ve been—I approached the group, squatting next to someone who was sitting at the edge of the crowd on a large worn armchair.
“Who is that?” I asked the Armchair-Person.
“That’s Alden,” they said. “He lives in my building. He’s actually so funny.”
“Cool,” I said, not taking my eyes off Alden as he sank into the couch in front of the TV to allow someone else to practice their presentation.
I sat there for two hours and learned about everything from nuclear fission to stoicism. When the group dispersed, Alden stood from the couch and stretched.
We were the only two people left, and I wasn’t sure if he’d even noticed me. It was too late to go to dinner now—I had about fifty messages asking where I was and if I was okay—but for some reason I couldn’t let this boy go. I needed him to know I’d been here the whole time, waiting.
So I twirled my long thick ponytail around my palm and took a deep breath. “Cool presentation,” I said, then wished I hadn’t.
Cool presentation?
It was a terrible opening line, and he knew it as well as I did.
Not that itwasan opening line.
When he smiled, it didn’t look like he was humoring me. He seemed genuinely happy. “Thanks.” He sat back down on the couch, which emitted a cloud of dust. “It’s for my Victorian Novel class.”
“That sounds tedious,” I said, then quickly added, “Sorry, no, it’s—”
“I like it.” He shrugged, and I was relieved that he’d put an end to my fumbling. “I don’t know if I’m for sure going to major in English, but the professor told us we could have class outside when it’s nice. What are you studying?”
“Mostly bio.”
“Sounds tedious,” he said.
I laughed. “I’m Zoe.”
“Alden.”
I sat on the couch then, with a full cushion between us. As we spoke, he pressed his legs to his chest, and I did the same, his mirror.
He told me more about his first days at school, and I told him about the girl in my bio class. He laughed at that, which felt remarkable.
I’d never experienced this before: talking to someone where it felt like everything I said was interesting and right and true.
It was miraculous.
When I finally checked the time, it was one in the morning.
“Oh my god, it’s so late.” I turned my phone around so he could see my lock screen.
“Or maybe early?” He stood from the couch. “There’s somewhere else that should be open. Well,openas in they sometimes forget to lock it. Care to join?”
I nodded. Even then, I knew I would go wherever he asked.
ThesomewhereAlden had mentioned turned out to be the clock tower, the giant obelisk at the center of campus that marked the hours with kitschy songs played on clanging chimes.
“Are we allowed in here?” I whispered as he pulled the doors open and we began our ascent.
“Probably not,” he told me. “But we won’t get in trouble. I promise.”
For some reason, I believed him.
