Weirdos, predictably, pour out of the train. They awkwardly pick their way around my undignified form. Should I ask one of them to help me up? To throw me onboard with my luggage?
Is it worth it, to force them to make eye contact with me when I am basically indistinguishable from a wrung-out towel?
I can’t even move my mouth to ask. Also, I think drool is trickling down my jaw.
One by one, passengers step onto the train. I’m forced to watch as the last one hefts a bag with a skeleton print up the carriage steps. One, two, three, four… and then there’s no one else. A yellow-light-backed hole looms before me, like the light of heaven held out to a dying man. It’s calling to me.Get on, Sabby. Come on.
Then the doors clamp shut. The machinery grouses as the engines pick up. Only as the train whirs past and air whooshes against my eyeballs does my nausea subside. My breath normalizes. And I regain a sense of having bones.
All too late.
“No,” I whisper, because my jaw has remembered how to work again.
No. No no no no. The words resound in my skull. The train moves on, abandoning the platform for more heavenly locales, leaving me here in hell. I swear that’s what this is, because I feel the flames licking at my newly reusable feet, scalding me as they incinerate my hopes and dreams.
If I can’t be in New York by morning, it’ll be a disaster. If my senior—the person who is supposed to be my direct supervisor—thinks I’m ghosting on my first day on the job, I’ll be let go. Worse, I’ll be blacklisted from every major accounting company worldwide. And then what? I worked my ass off to be a top-three student in high school, despite spending over a year living on friends’ couches. I worked part-time catering jobs during college, crammed into student housing with awkwardly touching beds. I single-handedly carried our group projects to completion. I got an A in Intermediate Accounting 1! And I abandoned my mattress for weeks, applying for internships. I can’t let all of that toiling and misery go to waste.
All one has to do is look at Mom to see what happens to a Spük woman whose dreams of normalcy are thwarted.
It can’t be too late to bargain my way out of this.
“Call Baldy,” I demand of my phone after plopping my earbud back in. It rings too loud in my ears.
He picks up, and I start talking before he can say anything.
“What if I paid you to make a teeny-tiny amendment to the will? Would it take a hundred bucks? A thousand? I can set up a payment plan with you,” I say, fighting to sound calm and measured and businesslike. The bad news is, it sounds more like begging. Okay, so it is begging. I’ve used up all my savings and was planning to live on credit until getting my first paycheck from EFG. But maybe there’s a chance. “I can ask my mom. Not that she has a thousand dollars on hand. Pesos, maybe. Could I send you pesos?”
“Samantha, the will’s terms are clear, and you accepted them. I will visit soon to discuss next steps.”
Baldy hangs up, and it takes everything in me not to shake my fist at the sky—a sky snuffed out of stars, and moonlight, and any sign of hope whatsoever. I want to let the tears prickling at my eyes embark on a feeble journey to my chin. I want to weep like a destitute medieval maiden who’s had her beet harvest stolen by a villainous rogue. Instead, because I’m in public, and because I’ve already sacrificed all my normalcy capital by temporarily turning into a human puddle, I refuse to become more noticeable in my shame.
I instead resign myself to mentally screaming at Grandma Rose as I crawl to a bench where I can lick my wounds. Another vile October breeze flutters past, prompting a shiver. I squeeze my hands together, annoyed at the crisp fall note in the air. I can practically hear Grandma Rose cackling from above—where, I continue to suspect, she’s already ascended, unbeknownst to Baldy and this indecently magical will.
Less than an hour after my train leaves for Penn Station without me, I’m back staring at the feature-flush facade of Grandma Rose’s house. Even in the dark, it screams for attention: the two-story home is crammed onto a triangular lot, shaped and painted like a pink piece of pie. Mom never could explain the decision-making behind this. I always assumed someone liked strawberries.
As I wriggle the house key out from under the flamingo’swoven-sandaled foot, Bulan rolls out from a flower bed filled with weeds. Of course he’s grinning wildly.
“I knew you weren’t really going to leave!” he crows. “A Spük never spooks.”
It pains me that I can’t prove him wrong.
“I think a worm’s stuck in your beard.”
He gives himself a solid shake, flinging the poor earthworm to the wind. “Better?”
“Uhh, sure.”
“Good. I prefer sleeping on pillows to peat. It’s much less squirmy.”
Bulan follows me to the front door and bounces up the stairs in hyper little bursts. I don’t want him staying with me, exactly, but what kind of person leaves a stray outside on a cool night? It’s in the fifties. Though my experience having a beard is limited, I’m guessing that when it comes to warmth, it’s no substitute sweater.
“So, so, so,” Bulan huffs. “You’re back! Does this mean we’re doing the wedding after all?”
“Just because I’m here, I’m not—”
“Dave and Amanda are expecting you to do it,” reminds Bulan.
“That sounds like athemproblem,” I reply.
