Page 97 of Leaving the Station
It can be a new beginning.
“Um, Zoe?”
Aya is standing behind me, her hands clasped in front of her. It’s the most toned-down I’ve seen her.
“How’s it going?”
She doesn’t say anything about the conversation she must’ve had with her mom the night before, instead, she holds up the fifth and final Percy Jackson book. “I’m on the last one,” she tells me. “But I’m reading itreeeaaaaallyslowly,because I don’t want it to be over.”
“You can always reread it,” I say.
She looks so incredibly sad then. “But it’ll never be the same as reading it for the first time.”
I remember what she said at her birthday party, about being scared to turn double digits. Maybe Aya and I aren’t so different. I had a breakdown when I turned ten because I knew I’d never be single digits again, and that thrust me into an existential crisis about who I’d be in the future.
But I don’t want to think that way anymore. I wasted eighteen years of my life worrying over shit like that, when I could’ve just been... living my life. I don’t want Aya to feel that way either.
“Okay, how about this?” I ask after a moment. “Do youwantto read it really fast?”
She shrugs. “Yeah, but I’m not going to.”
“If you want to, you should,” I tell her. “Don’t save the book just because you’re worried you’re going to be sad when it’s over.Trust me, I’ve done that a lot, and it never made me happier.”
She stills, then bursts into tears. I immediately want to take back everything I said and give her a giant hug or, like, a pile of pugs.
“Oh my god, no, Aya,” I say. “I’m so sorry.” I look on in horror as she cries.
“My mom told me everything,” she says through sobs, the physical, shaky kind I haven’t had since I was a little kid. “And she said you and Oakley were the ones who wanted her to tell me.”
I have no idea what to do, but I have the unhelpful thought that Oakley would know.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I tell Aya. Then, because it’s the only thing that comes to mind: “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” she says, frustrated and sniffing back snot and tears.
“You know what?” I say. “You’re right.”
She wipes her eyes and looks at me, surprised.
I know it’s not my place to apologize on Oakley’s behalf, but I at least want to let Aya know how sorry I am about what happened during her party.
“It’s not okay. Your mom should’ve told you that you were moving to Seattle before now. You’re allowed to be mad. And you’re allowed to be sad.”
She rubs at her eyes. “If I finish this book fast, that means the train ride will be over,” she says through sniffles. “I don’t want to leave.”
“But you’re heading to Seattle, right?”
Aya nods, her face red and blotchy. “I don’t even know anythingabout the city, and I’m gonna live there now.”
“Did you know thatI’mfrom Seattle?”
Her eyes go wide. “You are?”
“Yup,” I tell her. “And I’ll be staying there for a while, so...”
Though her cheeks are still streaked with tears, she smiles at this. “So we can have sleepovers!”
“Maybe,” I say, because not only can’t I imagine a situation in which I, an eighteen-year-old, would be having a sleepover with a freshly-nine-year-old, but also because there’s very little chance Nanami will let that happen.
