Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 117601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
I’m too disoriented to care what people think about me. I’m shivering. I can’t do this. I have to do this.
I check my watch. It’s eleven fifty-three. Time doesn’t have any significance to me. Nothing stops me from getting into the train station right this moment. Or at twelve thirty, for that matter. But I don’t want to go off script here. Every minor change is a threat.
Pacing back and forth, I think about yesterday at dinner, when I showed Dad, Renn, and Donna my headstone sketch. They seemed to like it. This morning, I made some phone calls and asked around about sculptors who work with granite. It’s going to put a real dent in my savings, but it’s going to be worth it.
Eleven fifty-nine, and it is time to face the music.
I clutch the banister as I make my way down the stairs. The thick throng of people shoulder past me, unaware of and uninterested in my heartache. As soon as I’m inside, I lean against a column. I draw a deep breath full of sweat, piss, and steel brake dust.
I am here.
I am underground.
Just a couple of feet away from where it happened.
This is the place that made me who I am. My breaking point. This, right here, is why I carry all the guilt. All the self-loathing. This inherent sense of disbelief. That nothing is going to be okay. That things won’t really get better. That time doesn’t heal. It just makes you feel like you’re stuck in a loop.
This is the place where I took a life.
Well, one of them. I’m responsible for Dom’s loss of life too.
I’m nauseous again, but luckily, I’ve already emptied my stomach and have nothing left to vomit. The platform is teeming with people. The electronic sign above my head tells me the next train arrives in two minutes.
I take out my phone, angle it up from my chest area to catch both my face and the Montgomery Street sign behind me, and snap a picture for Joe. I’m as pale as a ghost and look physically unwell. Not exactly how I’d like Joe to see me, but at least he won’t be able to smell the puke stench coming from my mouth.
I peer into the rails. They look so normal. So unassuming. Just a bunch of hot-rolled steel. There are no bloodstains, no human remains, no big SOMEONE DIED HERE sign. My tragedy has been dutifully erased. It only lives in my head now. The shriek of the approaching train pierces my ears. I hug the column, closing my eyes. The memory slams into me all at once, with forceful momentum. It is the first time I allow myself to fully remember. To go back and relive that scene.
Darling, take my hand. Take it.
I can’t, Mom. It hurts. My ankle hurts so bad.
Please. Let me help you. I can hear the train coming.
Then being hurled back to safety. Flung across the platform. Just to look around me and notice she wasn’t there.
I’m sobbing by the time the train arrives. My shoulders shake and my knees are bent. People are looking. The train stops in front of me. The doors slide open. I can’t do this. I can’t get inside. I turn around, toward the stairs, toward the world above. I’m going home. I can’t do this.
“Ever.” I hear a voice.
I look up, wiping my tears.
And there, in front of me, on the train in front of me, stands Joe. With his worn-out Levi’s. With tousled dark curls that frame my favorite face in the entire world. With a cigarette tucked behind one ear. Beautiful and handsome and alive. He offers me his hand.
“What are you doing h-here?” I stammer.
“You won’t find out unless you get on this train right about, let’s see . . .” He twists his wrist to check an invisible watch. “Now.”
I jump on the train a second before the doors slide shut. I fall into his open arms. He holds me up and tucks me under his armpit, like a protective older brother. He gazes down at me. “Hello, stranger.”
“You came here to watch me get on a BART?”
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t act like there’s anything good on TV these days. It’s not that big a deal.”
“You do have a point.” I decide to downplay the whole thing, to spare him any embarrassment.
I curl my fingers over his shirt, holding on to him. The train starts moving. We’re safe inside it. I don’t think about what happened last time I was here, and that is huge.
“I figured I can finish the book in a week if I lock myself up in a hotel room and write all day. I took some time off work.”
“Actual time off work?” I arch an eyebrow. “Holy moly, but I thought writing is not a real grown-up thing people do?”