Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

the lonely way.” Then a moment later, the girl: “What if they go back to DW?” And Brady: “Then it will be over. And you can come home.”

The initials DW stuck out to me, because I had seen them before. They were carved into a desk in my social sciences class, deeply etched as though someone had done it with a pocketknife. I figured they were the initials of someone’s ex-boyfriend or something. But then, in the cafeteria, at the edge of the stage, I noticed someone had written in black Sharpie, Going down, down, down, to DW. So apparently DW was a place.

The shriek of the bell caught me completely unprepared, and I realized I was alone in the hallway. Just one more second, I kept thinking. Then I’ll go to my class on surrealist fiction. I pressed up against the wall to keep listening.

But then I recognized the thudding feet of the hall monitor coming my way. I ducked into the nearby handicapped bathroom and waited for what seemed like an eternity before I could clearly hear his footsteps receding.

When I stepped back into the hallway, I realized I could no longer hear Brady and the girl. I whipped around just in time to see them heading for the front of the school, his hand gently resting on her back. She was a tall, thin girl with long brown hair, and despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but feel a crushing jealousy of her—of her long legs and tiny waist. She was a good three inches taller than me and was wearing what appeared to be designer jeans and a fitted suede jacket.

I remained flattened against the wall until they turned the corner.

Okay, I figured. Now I’ll go to class. But when my feet started moving, it was towards Brady, and the parking lot.

I watched from a window, until I saw them get into a beat-up old Pontiac and drive away. They made a left out of the lot, and then a right onto Clark Street. And since Clark Street dead-ended about a quarter mile from the school, there was only one place they could have been heading: the old train station.

I don’t know why I did it. It wasn’t like me. I was a good Catholic girl. But it was the last class of the day, and if I went back in now, I’d just get written up.

Maybe I knew in my gut something was wrong, because nothing good ever happened at the train station.

After all, that’s where Robbie was killed.

I hadn’t been to the station since Robbie’s “accident,” which was the word my parents used to describe the night Kieren apparently pushed him in front of the train. The word accident always had a certain weight to it whenever they said it—a weight that said, in no uncertain terms, that they believed Kieren had done it on purpose.

Straddling my frozen bike on the sidewalk across from the station, spying on Brady and the girl as they sat in the parked Pontiac talking, I couldn’t help but let my eyes drift down the tracks a bit, towards the part where Robbie was hit, and farther down, to the place where Kieren had made me that flattened penny as the commuter train brought workers home from Proxit Tech. That train didn’t even run anymore. Since Proxit Tech closed, they shut down the commuter line, and guys like my dad had to start driving to work.

Now only the long-distance lines came through the station: one heading west towards Oregon, I believed, and the other one heading east. I had no idea where that one ended up, but I liked to imagine New York City. They were both dream-chasing trains—the kind you get on when you have no intention of ever coming back.

The station looked abandoned now, the white paint muted and chipping, the weeks-old snow that clung to the roof gray from the exhaust of passing cars. The ivy that adorned the walls had died at some point, and the city had removed all the other plants and trees—I guess because they weren’t worth the upkeep. A vending machine had been placed outside, the word TICKETS handwritten across the top.

Brady and the girl finally stepped out of the Pontiac and bought one of those vending-machine tickets. It was hard to tell from where I was standing, but the girl’s face looked numb and distant, as though she had been crying for hours. Brady put his arm around her shoulders and she buried her head in his chest.

They stood that way for a long time, and while I knew I should probably go, my feet felt locked in cement. It was like a foreign film. I didn’t understand the language, but somehow I couldn’t turn it off.

Finally, after about fifteen minutes, the train came. The westbound train. It screeched to a halt and when it pulled away a minute later, only Brady was standing there. I watched him walk to his car and drive away. I had no idea what time it was, but the sky had turned quite dark. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe 4 p.m. It was official. I had cut school.

I wouldn’t be able to take the path that ran along the tracks back to my house, as it was probably coated in a sheet of winter ice. I’d have to take the main road, behind Brady. I waited another fifteen minutes, turning my back to the wind and rocking slightly against the chill. Only one car passed.

I couldn’t wait anymore. Pretty soon I’d barely be able to see the road, and I wasn’t wearing any reflective clothing. I’d have to think up a story to tell my mother about where I’d been after school. I pedaled harder and harder while I thought, the blood rushing through my limbs and finally warming me up. I turned in to my neighborhood of small, identical houses, cold and hungry, anxious to be home.

I wondered where