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I force a grin. “You just happen to know that, huh?”
She flutters her hands at me dismissively, hiding a pleased expression.
I jump off my stool, feeling the need to get some fresh air and think. First, I round the island to give her a kiss on her cheek. “I love you, Kerry.”
“I know,” she replies with a chuckle. “Now get out of my kitchen.”
I drive for a while with my windows down, long enough for the sun to set and the air to turn slightly cooler, before somehow turning up at the Fareway Freight train trestle. Another task off the Walker list. One of the last. I haven’t been putting it off, like I did with Charles. Not exactly, anyway. There’s a lot of history here because we used to fish underneath it as kids during the offseason. A lot of memories of long talks and big dreams. Maybe that’s why I’m here. This is where we originally hatched our plan to go into the PBR together. Maybe I’m hoping there’s something magical about this place. That being here will give me clarity, or maybe I just want to get this fucking list over with and move on with the rest of my life.
I’m stagnant. I’m literally standing on the precipice. Do I follow the path he laid out before me, or do I swerve?
It’s a stupid dare. Trains are rare and the trestle is rickety as fuck, but kids used to walk across it all the time until last summer when two sophomores from the football team got hit by a freight train in an initiation gone tragically wrong.
I don’t know if that was before or after Walker made this list, but everything seems pretty quiet now, so I jump out of my car and hike up the steep hill in the darkness toward the tracks. I stand at one end and stare into the tunnel. It seemed shorter from where I was parked. I shine my phone’s flashlight and count the railroad ties. Fifty-four in total. The trestle isn’t as high as the corn silo, but it’s still a good twenty-five feet in the air over Rock River. I take a step. Tiny pebbles grate against the metal, scratching and squeaking under my Jordans. I take another step and another until I’m in the dead center of the narrow bridge. Twenty-seven ties in. Wrapping my arm around the cold metal, I lean out into the open air. The cool night presses and pulls at my sweat-damp button-down, making me shiver. I gulp the air into my lungs, past the tightness in my throat. Beneath me, inky black water rushes over massive boulders, drowning out the noise of my breaths. The air pricks at my cheeks, and I realize I’mcrying.
What am I doing? I slide down carefully to a squat, still gripping the metal, even as I curl in on myself. I can’t seem to catch my breath. I can’t feel or see or hear anything but rushing water. I don’t know how long I stay like that; I only know all of a sudden, the metal beneath my palms is shaking. No. Not shaking.Vibrating. Every atom of my being instantly charges as if I’ve been zapped with a cattle prod, and I spin on my heel to see the telltale pinprick of lights rapidly growing in the distance.
A train.
You have got to be kidding me. I calculate the numbers. DoI have time to make a run for it, or do I have to jump? The water is fucking cold.
Run it is. Make it a sprint.
The rumbling is louder, but it’s still a ways off. Twenty ties. Eighteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eight. The train is louder now. Really loud. Too loud to look. Just run. Keep running. Don’t stop running.
Six.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
I scramble off to the side, sliding on the dewy grass and rolling painfully over gravel and debris. My body comes to a stop just as a mighty gust of wind and painful roaring assault me—the train flying past. I reach for my chest as if I could grasp my heart, thudding painfully inside of me, trying to escape. Train car after train car rushes past, and still I sit, rubbing at the beating muscle under my fingertips. It finally passes, and I fall back against the ground, staring at the star-filled sky and laughing.
Fucking laughing.
What just happened? I can’t believe that just happened. I almost died. Fucking Walker and his fucking list almost killed me. Again.
With a groan, I get to my feet and climb back up toward the trestle.
Because of course, I have to do it all over again to get back to my truck. This time, though, I don’t mess around. I don’t count the railroad ties, and I don’t stop at the halfway point to cry. No trains come, and I make it back to my car in one piece. Thetrembling has stopped, and my adrenaline has melted away. It’s been seventeen minutes since I left my car, and now I’m back, and I’m just me again.
Nothing has changed. I’m still the same as I was when I stepped onto that trestle. I still have the same problems, the same misery, same loneliness, same uncertainty.
But also,everythinghas changed. Because that’s it. I’m done letting Walker’s memory guide my life. I won’t survive it. I need to start living on my own.
TwentyCASE
The night after the train trestle, I watch a Rangers game with my dad for the first time since I got my driver’s license. We don’t typically do that kind of father-son bonding. He’s always working late, and to be honest, we don’t have a whole lot in common. I have to imagine I’m a lot like my mom, though he’s never said. I know he loved my mom, so much he can’t bring himself to talk about her even, eighteen years after the fact, and I’ve always told myself he has to love me that much, too. Like deep down inside. Or maybe that’s not something men talk about with their sons. Walker’s dad was super affectionate with the both of us, but that could be because his kid was sick. Maybe this is typical if no one’s actively dying.
I’ve never given it much thought. Not until recently, after being exposed to Winnie’s dad. The thing is, my dad and I don’t see eye to eye on much, but hehasalways seen me and taken care of me. He’s always been a dad.
The bar is admittedly low, but still.
