Part 1:
The young woman smoothed her skirt and lifted her case as the train pulled up to the station. As the doors opened and the arriving passengers departed the train she reflected on the memory of a day twelve years earlier when she had stood on this same platform and watched as one of the two people who ever really understood her got on the train and was whisked away from her life. When the last passenger had departed and the conductor checked her ticket she climbed up into the train. She went all the way to the back of the compartment before she slipped into an empty seat. She kept her case on her lap instead of stowing it in the overhead compartment so that she could have easy access to her notebook she kept tucked in the side. She watched half-hearted as the rest of the passengers got on the train and found their seats. She always watched the other passengers as they got on or off the train, hoping that someday she would see him again, even though she knew that after all these years she probably wouldn't actually recognize him if she bumped straight into him. Sadly she also knew that her feelings for him hadn't been reciprocated, and even had they been it would have been highly inappropriate as she had been a mere eight at the time and he had been nearer to thirty. Her mother had known at the time of her feelings for the older man, but truly believed it was merely a child's crush, and at the time that had been all it was. As she had grown older he had become the man in her fantasies. Daydreams where they lived in a small two bedroom home that they could barely afford with their careers, a cat that happened to look like the one she had until she was ten, books everywhere, and a small daughter who's intelligence and creativity were never stifled as hers had once been. Then she started waking up mornings with memories of dreams from the night before, dreams where his hands and his kisses drove her wild though she always woke up a few moments too soon. She had been out late the night before on a date with a young man, only two years older than her. She had thought that the relationship had been going well but last night after only two months he had started pressuring her to sleep with him. Her life growing up hadn't been completely horrid, her parents tried they really did and they had never hit any of their three children, but her parents had never encouraged her or her sister and her brother had run wild as a child and turned into a true delinquent by the time he was eleven. When her brother was fifteen he was sent to juvenile hall for the second time and when he was released at seventeen returned home, bringing with him his pregnant sixteen year old girlfriend. Fifteen at the time herself she had already been taking as many required classes as she could in high school just to finish sooner and get away from the town she had spent her whole life in. After they moved back in she studied twice as hard graduating a year early even despite her parents refusal to ever let her or her sister skip years in school. They had been adamant that they needed the experience and would never get back that time in their lives even throughout countless meetings her teachers, principle and guidance councilor had called trying to reason with them. Of course to be fair they had hardly been older than her brother when they had gotten married, and they assumed that their daughters would marry right out of high school too. Her mother had finally signed to let her take her finals early and graduate when she realized that she had a scholarship to a collage and that she didn't intend to marry anytime soon. Her father hadn't been happy when he found out but didn't protest too much as he usually looked to his wife to make decisions regarding the children. Her younger sister and she had been forced to share a room the last couple years so that her nephew could have her sister's room. Three years and a four year college degree later she had returned home to spend the summer with her family. She had thought about trying to find him again, but realized that she had virtually no information to go on. The first week home her sister graduated from high school. The second week home her brother and his family moved into their own home finally, a small home they had helped build themselves through one of those assistance programs. The fourth week their twins were born bringing them up to five, all boys. While visiting her new nephews in the hospital she had met Jim at the hospital, who was visiting his mother who worked there. They had started seeing each other, and until the night before he had been willing to go slowly. The sixth week her grandmother died, leaving her the money she had made from the book she had written, and while she was grateful for the money, she deeply mourned the loss of her grandmother who was the second person who understood her. After her grandmother's death her family's petty squabbles and foolish antics threatened to drive her insane, and after having Jim over for dinner one night and seeing how well he got along with her family she contemplated dumping him. Then her mother had given him high praise she really started worrying. The next day she went to the local elementary school she had attended as a child, where he had taught for a week to try and find out more about him, but hit a wall when she realized that the records of his employment with the school had been lost in one of the fires her brother had caused in an attempt to destroy his permanent record. The school had finally put all their records on a computer after the third fire, but any information about the teacher she sought had been destroyed and the only one who even remembered him any more didn't even have his last name right. Giving up hadn't been easy but she knew now that she needed to move on for good, even though at the same time she realized that anyone she ever met would be compared to him. After spending the summer with her family she was even more reluctant to become intimate with someone who she knew was not someone she wanted to spend her life with and had already decided to break up with him before she left for the city where her first teaching job waited for her in the fall. Last night after getting back late from her date she had stayed up even later to pack the last couple boxes that were being shipped to her new apartment in a week. Though considering she had entrusted her mother with the task she doubted they would be shipped to her the next week and she would probably have to call her mother several times before her mother would finally decide to send her father and brother down with them. Not wanting to consider having to share the small space she had rented with them overnight like she knew she would she went back to scanning people as they went past her, heading for the lavatories or to the food carriage. After a few minutes she let herself drift off to sleep that she desperately needed. It was a three and a half hour ride and the final stop for the evening so she didn't need to worry about oversleeping. |
