He doesn’t answer, an unnameable silence bending the darkness around us, shaped by the things he doesn’t want to admit, doesn’tsay. But I know what it is to keep yourself secret, hidden, safe. And I smile, liking the quiet between our words.
“Everything feels different at night,” he says after a long exhale. “Like it all has more meaning.” He breathes, and I know there is more to this boy than what I can see beside me.
I tilt my head to look at him. A moment passes. Then another. Unfettered by noise, only our hearts thudding in our chests. A feeling that’s hard to describe: like the ends of my eyelashes are lit with electricity, like the sky right before a summer thunderstorm—the mere seconds before the first snap of lightning. He’s not looking for a response—it’s the silence we both crave.
But then it comes… the low rumble I’ve been waiting for, and I push myself up to standing, squinting through the dark down the tracks. “There,” I say, nodding.
Oak rises to his feet, his shoulder steady beside me, a boy who is a mountain, who is atree, who is a heartbeat too close. Our eyes watch the tracks, where a beam of light is breaking through the forest.
A train is coming, only a few minutes behind schedule.
Never on time.
It travels on a track that runs parallel to this abandoned section—where we stand on the forgotten train car. The ground begins to tremble. This is my favorite part: the anticipation. The world shaking out of focus just a little.
The vibration grows stronger, the train moving quickly, only seconds now. I step to the very edge of the roof, closer to the other track, my heart climbing up from my chest—the adrenaline inching along my veins. This is why I come, the thing I want to feel.
Oak watches me, and I can sense the flicker of uncertainty inhim. But he steps forward, filling the space beside me—this boy who stands so close, he could touch me if he wanted. He could pull Lark Goode into his arms and lay his lips against mine, but somehowhe resists. Somehow he seems immune when others would have slid their hands along my floral-scented skin by now, begging me to love them back.
Somehow,somehow…
And yet.
A part of me wishes he would.
The light of the approaching train grows impossibly bright, filling the sky, flashing across the trees, sending the ghosts back into the dark. I suck in a breath just as the train slams past us. A rush of air and sound roars against my ears, the metal wheels rattling over every divot in the track, and I swear the air smells like all the places the train has been—sun-soaked beaches and snowy mountainsides and deserts where nothing grows.
This train doesn’t stop here in Cutwater, doesn’t even slow down; it passes through on its way to better places.
The wind screams against our faces, the stationary train car shuddering below us, vibrating up our legs, and I hold out my arms to feel the rush of the wind against my skin, my hair swept out in waves behind me.
Oak grabs my hand.
He touches me.
Clenches his palm to mine.
I flick my eyes to his, and I can see that the fear in his tensed jaw and sharp green eyes isn’t for himself; it’s for me—he’s keeping me from tipping forward into the passing train as it shrieks past.
My heart bangs against my eardrums, and I pinch my eyes closed: the heat from his palm, the wind against my face, it makes my body feel wrenched inside out, ripped free from the roof and sent down the tracks. A girl who once lived in Cutwater but was swept up into the sky by a boy and a train.
“Lark,” I think I hear him say, my name against his lips, his voice like the first snowfall on autumn trees, cold and verdant and sanguine. I swallow, the pulse in my chest thudding louder, louder….
Until all at once the train is gone.
Whoosh.
Slipped back into the night, the last of the roar echoing off the trees, carried away into the distance, and the wind goes with it. Silence falls over us, the lack of noise almost unbearable, ears ringing, blood spilling back down my veins. But I don’t want to let go. I want to hold on to this moment, make it last, suspended like a raindrop against a cold windowpane.
But Oak slides his hand free from mine, and the moment is broken.
I feel lightheaded.
My heart is still beating against my ribs when I turn to look at him. “Do you want to go home?” I ask, breathless, senseless, reckless.
His eyes are blades. “No.”
“Good. I have something else to show you.”
