One Week (2 page)

“You want a USA Rail Pass or a North America Rail Pass?”

“What’s the difference?”

The lady rolls her eyes. “You want to go to Canada?”

“Um, no. No, it’s cold there.”

“Right. USA Rail Pass. For how many days?”

“Ten?” Solid number, right?

“Fifteen and thirty are your choices.”

“Fifteen.” How long can it take to get someplace so I’d need thirty days? You can fly to Europe in one night.

“That’ll be $455.00.”

I hand over my credit card, hesitating only a little. This is it. My dad will see that I’ve bought this ticket, and he’ll know I’m gone, and he won’t know where. I square my shoulders. Good. Let him worry.

“Thanks,” I say, taking my card back. “Um, where do I go?”

The agent rolls her eyes again. “Wherever you want. You got a general pass, right? Go find a train and get on it. Next!”

Right. Anywhere I want to go. I just wish I wanted to go someplace.

Florida’s nice this time of year, right? Oh wait, no, thunderstorms and hurricanes. Skip that.

The hell with this. I’ll just get on a train, and get off where it looks nice—someplace as different from LA as a place could possibly be. Yeah.

I quickly board a train with a flashing “departing” sign—what, no conductor yelling “All aboard”?—and look around for my cabin. To be honest, I’m geeking out a little—I love the idea of sleeping on a train, with the tiny bathrooms and the beds that pull out and Eva Marie Saint comes tumbling down on Cary Grant’s head.

A helpful porter walks down the aisle, and I stop him.

“Where’s my cabin?” I ask, showing him my ticket.

He looks at it and snorts. “Your cabin? Look, kid, this is a short-distance train; we don’t have sleeper cabins. Passenger seats are that way.” He gestures over his shoulder.

“How long until we arrive?”

“Arrive where? We’re making lots of stops. Where are you going?”

“The end of the line.”

He looks at me oddly. “About three hours then.”

Okay. Three hours isn’t that bad, and that’ll probably get me somewhere decently far from here. I look past him at the rows of seats, and all the ones I see are already occupied. There’s a little more room than coach on an airplane, but not much.

“Where’s first class?” I ask.

“This isn’t a first class ticket.”

It’s not? Shit, I should’ve specified. “Well, how can I upgrade?”

The porter shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe the next stop? But we’re heading out—excuse me.”

“But—” Damn. I don’t want to have to get off and run my card again—it’ll look like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Which is, you know, accurate. People ride in coach all the time. How bad can it be?

I wander down the aisle, hoping to at least find a couple of seats together so I don’t need to be squashed up next to someone with troubling personal hygiene. As I keep wandering, my goal changes slightly. I would just like to find a seat. Any seat. I’ll try the next car.

And the next. And we’re moving now. Shouldn’t they wait to start the train until they’re certain they have enough seats for everyone?

When I finally find a seat, my shoulder is killing me. I wish smaller bags would come into fashion. I’m about to sit down, when I stop dead.

You’re kidding me. This is Goth Geek’s train? He glances up at me, and I look away quickly, inexplicably shy. There
has
to be another seat. I look back, scanning the aisle to see if maybe I missed something. And yes, there is in fact another free seat. And the reason I missed it is because a giant fat man is sitting in most of it. I shift back and forth, debating. I’m small and could probably squish in. Oh yeah, that sounds pleasant. I glance back at Goth Geek, and he looks up and smirks.

“All the room in the world right here, Barbie,” he drawls.

Fat guy it is.

Why is it that men always have to spread their legs so freaking wide? I don’t believe there’s
that
much business down there, nor do I believe it all needs that much space. And I get that this particular guy takes up more space than most, but he could still make a tiny effort to give me room enough to sit both butt cheeks down.

I lean against my armrest and pull out my iPod. I close my eyes, and try to zone out to the music. Nothing can bother me; I’ve got Lady Gaga on my side.

Ow! What the hell? Giant Fat Guy is
sitting on me
.

“Excuse me?” I say as politely as I can, under the circumstances. “Sir, you’re kind of hurting me…”

He grunts and continues shifting around.

“Ouch! Um, mister, could you sit still please?”

He starts digging around in his backpack (and thereby digging his elbow into my side, by the way) and pulls out a bag of chips and a liter of orange soda. Gross. I
hate
orange soda. One time when I was little I had too much at a birthday party and I puked and the smell has made me nauseous ever since.

Okay, Bee. Focus on the music. Focus on how the train is leaving LA. Focus on how you’re skipping school tomorrow and every day for the foreseeable future. Focus on anything but the smell of the orange soda.

The train lurches as it rounds a bend, and Fat Guy drops the orange soda. All over me. Of course.

“Shit!” I yell, and stand up, doing my level best to spill the rest of the bottle on him where it belongs. But it’s all gone. All over me and my bag. I’m
smaller
than him. By a lot. What were the odds that the soda would land on
me?

I look at Fat Guy, waiting for the apology. But it doesn’t come. He shrugs, and his hand goes back in the chip bag.

Oh God. I think I’m going to be sick. The orange soda smell is inescapable now and it’s all over me and it’s sticky and…

I run to the bathroom.

I brush my teeth—hey, when you have a bag this big, you have room for everything—and wash my face. I wish I had stopped to grab at least a change of clothes before I left. Usually I have at least an extra top in here, but wouldn’t you know the day I run away from home is the day I’m low on supplies. I look down at my top and sigh. It’s a thin cashmere halter top, and rinsing it here would ruin it. But then, the orange soda already took care of that, didn’t it.

I strip it off, and rinse it in the tiny sink. At least this’ll get rid of the smell. I wring it out, and do my best to reshape it into something resembling a shirt. I pull it back on, and glance in the mirror. Oh Jesus.

Why hasn’t anybody thought of having a wet T-shirt contest using cashmere? It’d be a big hit.

There’s knock at the bathroom door, and I realize that I’ve been in here for kind of a long time and there are probably people waiting. I turn off the light and open the door—in that order—hoping to keep my nipples to myself for as long as possible. The mother and the little boy who is holding his crotch don’t even glance at me. Sorry kid, mine was a soda emergency of a different kind.

I take a deep breath and head toward the seats. A couple of heads glance up, and then a couple more. The twelve-year-old boy in row four starts snickering. I cross my arms over my chest. No way am I sitting next to Fat Guy again. He looks up and
now
he scoots over to make room for me to sit down. Asshole.

Goth Geek hasn’t looked up. He’s reading. I make my way over there, and sit in the seat next to him, and bury my head in my arms. I hate trains. I miss Carlos.

“Who’s Carlos?”

I look at Goth Geek, surprised. Did using so many chemicals on his head make him psychic?

“You muttered that you miss Carlos? Your puppy or your boyfriend? Or both?”

“He’s my dad’s driver,” I say reluctantly. Thoughts aren’t supposed to be muttered, Bee.

“Aww, what happened? Did the IRS remember you exist and now you have to take the train with the rest of the poor kids?”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, that’s what happened. And then my dad testified against the mobsters that have been funding his projects and now they’re after me and I’m going into witness protection. So shut up and quit drawing attention to me.”

“You’re going out of your way to draw attention to yourself,” he says, shrugging.

I glare at him, waiting for a wet T-shirt comment, but it doesn’t come. “Shut up and read your book,” I snap.

I put my earphones in and try again to zone out. I wish I’d brought a book.

What’s he reading? I try to surreptitiously glance at the book, but it’s in tiny print and doesn’t have the title printed across the top. With a font size that small I can’t even read over his shoulder. God I’m bored.

And I’m cold. Wet cashmere is not exactly comfortable. I fiddle around with my iPod, hoping to distract myself by finding the perfect song to fit the moment. There must be plenty of anger and humiliation anthems to choose from….

I scroll, and I fidget, and I look out the window. LA really is ugly. I pick up my bag and start riffling through it. I’m not looking for anything in particular, really, but you never know—there might be a magazine in there or something.

My elbow bumps into Goth Geek’s arm, and he grunts irritably at me. Like I can help invading his personal space in seats this small. I bump into him again, and he sighs heavily and closes his book.

“So where are you headed, Malibu Barbie?”

I shrug uncomfortably. Why do people keep asking this question? Is this the train version of asking about the weather? “I’m going to…” Uhhh… The lack of a destination is killing me. I’m not a go-with-the-flow kind of person. I like having plans, and I like having them way in advance. This whole running away thing is giving me a migraine.

“Yes?” Goth Geek smirks. “It’s not a hard question.”

“I’m going to New York,” I blurt. Random, but it sounds good. Yeah. New York is east. And it’s large. People go there to get lost all the time. And I kind of know my way around from that time my father tried his hand at producing a Broadway play (it didn’t go that well, but he blamed it on New Yorkers being snobs). 

“New York, huh? Rich girl goes from one rich city to another. How predictable.”

I glare at him. “Why, where are you going?”

“Oh, New York,” he says easily. “But, you know, I’m from there, so I kind of have to sometimes.”

Oh, so he’s from New York, so he thinks he’s all tough and cool and knows everything. I give him a closer look out of the corner of my eye. He’s older than I thought. College kid, probably—UCLA, by the looks of him. I’ve seen his type hanging around Book Soup all day, as if just being in a bookstore would lend them some kind of hipster cred.

“Whatever,” I say, and lean my head back against the seat. “I’m just going to sit here, and zone, and when we get to the end of the line I’ll be that much closer to New York.”

“Um, okay, but then you’ll be in San Luis Obispo, and you won’t be able to get a train to New York. I mean, you’ll be closer, because it’s north, so maybe that’s all you’re looking for.”

I sit up and stare at Goth Geek. “What? What are you talking about?” Why would a train go somewhere that doesn’t connect with New York? Everything connects with New York, right? Also, it takes three hours just to get to San Luis? I could drive faster than that! Or Carlos could, anyway.

“This is the Pacific Surfliner, Barbie. It just goes up the coast. You’ll have to get off in Santa Barbara, and take
a bus over to San Jose, and then take a train to
Sacramento, and then you can get to New York.”

I blink at him. He must be crazy. Or messing with me. “There is no way it takes that much trouble to get to New York from LA. Why would there be trains to New York from Sacramento, but not from LA? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, there isn’t a train from Sacramento to New York. Or from LA to New York. You have to take a train to Chicago, and then you can get a train to New York.” Goth Geek grins at me.

What the hell? How many freaking stops are we talking about here? No wonder nobody ever takes the train anymore—just get on a plane, have it go somewhere, and that’s that. “Okay,” I say slowly. “Fine. So how come there are trains that go to
Chicago
from Sacramento, but not from LA?”

“There are,” Goth Geek assures me. “But this isn’t that train. You got on a train that goes to San Luis. You could,” he says, shifting in his seat and looking back, “get off the train, and go back to LA, and get yourself on the right train. But then you’d have to admit you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing and are a dumbass, and we couldn’t have that.”

I dig my fingernails into my palms and close my eyes. I want to scream. Clearly getting on the next train that was leaving was a stupid move. I have absolutely no desire to go to San Luis. I want to get out of California. And no, I have no idea what I’m doing, but if taking some long-ass route (involving a
bus
, gross) to get to New York is what I’m doing, as it apparently is, then that’s what I’ll do.

Wait a minute.

“If taking this train to get to New York makes me a dumbass, then what the hell are you?” I demand. “You’re on this train, and you’re going to New York!”

Goth Geek shrugs. “It was the cheapest way to get there. Not all of us are as quick with our credit cards as you are, Barbie. And I’m not exactly in any hurry.”

I sigh, and realize neither am I. “So I’ll get there when I get there,” I say. “Whatever.”

“Well said.” Goth Geek shakes his head, stil
l laughing. “Now, why are you being so chatty? You’ve been looking down that expensive nose at me since I saw you at the ticket agent.”

I glare at him. “My nose came as is, thank you very much, and I’m
not
being chatty. You started talking to
me,
remember?”

“Yeah, but I was just trying to get you to move so I could have the row to myself again.”

I stare at him blankly. Come again?

“The surest way to get someone to not want to talk to you is to start talking to them,” he explains.

“
That’s
why you invited me to sit down before, when I first got on the train?”

“It worked, didn’t it? You would rather go sit next to the fat slob than someone who
wanted
to sit next to you.”