Fullepub 
Chapter 15
15
[Photo shows a young white man with red hair sitting on a subway train holding a bag of groceries. In the background, just out of focus, a dark-haired woman reads a book with headphones on, a leather jacket bundled under one arm.]
May 14, 2015
“I swear to God, if I have to inflate one more balloon…” Wes says as he ties off a red balloon with his teeth.
“Get used to it,” Myla says. She’s tying a bundle of them together with a rainbow of ribbons. “We need about two hundred more of these to pull this off.”
Wes halfheartedly gives her the finger. Myla blows him a kiss.
August checks her phone. Three hours until doors open on the most ambitious—and only—party she’s ever attempted to throw in her life. Six hours until they put their plan into motion. Seven hours until Myla overloads the circuit and blacks out the line.
Seven hours until Jane might be gone for good.
And here August is, blowing up a ten-foot inflatable cat with sunglasses and an electric guitar.
The party store by Myla’s work donated their least popular decorations, and they had to take what giant inflatables they could get—anything tall enough to block a security camera. The balloons will take care of the rest.
“Do you need anything?” Gabe asks, hovering around Myla like an enormous gnat with a Shawn Hunter haircut. Part of the agreement with the city was that Gabe’s uncle would supervise the event, and Gabe’s uncle apparently does not give a shit, because he sent Gabe instead. They keep having to switch topics when he drifts too close, so he doesn’t figure out the whole thing is partially a cover for a time crime.
“Actually,” Myla says, “I would love a Filet-O-Fish. Ooh, and a bubble tea.”
“Oh, uh—sure, okay.” And Gabe wanders off, glowering at Niko when he thinks nobody’s looking.
“That should buy us an hour,” Myla says when he’s gone. “Do you think I should feel bad about this?”
“I overheard him explaining wage disparity to Lucie earlier,” Wes says. “He said he believes he’s ‘undermining capitalism’ by ‘choosing’ not to pay his own rent.”
“Ew,” Myla groans. “Nope, okay, sticking to the plan.”
The Plan, as outlined on the whiteboard, and then thoroughly erased to destroy all evidence: One. Wait for the party to hit maximum capacity. Two. Myla seduces Gabe’s security clearance badge away from him. Three. August sneaks out to meet Jane on the Q. Four. Wes stages a diversion to pull security guards away from the control room door. Five. Myla overloads the line while Jane stands on the third rail.
August ties off her last balloon and texts Jane a selfie—tongue out, peace sign, hair static from all the helium-filled latex.
sup, ugly, Jane texts back, and August almost spits out her gum. She should never have given Jane and Myla each other’s numbers. Jane’s going to be bringing millennial humor back to the ’70s.
God, she’ll miss her.
While Lucie and Jerry set up the pancake station, Myla’s network of Brooklyn artists start wheeling in sculptures and paintings and wood reliefs of ugly dogs for the silent auction. There are wristbands to wrangle, drink tickets to count, lights and a stage and a sound system to set up, gendered bathroom signs to cover with pictures of breakfast foods.
“Put it on, Wes.” August sighs, throwing the last remaining Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes T-shirt at him.
“This is a small,” he argues. “You know I wear XL.”
“Please, that is a youth medium-ass man,” says a loud voice, and it’s Isaiah, brows already glued down, swanning in with a clothing rack full of drag and a trail of half-done drag daughters. Winfield’s bringing up the rear, and once they disappear into the back to paint, Wes pouts and puts his size small T-shirt on and trudges to the corner where his friends from the tattoo shop have set up their booth.
Six kegs and ten crates full of liquor get unloaded from someone’s borrowed minivan, courtesy of Slinky’s and a few other neighborhood bars, and Lucie directs a couple of Billy’s busboys hanging lights from the rafters over the makeshift dance floor and the stage they’ve set up for the show. When Myla kills the overheads, August has to admit the place looks incredible, all brutalist lines and giant antique levers and dingy tubes of wires transformed in the glow.
Eight o’clock draws closer and closer, and August can’t believe it, but they actually made this happen.
“You ready for this, old man?” August asks, tying her hair up as she takes her spot at Jerry’s side, next to the griddle. He and a small army of line cooks will be slinging pancakes all night, and August and Lucie will be passing them out to the drunk and hungry.
“Born ready, buttercup,” Jerry says with a wink.
She knew, mathematically, that they sold more than two thousand tickets for tonight. But it’s one thing to see the number, and another entirely to see this many people in the flesh, dancing and bellying up to the makeshift bar. Jerry and the line cooks start pouring batter on the griddle, and August realizes they might save Billy’s and Jane in one night after all.
The first hour passes in a riot of color and noise and maple syrup. Art school kids in Filas pick their way down the silent auction line, oohing and ahhing at Myla’s enormous, glittering, twitching sculpture, which she’s entitled IT DO TAKE NERVE. People line up to have Wes or someone else from his shop ink something impulsive onto their arms. The first queens take the stage, spinning under the lights and crowing crass jokes into the microphone.
It gets louder, and louder, and louder.
Lucie leans over, scrambling to fill a plate with pancakes before a shitfaced NYU student with corduroy overalls and half-pink hair can chug any more of the complimentary syrup. “Did we give out too many drink tickets?”
August watches two girls nearby go from making out to viciously arguing and back to making out in the span of four seconds. “We were trying to get them to donate more.”
“Have you seen Myla?” says a voice to her right. It’s Gabe, out of breath and sweaty, a rapidly separating milk tea in one hand and a crumpled McDonald’s bag in the other.
August looks him over. “Man, I don’t think she wants that Filet-O-Fish anymore. It’s been, like, four hours.”
“Shit,” he says. He looks around at the pandemonium in time to see Vera Harry throw herself off the stage and start crowdsurfing. “Things got, uh, kinda crazy while I was gone.”
“Yeah,” August says. The tires on Gabe’s Tesla may or may not have been slashed by a fish-shaped knife before his errand to keep him busy for a few hours. August isn’t taking questions. “You want a drink?”
The night blares on—the guys from the post office next to Billy’s having a disjointed dance-off, a person with a lip ring shotgunning two White Claws at once, bodies jumping and swaying as the queen who is sometimes Winfield takes the stage in a magenta beard and performs an elaborate socialism-themed number set to a mix of “She Works Hard for the Money” and clips from AOC speeches.
Isaiah’s Easter brunch was madness. Christmas in July was chaos. But this is a full-tilt, balls-to-the-wall, someone-getting-a-tattoo-of-Chuckie-Finster, drag-king-named-Knob-Dylan-doing-a-full-gymnastics-routine shitshow. The tip jar by the pancake griddle is overflowing with cash. August feels like the entire belly of New York’s weirdest and queerest has emptied out on the dance floor, smelling like syrup and weed and hairspray. If she weren’t double occupied by her pancake job and the Jane plan, Myla and Niko would have her out there in a cloud of glitter.
The feeling she had at Delilah’s comes back, tugging at her hair, pushing her heart against her ribs. Jane should be here. Not on a train waiting for this party to smuggle her out of purgatory. Here, in it, defiant by existing, in a room full of people who would love her.
“And what are we here for tonight?” Bomb Bumboclaat shouts into the mic.
“Billy’s!” the crowd shouts.
“Who has held down the corner of Church and Bedford for forty-five years?”
“Billy’s!”
“Who’s gon’ do it for forty-five more?”
“Billy’s!”
“And what do we say to landlords?”
The crowd inhales as one, through smoke and dry ice and paint fumes, and they bellow out in one resounding voice, middle fingers raised up to the lights, “Fuck you!”
Bomb Bumboclaat leaves the stage, and the alarm goes off on August’s phone.
It’s time.
August’s fingers are sweaty on her phone.
She can do this. She can.
She registered with one of those conference call services last week so they could keep a group call going while they try to pull this off—the bootleg version of Mission Impossible comms. She ducks behind a bundle of balloons and starts the call.
Myla dials in first, then Wes, Niko, and finally Jane. She knows exactly where each of them is, because they agreed on it beforehand: Wes is taking a break from the tattoo booth to smoke a cigarette dangerously close to a trash can full of alcohol-soaked paper cups. Myla is milling around the edge of the dance floor, keeping an eye on Gabe as he refills his drink. Niko is one floor up, looking over the railing of the catwalk to keep tabs on everyone.
“And I’m on the subway,” Jane says. “You know, in case anyone was wondering.”
August switches her phone to speaker and slides it upside down into the front pocket of her T-shirt, like she did the night of Isaiah’s party. Only it’s not just Jane in her pocket this time. It’s a whole family.
“Y’all ready?”
“Yep,” Myla says.
“As I’ll ever be,” Wes says.
“I like when you’re in crime boss mode,” Jane adds.
“These pancakes are fantastic,” Niko says, muffled through a mouthful. “Tell Jerry I said he’s doing great.”
“Do the spirit guides have anything to say about whether or not this is gonna work?” Jane asks.
August looks up to see Niko lick a finger and stick it in the air. “Hmm. I’m feeling pretty good about it.”
“Dope,” Myla says. “Let’s go.”
August can’t see her through the enormous crowd, but she can hear the noise shifting through the speaker as she moves.
“Hey, Gabe?” she says. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Gabe’s voice comes faintly across the line. “Sure, what’s up?”
“No, I meant … alone.” Myla leans heavily on the last word. She’s heard Myla use that voice on Niko more than she’d care to think about around the apartment, usually followed by a lot of loud music from their room and August taking a trip downstairs for an extra-long Popeyes dinner.
“Oh. Okay, yeah.”
She drags him off toward a storage closet they scouted earlier, and August finally catches a glimpse of them, Myla’s hand wrapped around his elbow. The badge is where it’s been all day—on the lanyard hanging around his neck. August watches Myla lean away from him and into the phone tucked under her bra strap, ducking her head down so he can’t see her mouth move.
“Niko, everything I’m about to say to this guy is a complete and total lie, and I love you and will marry you and adopt a hundred three-eyed ravens or whatever it is your weird ass wants instead of kids,” she mutters.
“I know,” Niko says back. “Did you just propose to me?”
“Oh shit, I guess I did?” Myla opens the door and shoves Gabe through it.
“I’m so mad at you,” Niko says. “I already have a ring at home.”
“Oh my God, seriously?” says Jane.
“Mazel,” Wes chimes in.
“Y’all,” August says.
“Right,” Myla says. “Here I go. Muting you guys now.”
August sees her slide a hand under her shirt to turn the volume on her phone down, but she leaves the mic on. “Hey, Gabe. Sorry to bug you. But I … I just really wanted to thank you for helping us.”
August can practically hear him blushing. “Oh, it’s no big deal. Anything for you, Myles.”
“Myles?” Wes and August mutter in disgusted unison.
“I wanted to let you know … I’m so sorry about what happened between us. I was a dick. I don’t know what I was thinking. You deserved better.”
“I appreciate you saying that.”
“And, I … I know you have every right to hate me. But fuck if I don’t still think about you all the time.”
“You do?”
“Yeah … when Niko’s asleep, sometimes, I think about you. That one time, in the elevator of my dorm, you remember? I couldn’t walk straight for two days.”
“Yikes,” Wes says.
“Amateur,” Niko notes.
“And especially when I hear that song you used to like—you remember? Sometimes it comes on, and I’ll think, wow, I wonder what Gabe’s doing. I really let a good one get away.” She sighs for dramatic effect. “I missed you. I didn’t even know what you’d been doing for the past two years. You’ve been keeping yourself from me, huh?”
“I mean, honestly, it’s mostly this job. Um, yeah, and I got really into intermittent fasting. And vaping. Those are, like, my two main hobbies.”
“Those are hobbies?” Wes deadpans.
“Do I even want to know what that means?” Jane asks.
“Shh,” Niko hisses, “it’s getting good.”
“Wow,” Myla continues. “I’d love to hear all about that sometime—”
“It’s actually really interesting. I read about how Silicon Valley programmers can go for twenty, twenty-two hours straight without eating or only supplementing with a meal replacement shake. Apparently skipping meals and restricting nutrients makes time go by more slowly, so you can get more done in your day. That’s how I have time to do this job and start making a business plan for my line of JUULpods.”
“Oh my God,” August says.
“Yeah, um,” Myla stammers. “Wow. You always were so … creative. I—”
“Yeah!” Gabe says, suddenly excited. This was not the plan. “I’m close to having my first product line developed, then I’ll go into market testing. My concept is, like, savory pods. You know how you only ever see sweet ones? But what about, like, a buffalo chicken vape? Or—”
“This is transcendent,” Niko says. It sounds like he’s got a mouthful of pancake.
“She has to kill him,” Wes says. “It’s the only way.”
“—pepperoni pizza vape, bacon cheeseburger vape, you know? And for the vegetarians, there’s a whole line with bean burrito and nacho cheese and paneer tikka masala flavors—”
“I’m gonna barf,” August says.
“Anyway, I’m still looking for investors. I’m so glad you’re into the idea. It’s been hard to pitch.”
“Yeah, I guess some people have preconceived notions about, uh, what vapes should taste like? But anyway—”
“You know what? I have some samples in my car—did I tell you I got a Tesla last year? I mean technically, my dad got it, but anyway, let me go grab some and you can taste for yourself.”
“Oh, you really don’t have to do that—”
“No problem at all, Myles.”
“No, Gabe—fuck.” There’s a rustling over the line as Myla pulls her phone out and unmutes the group call. “I didn’t get the badge.”
August spins on the spot. On the other side of the crowd is Gabe, headed for the door.
“Fuck it, I’ll get it,” August says into her phone, and she snatches up the nearest bowl of batter and plows straight toward him.
In the crush of bodies, it’s easy to play the last few steps into a stumble—right into Gabe’s chest, pancake batter splattering everywhere, up his neck and into his hair, soaking his Members Only jacket.
“Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry!” August shouts over the crowd. Gabe holds his hands out in shock, and she pulls a towel from her apron and start sopping up the batter. “I’m a disaster, oh my God.”
“This jacket is vintage,” he hisses.
And that’s all it takes—concern over his stupid jacket—for him not to notice when she slides her hand under the towel and unclips the badge from his lanyard.
“I’m so sorry,” August repeats. She slides the card into her back pocket. “I—I can give you my Venmo and you can charge me for the dry cleaning.”
He sighs heavily. “Don’t worry about it.”
He storms away and August waves apologetically after him, then leans back into the phone in her front pocket. “Got it.”
“That’s my girl,” Jane replies.
“Oh, thank God,” comes Myla’s voice. “I thought I was gonna have to vape some lamb vindaloo.”
“No crimes against nature tonight,” August says. “Except for the big one, I guess. Meet me in the bathroom, Niko?”
“Be there with bells on.”
“Okay, Jane,” August says. “I’m gonna end the call, but I should be there in ten. Just—just stay where you are.”
“I think I can manage,” Jane says, and August disconnects.
She passes the ID to Niko, and he gives her a vague salute and heads off. He’ll meet Myla near the control room once everyone is in place. Just one more step—setting up the diversion.
“You ready?” August asks Wes, sidling up beside him at the trash can.
He smirks and raises an eyebrow. “Ready to commit arson at a loud party? This is what I was born to do.”
“Okay,” August says, untying her apron. “I’ll give you the signal when we get over the bridge. I’m gonna—”
“Where have you been?” says Lucie’s voice from behind her. Fuck. She sounds like she’s about to start spitting curses in Czech. August spins around to find her glaring, a bottle of maple syrup clutched in her hand like a grenade. “These people. Nightmare. I need help.”
“I—” How the fuck is she going to get out of this? “I’m sorry, I—”
“She had the most genius idea,” says another familiar voice, and there’s Annie Depressant herself, bewigged and costumed, a stack of stuffed pancakes balanced atop her head. “I’m gonna take over for her.” She points to the tip jar. “I can double that in fifteen minutes.”
Lucie looks between Annie and August, eyes narrowed. August tries to look like she’s in on it.
“Fine,” Lucie says. “We try for half an hour.” She jabs August’s shoulder with one of her pointy acrylics. “Then you are back on shift.”
“Sure, no problem,” August says. Lucie stalks off, and August whips back to Annie, who’s casually buffing her nails on her fake tits. “How did you—”
“You think I’m stupid?” she says. “Like it’s not obvious to anyone who knows y’all that something’s going on. Look at Wes. He’s sweating like a fucking hard cheese on the A train. I don’t need to know what you’re doing, but, you know, I can help.”
Wes stares at Annie for a full five seconds, and says, “Oh Jesus Christ, I’m in love with you.”
Annie blinks. “Can you say that without looking like you’re gonna throw up?”
“I’m—uh—” He visibly gulps down whatever else he was going to say. “Actually, yeah, I am. Yeah. In love with you.”
“Look, I am very happy for both of you,” August says, “but we are on a clock here—”
“Right,” Annie says. She smiles. She’s a supernova.
“Right,” Wes says. Neither of them is even pretending to look at August.
“I’m gonna kiss you,” Annie says to Wes. “And then I’m gonna go serve some pancakes to some drunks, and you can tell me why later.”
“Okay,” Wes says.
They kiss. And August runs.
Times Square is streaking, blazing, burning through August’s glasses.
Like most people who live in Brooklyn, she never comes here, but it’s the nearest Q stop to the Control Center. The streets are nearly empty at one in the morning, but August still has to vault over someone slumped on the sidewalk in a Hello Kitty costume and bank hard to avoid a shuttered halal cart.
She throws herself down the subway stairs, races to the platform, and there, somehow in perfect alignment with the universe, is the Q waiting for her with doors open. She lunges onto the train as they slide shut.
Momentum carries her across the aisle, and she smacks into the opposite side of the car, startling a drunk couple so much, they nearly drop their takeout.
To her right, a voice says, “Hell of an entrance, Coffee Girl.”
And there’s Jane. Same as always: tall and smirking and the girl of August’s dreams. She’s got her jacket settled carefully onto her shoulders, her things neatly tucked away inside her backpack like it’s the first day of school. The way she might have looked stepping onto that bus to California if she’d ever made it. August chokes out a laugh and lets the movement of the train carry her into Jane’s side.
“Incredible,” Jane says as she gathers August up in her arms. “Ran all that way, and you still smell like pancakes.”
They ride through Manhattan, across the Manhattan Bridge, and into Brooklyn, where August texts Wes his cue and Wes texts back fire in the hole and a photo of security guards rushing to put out a blaze in the designated trash can.
“Okay,” August says, turning to Jane. She holds out a hand. “Once more for old time’s sake?”
Jane laces their fingers together, and they walk from one car to the next, platform after platform, like they did all those months ago when Jane dragged her through the emergency exit for the first time. August can’t even remember to be afraid.
With every car, there are fewer and fewer passengers, until they hit the very last one. It’s empty.
They’re easing past Parkside Ave., where it all started. It’s too dark to see the painted tiles or climbing ivy, but August can picture the apartment buildings and nail salons and pawn shops standing over the tracks, turned down for the night. She imagines New York ghosts unfurling from under stairs and between shelves to stand at the windows and watch Jane skate away.
“I guess I should give you this,” Jane says, pulling her phone out of her back pocket. “I don’t want to accidentally cause a paradox or something by bringing that back to the ’70s.”
“But what if I need to—” August says automatically. “Oh. Right. Yeah, of course. Obviously not.”
She takes the phone and tucks it into her pocket.
“I also, uh,” Jane says.
She hesitates before tugging her backpack off and shrugging out of her jacket. She hands that over too.
“I want you to have this.”
August stares at her. She’s looking back softly, something pulling at the dimple on the side of her mouth, exactly and nothing at all like she did that morning they met and she held out a scarf.
“I can’t—I can’t take your jacket.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Jane says, “I’m telling you. I want you to have it. And who knows? Maybe I’ll stay, and you can give it right back.”
“Fine,” August says, reaching into her bag. “But you have to take this with you.”
It’s a Polaroid, the one Niko took of them the night of Easter brunch, before August accidentally solved part of the mystery with a kiss. Inside the little square of film, Jane’s screaming with laughter, a wad of cash pinned to her chest and a crown on her head, the constant backdrop of the Q behind her. She has a red lipstick print on the side of her sharp jaw. Under her arm is August, turned away from the chaos, gazing up at Jane’s profile like she’s the only person on the planet. Her lipstick is smudged.
It’s not the only picture she has of her and Jane together, but it is her favorite. If Jane can only have one thing to remember her by, it should be this.
Jane spends a long second looking at it before tucking it into her backpack and shouldering it again.
“Deal,” she says, and August takes the jacket.
She puts it on over her Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes T-shirt, turning under the fluorescents to show it off. It’s surprisingly light on her shoulders. The sleeves are slightly too long.
“Well? How does it look?”
“Ridiculous,” Jane says with a grin. “Awful. Perfect.”
They’ve moved through Brooklyn swiftly, barely anyone at the final few stops.
August glances up at the board. One last stop.
“Hey,” she says. “If you go back.”
Jane nods. “If I do.”
“Will you tell people about me?”
Jane huffs out a laugh. “Are you kidding me? Of course I will.”
August curls her hands up inside the sleeves of Jane’s jacket. “What’ll you tell them?”
When Jane speaks again, her voice has shifted, and August imagines her on a fat ottoman in a smoky apartment in July 1977, a few sweaty girls circled around the floor to listen to her story.
“There was this girl,” she says. “There was this girl. I met her on a train. The first time I saw her, she was covered in coffee and smelled like pancakes, and she was beautiful like a city you always wanted to go to, like how you wait years and years for the right time, and then as soon as you get there, you have to taste everything and touch everything and learn every street by name. I felt like I knew her. She reminded me who I was. She had soft lips and green eyes and a body that wouldn’t quit.” August elbows her, Jane smiles. “Hair like you wouldn’t believe. Stubborn, sharp as a knife. And I never, ever wanted a person to save me until she did.”
Hands shaking, August pulls her phone out. “I didn’t save you. You’re saving yourself.”
Jane nods. “I’ve figured out you can’t do that alone.”
And that, August thinks, as she dials up Myla’s number, has to be true.
“Y’all good to go?” August asks as Myla swears into the line. “We’re almost there.”
“Yeah,” Myla grunts. It sounds like she’s manhandling some machinery. “It was a bitch, but there’s one more lever and it’ll put the line over. Get her in place and I’ll tell you when.”
August turns to Jane as the brakes scream into the station. This is it.
“Ready?”
She courageously wrestles a smile onto her face. “Yeah.”
With one hand on the emergency exit handle and the other wound up in August’s hair, she kisses August long and deep, pulling at it like music, a whole creation of a kiss. Her mouth is soft and warm, and August kisses her back and touches her face to brand its shape into her palm with permanence. Above their heads, the letters announcing the stop flicker on the board.
August can’t help grinning—she’ll miss kisses that break things.
The doors open, and August steps onto the platform alone.
It’s past two in the morning, the amusement park shut down for the night, trains coming only once or twice an hour, so they have a brief window during which there’s nobody to stop them. She planned it exactly, timed it perfectly.
When she looks down, Jane’s swinging herself out the emergency exit and dropping down onto the third rail. She looks so small from up here.
She picks her way down the tracks carefully, hidden behind the parked train, and August sits on the ledge of the platform, right on the yellow line, hooking her knees over.
“Okay,” Jane says from below.
She takes a deep breath, holding it high in her shoulders, shaking her hands out. From here, she could be anyone. She could pull herself back up onto the platform and take the stairs two at a time up into the muggy night. She gazes off down the track, peering into freedom, and August wonders if this is the last time she’ll ever get to see the set of Jane’s smirk, her long legs, her soft black hair swept up off her brow.
What if it’s the last time?
What if this is August’s last chance?
Wes told Isaiah. Winfield probably tells Lucie every day. Niko and Myla are going to get married. And August? August is going to let the girl who changed her entire life disappear without ever telling her, because she’s afraid of how it’ll hurt.
She feels the knife in her pocket, heavy and light all at once.
Fuck caution.
“Hey, Subway Girl,” August calls out.
Jane turns to her, eyebrows raised, and August reaches for her phone and mutes the mic.
“I love you.”
Her voice echoes off the glass ceiling, off the silver of the trains stored on the side of the tracks, out toward the street and the moonlit beach beyond.
“I’m in absolute fuck-off, life-ruining love with you, and I can’t—I can’t do this and not tell you,” she goes on. Jane’s staring at her with her mouth popped open in soft surprise. “Maybe you already know, maybe it’s obvious and saying it is just gonna make this harder, but—God, I love you.”
August’s mouth keeps moving, half-shouting into the empty tracks, and she barely knows what she’s saying anymore, but she can’t stop.
“I fell in love with you the day I met you, and then I fell in love with the person you remembered you are. I got to fall in love with you twice. That’s—that’s magic. You’re the first thing I’ve believed in since—since I don’t even remember, okay, you’re—you’re movies and destiny and every stupid, impossible thing, and it’s not because of the fucking train, it’s because of you. It’s because you fight and you care and you’re always kind but never easy, and you won’t let anything take that away from you. You’re my fucking hero, Jane. I don’t care if you think you’re not one. You are.”
The last two words flutter down between the slats of the elevated tracks, past Jane’s feet and onto the street below. Jane’s still looking up at her, eyes bright, feet planted. Seconds to go and unforgettable.
“Of course,” Jane says. Her voice comes from deep in the solid center of her chest—her protest voice, projected up to the platform. It could wake the dead. “Of course I love you. I could go back and have a whole life and get old and never see you again, and you would still be it. You were—you are the love of my life.”
Myla’s voice crackles out of August’s pocket. “Ready?”
August’s eyes don’t leave Jane’s as she pulls her phone out and unmutes the mic.
“I’m ready,” Jane says.
August breathes in, knuckles white.
“She’s ready.”
“Now.”
And everything goes black.
Silence, nothing but the shock of darkness. The street outside the station goes dark too, eerily quiet and still. August’s lungs refuse to release. She remembers what Jane said, the day they danced with strangers on a stalled train. The emergency lights.
They flicker on, and August half expects them to flood down onto a deserted track, but there’s Jane, feet on the third rail. That kind of shock would have killed anyone else. She doesn’t even look startled.
“Oh my God,” August says. “Did it—are you—?”
“I—” Jane’s voice is hoarse, almost staticky. “I don’t know.”
She makes a weird, jerky motion with one foot, trying to take a step outside of the tracks.
She can’t.
“It didn’t—” August has to swallow twice to get her throat to cooperate. She holds her phone closer to her mouth. “It didn’t work, Myla. She’s still stuck.”
“Fuck,” she swears. “Was anything off? Was the timing right? Are you sure she was touching the third rail?”
“Yeah, she was touching it. She’s still touching it.”
“She’s—okay. So, it’s not hurting her?”
“No. Is there something wrong with it?” August leans past the edge of the platform, trying to see better. “Should I—”
“Don’t touch it, August, Jesus! There’s nothing wrong with the third rail. She’s just—she’s still in between.”
“Okay,” August says. Jane looks up at her, paler somehow. Drawn. “What do I do?”
“Make sure she keeps touching it,” Myla says. “If I blacked out the line and she’s still there, it means residual electrification on the rail is what’s keeping her here for now.”
“For now? What—why didn’t it work?”
“I don’t know,” Myla says. She’s grunting and out of breath, like she’s working on something. “We were never going to be able to produce a surge as powerful as the one that got her stuck—I mean, fuck, this station’s part solar-powered now, which is a whole other factor. The hope was that something close would be enough.”
“So—so that’s it?” August says, flat. “It’s not going to work?”
“There’s one more chance. The second surge, remember? When I undo what I did and restore power, there’ll be another surge. We can—we can hope this one will put it over. She might have some charge left over from the first one. That could help.”
“Okay,” August says. “Okay, when’s the next surge?”
“Give me a couple of minutes. I’m passing the phone to Niko. Just—just talk to her.”
August shoves her phone back into her front pocket and looks down at Jane. Without power coursing through the line, she—well, she doesn’t look good. All the color has drained from her face. No more summer glow. Even her eyes seem flat. It’s the first time August has looked at her and actually seen a ghost.
“Hey,” August calls down to her. “You’re okay.”
Jane holds a hand in front of her face, examining her own fingers. “I don’t know about that.”
“You heard Myla, right?” August demands. “We have another chance.”
“Yeah,” Jane says vaguely. “It … it doesn’t feel good. I feel weird.”
“Hey. Hey, look at me. You’re getting out of here tonight, one way or another. I don’t care what it takes, okay?”
“August—” she says. And August can see it in her eyes, a dullness that has nothing to do with electricity. She’s losing hope.
“Jane,” August shouts, pulling herself to her feet. “Don’t you dare fucking give up, do you hear me? You know how your emotions affect the line, right? What you feel, right now, it’s holding onto that charge. It’s what’s keeping you alive. Don’t let that go. You remember when we got in that fight, and you blew out a light? You remember when you stopped the whole train just because—because you wanted to get laid—” Despite herself, Jane’s face splits into a smile, she laughs weakly. “Come on. Jane, that was all you. You have power here too.”
“Okay,” she says. She closes her eyes, and when she speaks again, it’s to herself. “Okay. I’m gonna live. I want to live.”
“Almost ready,” says Niko’s voice from August’s pocket.
And August—August thinks about what she just said.
The nerves in Jane’s body, electrical impulses, feedback loops, a scarf, an orange, hands brushing into sparks. What Jane feels. What August makes her feel. The love of my life.
She pushes herself off the platform.
Jane’s eyes snap open at the sound of August’s feet landing on the tracks.
“Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?”
“What’s the one thing that’s worked?” August says. She crosses the first two rails, balancing on the tracks. One wrong step, and she’ll be crashing down to the street. “This whole time, Jane. What’s the one thing that made this all happen?”
She sees the moment when Jane realizes what she means—her eyes go wide, frightened, furious.
“No,” she says.
“Ten seconds,” Niko says.
“Come on,” August says. She’s inches away. “I’m right. You know I’m right.”
“August, don’t—”
“Jane—”
“Please—”
“What is it, Jane? What’s the one thing that could put it over?”
And here they are. August and Jane and the third rail and the thing she’s prepared to do, and Jane is looking at August like she’s breaking her heart.
“It’s you,” Jane says.
“Now,” says Niko’s voice, and August doesn’t think, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t hesitate. She slams her foot down on Jane’s to hold it to the rail, and she grabs Jane’s face in both hands, and she kisses her as hard as she can.
