There’s supposed to be something that stands out to you at first. That’s what all of the books tell you, anyway. Astoundingly brilliant green eyes that could swallow a galaxy whole, or a smile you can’t get out of your head, or beautiful hair that looks like it was made from the threads of goddesses. Stuff that authors can repeatedly describe when they get lazy. This girl—she didn’t seem to really have any of that stuff, to be honest. She looked kind of ordinary. The first thing that came to mind was that she looked like what the day after a rainstorm would be if it was a person and not, you know, weather. Kind of dreary, like everything was still the same, except a bit damper. Most of her hair was bundled under a gray beanie in a messy bun (ah, yes, messy buns, one of the many favorites of romance writers, known for . . . nothing in particular, really) and she was wearing an oversized turtleneck that made it look like she was trying to bunch herself in. Like a turtle. How ironic.
Oh, wait, I’ve nearly forgotten to introduce myself, like Geronimo Stilton always did in every single one of his books. You’d think that the guy (mouse?) would eventually just decide to write his name at the top of the page or something after 50 volumes of the same exact thing, but no, of course not. Anyway, fictional mice aside, all you need to know is that I was, at the moment, a very tired, very gay girl standing in a train station at nine o’clock at night waiting for the thing to take me back home, and rain-girl (as I had started to call her) was adjusting something on her sleeve with pale, slender fingers. Pale, slender fingers. There you go, lazy authors. There’s your reference point of specialness. Nothing too special about it, though. I’m pretty sure that the girl flirting with the barista at the coffee shop a few blocks away had the same hands. Regardless of how special her hands looked to be, it probably didn’t matter. As a matter of fact, I probably shouldn’t have been looking at her at all. Especially since she didn’t even have any reason for me to. Even more so because I would probably never see her again.
Yeah, right.
* * *
Fifteen minutes, one conductor yelling over the tinny intercom speakers, and two dusty downwards escalators later, we had boarded the train. By “we,” of course, I meant myself, the mom with her clan of unruly kids trailing behind her, and a ridiculous number of old people. One of them slowly shook her head while looking at me. It didn’t seem like the 10-hour ride was going to involve an entertaining seatmate. Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d end up sitting next to someone who just fell asleep and didn’t try to show me pictures of their grandchildren. Ten hours of grandchildren pictures on an old train sounded like the eighth circle of hell. I strategically slid into the window seat (the elderly seem to enjoy window seats) and casually slung my bag onto the chair next to me. An amateur ruse, perhaps, one that could be easily undone by a simple question asked in a croaky voice with a wooden cane waved around, but it would hopefully be enough to drive off the weakest of the passengers. Putting in a pair of earbuds, I reclined in the seat once the last grandfather found his way to the diner car. The old bag trick seemed to have worked. At least, it did until a pair of gray eyes blinked down and pointed to the bag-occupied seat curiously, leading me to trail my gaze down to the messy bun…to the turtleneck…oh, crap.
Of course it would be rain-girl who happened to be on the same train.
Of course she would ask to take the seat right next to mine instead of going literally anywhere else. (I couldn’t really blame her, though. I wouldn’t wish the wrath of grandchildren pictures upon anybody, especially not this rather attractive stranger.)
“Is this seat taken?” Her voice was a lot higher-pitched than I had expected. Something about her seemed more vulnerable than it had when she had been standing in that station, and before either of us really knew it, my bag was on the floor and there was a girl sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for the train to rumble to life and take us both on a 10-hour journey of awkwardness and potential kissing. Wait. Scratch that. No kissing. This was going to be a very long ride. My new partner in Seat 102 was currently flipping through a thick book, occasionally dog-earing a page without any particular method as she twirled a strand of hair around and around her finger, as if that one coil of hair was the secret to all questions the universe held and the only way that it could be solved was if it was wound tightly enough around her finger to turn the skin red. She kept this up for about five minutes until her finger looked like it was about to explode, eventually dropping her hand in the book and tracing a line.
Even the grandchildren pictures would’ve been better.
* * *
Ten minutes into the train ride from hell and the earbuds had somehow managed to get tangled into several knots, looping around and around and making it rather difficult to listen to the song currently blaring in my ears. Or ear, to be more specific, since the other earbud was dangling somewhere between the two armrests separating me and rain-girl. She still seemed invested in the book, refusing to lift her gaze, and she was sitting completely still, save for turning the pages. She didn’t even seem to be breathing. Creepy.
“Is this yours?” She had something in her hand. It was the earbud. Of course it was the earbud. I would’ve been able to tell even if she wasn’t carefully pinching it between two fingers. Come on, witty remarks, don’t fail me now.
“W-well, yeah, seeing that it’s connected to my, uh, ear.” That couldn’t have come out any more awkward. Rain-girl let out a light, jingly laugh that sounded like it should have been a wind chime or something.
“What’re y’listening to?” Her voice had a strange lilt to it, as if she was stumbling over her words and crashing them together in a way that just barely made sense. It was sort of cute, in a way, or at least it would be if she would just let go of my damn earbud.
“Oh, uh, it’s listed on the screen.” I dropped the iPod on her lap for emphasis.
“It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” she murmured, turning the blue device around in her hands, the earbud seemingly forgotten for the moment. Her voice had turned clearer, more defined. “In a few years, I’m sure that these’ll be rendered obsolete, left in the past with records and cassettes and all of that. We’ll be just like our parents, living in nostalgia and memories instead of the here and now.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better about my tangled cord?” She looked taken aback at the response, almost hurt. I don’t think I was supposed to do that. She bounced back quickly, though, weaving her hands through the earbuds with deft fingers in an attempt to untangle them.
“I can help you with that,” she said, pulling out the last knot. “And, as my reward—” She put in the earbuds with a flourish. “I’ll listen to one of these songs.”
“OK.” How do you even respond to something like that?
For the next several minutes, she reclined in her seat, no longer completely still but now bobbing softly along to the music and drumming her fingers along the armrest as the landscape rushed by in the window. It looked like something out of a poem, really, the way she was sitting, the way the moonlight looked on her face—no, can’t think like that. I doubted that she even liked girls, anyway. The song had probably long since ended—most of them were around four minutes, and it had been at least 10—but really, who would have the heart to yank out the earbuds of someone who looked so happy? So she continued to sit there with my iPod in her lap as I watched her in comfortable silence.
Comfortable silence, now there’s another trope worth saying something about. It’s probably even more common than messy buns, in fact. I hadn’t really understood the phrase until now—silence usually only ever caused awkwardness, and awkwardness usually led to ducked heads in hallways after rejection and all of that messy garbage, but that’s a story for another day. That’s a story for another day happens to be yet another common lazy writer trope, and it’s one I’m not particularly fond of. Rain-girl chose that moment to snap me out of my thoughts about lazy writing tropes with a drop of the device back into my hands.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “You’ve got a nice taste in music, y’know that?”
“W-well, actually—”
“Could you maybe make a list of some of your favorite songs?”
This really was going to be a long train ride, wasn’t it?
* * *
It had been about an hour since the train had started moving, and rain-girl hadn’t said a word since I had accepted her request, writing down every catchy title I could think of.
She pulled off her hat and set it down next to her—a peace offering, maybe. She was letting her guard down, at least. If she had been keeping a guard up at all.
