Chapter 5

5

Classifieds

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PERSONALS

BUTCH ON THE Q TRAIN—Are you the short-haired Asian woman, 20-30, who takes the Q from Manhattan to Brooklyn on Thursday afternoons? Do you wear a black leather jacket? Do you like to be spoiled? This wealthy older businesswoman can provide you with a life of sensuality and luxury. PO Box 2348, Queens, NY 11101. 10/18/1983

Niko’s described the bar where he works enough times for August to have it filed away under Pertinent Brooklyn Locations: beneath a bookstore and down a flight of creaky metal stairs that threaten to drop her into the murky bowels of the city. She’s got a coffee in hand for a bribe, and thankfully the girl checking IDs doesn’t say anything about it.

She can’t believe she’s working a case. And she really can’t believe she’s about to do the thing her mom swore she’d die before doing again: consulting a psychic.

Slinky’s is exactly the type of place where she would expect Niko to work. The whole room is washed in a bloody red glow, multicolored string lights strung up over a bar that looks sticky even from here. Most of the floor is taken up with round tea tables surrounded by curved and overstuffed booths, battered purple leather patched in every fabric pattern from starry galaxy to picnic gingham. The finishing touch is the ceiling, lined with hundreds of pairs of underoos and boxers and frilly panties, the odd bra or piece of lingerie dangling from a rafter.

Niko’s behind the bar in a denim vest, both arms of tattoos on full display. He grins around a chicken wing when he sees August.

“August!” He finishes his chicken wing and casually slides the bones into the pocket of his vest. August decides not to ask. “This is awesome! Hi!”

She sidles up to a sparkly bar stool, wavering between a dozen openings—It was a two-for-one special. The barista accidentally gave me a double order. Are vampires real?—before giving up and plunking the coffee down.

“I got you a coffee,” August says. “I know how night shifts are.”

He blinks owlishly through glasses, round and tinted yellow. “A gift from August? What god have I pleased?”

“I’m not that withholding.”

He smiles enigmatically. “Of course not.”

“You like lavender, right?” August says. “They have a lavender honey latte at Bean & Burn and—I don’t know, I thought of you. I can, um, toss it if you hate it.”

“No, no!” Niko says. He picks up the cup and sniffs it. “Although we are going to discuss your bougie choice of coffee shop later. There is a perfectly good combination jerk chicken and donut joint across the street that does cups for fifty cents.”

“Okay,” August pushes on. “Can I ask you a question?”

“If it’s about the underwear on the ceiling,” Niko says, turning away and reaching for a couple of bottles, “it started when one guy left his underwear in the bathroom and now people just keep bringing them and the owner thinks it’s hilarious.”

August looks up at a pair of briefs—cartoon teeth on the crotch and UNLEASH THE BEAST across the back—and back to Niko. He’s lined up three bottles on his workstation and is muddling a handful of herbs and berries.

“Not what I was going to ask, but good to know.”

“Ah,” Niko says with a wink, and August realizes he already knew. Stupid psychics. She’s still not even sure she believes he knows anything, but she doesn’t have any other option but to trust him.

“So, um…” she goes on. “Your line of work … you know about, like, uh. Supernatural stuff?”

The enigmatic smile is back. “Yes?”

“Like…” August resolves not to do anything with her facial expression. “Creatures?”

“Oh, I’m loving this already,” Niko says readily. “What kind of creatures?”

“You know what?” she says, hopping down from her stool. “This is insane. Forget it.”

“August,” he says, and it’s not teasing or apologetic or even like he’s trying to get her to stay. It’s the way he always says August’s name, soft and sympathetic, like he knows something about her that she doesn’t. She settles back down and buries her face in the sleeves of her sweater.

“Okay, fine,” she says. “So, like. You know the girl I told y’all about? The one I asked out?”

Niko doesn’t say anything. When she looks up, he keeps measuring out liquors.

“Her name’s Jane. She takes the same train as me. The Q, every single morning and afternoon. At first I thought, like, wow, okay, crazy coincidence, but tons of people probably have the same commutes, and … I definitely went out of my way to catch the same train as her, which I realize sounds a lot like stalking, but I promise I wasn’t weird about it—anyway, today at work, I found this.”

She slides the photo across the bar, and Niko nudges his sunglasses up onto his forehead to examine it.

“That’s her,” August says, pointing. “I’m a thousand percent sure it’s her. She has the same tattoos.” She looks up at him. “Niko, this photo is from opening day at Billy’s. Summer ’76. She hasn’t aged in forty-five years. I think she’s—”

The rattle of Niko’s cocktail shaker cuts through her sentence, drowning her out, and he wiggles his eyebrows until his glasses fall back down to his nose.

August is going to kick his ass one day.

She has to wait thirty whole seconds for him to pop the top off the shaker and pour the drink into a glass so she can finish. “I think she’s not … human.”

Niko slides the drink over. “Blackberry mint mule. On the house. What do you think she is?”

She’s going to have to say this out loud, isn’t she? Bella Swan, eat your horny little Mormon heart out.

“I think she might be … a vampire?” Niko raises an eyebrow, and she buries her face in her arms again. “I told you it was insane!”

“It’s not insane!” he says, a laugh in his voice, but not a mean one. It never is with Niko. “Once you’re tapped into the other side, it’s really easy to start seeing stuff beyond this one. Like, when I was eight I spent the summer with my cousins in Bayamón, and they totally had me convinced their neighbor’s dog was a werewolf. But, as far as I know, werewolves aren’t real, and neither are vampires.”

August picks her head up. “Right. Of course. I’m an idiot.”

“Well,” Niko says. “She’s not a vampire. But she might be dead.”

August freezes. “What do you mean?”

“It sounds like she might be an apparition,” he explains. “A particularly … strong one. She might not even know she’s—”

“A ghost?” August offers helplessly. Niko pulls a sympathetic grimace. “Oh my God, so she’s dead? And she doesn’t know she’s dead? I can’t even ask her on a date; how am I supposed to tell her she’s dead?”

“Okay, hold on. You can’t just tell somebody they’re dead. We have to make sure she’s dead first.”

“Right. Okay. How do we do that?” She’s got her phone out, already googling how to tell if someone is a ghost. Apparently, there’s a Groupon for this. “Wait. Holy shit. She is always wearing the exact same thing.”

“You only just noticed she has one outfit?”

“I don’t know! It’s ripped jeans and a leather jacket! Every lesbian I’ve ever met has that outfit!”

“Huh. Good point,” Niko says thoughtfully. “Have you ever touched her?”

“Um. Yes?”

“And how did it feel? Cold?”

“No, the opposite. Like … really warm. Sometimes staticky. Like a shock.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Are you the only one who can see her?”

“No, she talks to people on the train all the time.”

“Okay, have you ever seen her touch anything or anyone?”

“Yeah, she has this, like, backpack full of stuff, and she’s given me things from it, gum, a scarf. One time she put a Band-Aid on this kid who skinned his knee on the stairs.”

He rests his chin on his hand. “Cute. Maybe a poltergeist. A cute poltergeist. Can I meet her?”

August snaps her eyes up from her phone. “What?”

“Well, if I met her, I could get a better sense of what exactly she is, if she’s on this side or not, or somewhere in between. It’d only take a few questions. Maybe some light physical contact.”

She tries to picture it, Niko in all his Niko-ness, putting his hand on Jane’s shoulder: Hello, how are you, I think you may be an unmoored spirit trapped in some kind of MTA purgatory.

“You said you didn’t want to freak her out.”

“I never said that. I said you shouldn’t tell somebody they’re dead unless you’re sure they’re dead. Very bad energy.”

“What would you even ask her?”

“I don’t know. It would depend on how things feel. Sounds like a fun experiment.”

August grinds her teeth. “Isn’t there something else we could do first? Like—can I pour a ring of salt around her or splash her with holy water or something? But like, in a subtle way?”

“You and I come at subtlety from very different directions,” Niko observes. “But we could do a séance.”

August can practically hear her mother scoffing into her Lean Cuisine from the next time zone.

“A … séance?”

“Yeah,” he says casually. “To talk to her. If she’s a ghost, she should be able to visit, and boom, we’d know.”

“And if nothing happens, we can rule out ghost?”

“Yep.”

And so, August Landry, world’s leading skeptic, opens her mouth and says, “Okay, let’s do a séance.”

“Love it,” Niko says. He’s produced a toothpick from his pocket and starts chewing on it as he wipes down the bar. “Yeah, we’ll need numbers, so we should ask Myla and Wes. We can do it at the shop after close. I don’t like where the moon is right now, though, so let’s do it night after tomorrow. Do you have anything that belongs to her?”

“I, um,” August says, “I do, actually. She gave me her scarf.”

“That’ll do.”

She leans down to take a sip of her drink and promptly chokes on it.

“Good lord, that is disgusting. You’re terrible at this.”

Niko laughs. “Myla tried to tell you.”

---

“So,” Wes says. He’s watching August douse her fries in Cholula with an extremely New England expression on his face. “You’ve gathered us here today to tell us you’re boned up for a ghost.”

“Jesus, can you keep your voice down?” August hisses, eyeing Winfield as he passes their table. She should have known better than to slide into the booth with this information after her shift and think this particular group of delinquents would be discreet. “I work here.”

“Wait, so—” Myla cuts in. “She really used to work here? When it first opened? And now she’s on the subway looking exactly the same?”

“Yes.”

She leans back in the booth, eyes alight. “I can’t believe you’ve been in New York for, like, a month and already found the coolest person in the entire city. Back to the Future ass.”

“We’re more at the intersection of Ghost and Quantum Leap,” August points out. “But that’s not the point.”

“The point is,” Niko says, “we’re doing a séance to get a feel for the situation. And considering this whole thing is low-key a psychic’s wet dream, we’d love if you would help.”

And so, on Sunday night, the four of them are huddled together on Church Street, trying to look small and inconspicuous outside the locked door of Miss Ivy’s.

“Do you want me to pick it?” August asks, glancing nervously down the street.

“What? Pick the lock?” Wes says. “What kind of feral child are you? Are you Jessica Jones?”

“We’re not breaking and entering,” Niko says. “I have a key. Somewhere.”

August turns to sniff in Myla’s direction. “You smell like a McRib.”

“What?”

“You know, like, smoky.”

Myla jabs an elbow into Wes’s ribs. “Someone forgot their lunch in the toaster oven today and I had to put out a kitchen fire,” she says. “We’re, like, one fire away from losing our security deposit.”

“We lost our security deposit when you took it upon yourself to rewire the entire apartment,” Wes replies.

Niko chuckles under his breath. He’s fingering through a ring of keys in the dim glow of the streetlights. August wonders what all the keys are for—knowing Niko, he’s probably talked his way into having a key to half the plant supply stores and dive bars in Brooklyn.

“How our apartment ever had a security deposit to begin with is a joke,” August says. “The oven doesn’t even go over three-fifty.”

“And it didn’t go over one-fifty before I rewired it,” Myla says.

“Wes?”

The four of them jolt like Scooby Doo and the gang, caught in the act. Niko is not technically allowed to use his key for after-hours communications with the dead. No personal calls, basically—they can’t get caught.

But it’s only Isaiah, fresh from a gig going by the duffel bag thrown over his shoulder and the smudged eyeliner. It’s the first time August has properly seen him out of drag. In his T-shirt and jeans, it’s all very superhero secret identity.

“Isaiah,” Wes says. Niko returns to searching for the right key. “Hey.”

Even in the washed-out darkness of the street, it’s obvious Wes is blushing under his freckles. As Niko would say, that’s interesting.

“Hey, uh … what are y’all doing?” Isaiah asks.

“Uh—” Wes stammers.

Niko glances over his shoulder and says flatly, “A séance.”

Wes looks mortified, but Isaiah is intrigued. “Oh, no shit?”

“You wanna join?” Niko says. “I feel good about the number five tonight.”

“Sure, uh—” He turns, addressing the guy who’s been waiting for him. “You good to get home?”

“No worries, babe,” the guy says. He waves and heads off toward the nearest subway stop.

“Who was that?” Wes says, very obviously trying to sound like he doesn’t care at all.

Isaiah grins. “That’s my new drag daughter. Freshly hatched little baby. Goes by Sara Tonin.”

Myla laughs. “Genius.”

“Aha!” Niko crows, victorious, and the door to the shop swings open.

Niko leaves the overhead lights off and moves purposefully around the shop, lighting velones de santos like the ones he’s shown her at home until the glow mixes with the moonlight and the muddy flood of the streetlights. The space is wall-to-wall shelves, full of stones and bundles of herbs and animal skulls, bottles of Niko’s home-brewed Alcoholado. One rickety bookshelf sags under hundreds of bottles and jars, most filled with murky oil and labeled things like FAST LUCK and DRAGON’S BLOOD. There’s a collection of pillar candles too, with cards explaining their uses. The one closest to August is either for reuniting past loves or penis enlargement. She should probably get the prescription on her glasses updated.

“So … is this a … general séance?” Isaiah says. He’s on the other side of the room, examining a jar of teeth. “Or are we trying to talk to someone in particular?”

And now August is in Wes’s position, stammering and hoping Niko doesn’t come through with the truth.

“We’re doing a séance to reach a woman August has a crush on,” Niko says, coming through with the truth.

“Please, sir,” Myla says in an absolutely terrible Southern accent. “It’s my girlfriend, she’s very dead.”

August considers pulling the shelf of potions over on herself and ending it all. “Thank you both for making me sound like a necrophiliac.”

“You know, I thought you were a little spicy when I met you,” says Isaiah, taking it remarkably in stride.

“We don’t know if she’s dead,” August says. “She just happens to have not aged since 1976.”

“That’s basically what we said,” Niko says. “Follow me.”

In the back is a tiny room with a round table draped in the same heavy black cloth as the walls around it. Little poufs surround it, and a shimmery, sheer scarf rests on top, purple and glistening in the low light, spirals of gold and silver stars winking up at them.

Niko’s already lit a bundle of sage and set it to smolder in an abalone bowl. He’s at the table, carefully arranging incense and a ring of crystals around tall white candles, the kind you see in a Catholic church when you’re leaving a prayer for the Virgin Mary, except August is definitely the only virgin here and she doesn’t think praying to her would accomplish anything.

“Grab a seat,” Niko says. He’s holding a spent match between his teeth and a lit one between his thumb and forefinger. August has never seen him so fully in his element. Myla looks turned on.

“How is this going to work?” August asks.

“We’re going to try calling Jane’s spirit,” Niko says. “If she’s dead, she should be able to project herself here and talk to us, and then we’ll know for sure. If she’s not, well. Probably nothing will happen.”

“Probably?”

“Something else might come forward,” he says, lighting another match with total nonchalance as if he has not just suggested some unknown force from the great beyond could Beetlejuice into the room and rub its little demon hands all over them. “It happens. If you open a door, anything can come through it. But it’ll be fine.”

“I swear to God, if a ghost kills me, I’ll haunt the shower,” Wes says. “You guys will never have hot water again.”

“We don’t have hot water now,” August points out.

“Fine, I’ll haunt the toilet.”

“Why do you want to haunt a bathroom, man?” Isaiah asks.

“It’s where people are most vulnerable,” Wes says, like it’s obvious. Isaiah frowns thoughtfully and nods.

“Ghosts can’t kill you,” Niko says mildly. “Everyone hush.”

He lights the remaining candles, speaking quiet Spanish to someone no one can see. Wes tenses at August’s side as the last flame goes up.

“August?” Niko says. He’s looking at her expectantly, and she realizes: the scarf. She unwinds it from her neck and lays it on the table, the image of her uncle’s pocketknife laid across a gauzy cloth flashing through her brain.

“Okay,” he says. “Take one anothers’ hands.”

Myla’s callused palm slots neatly into August’s. Wes hesitates, looking unwilling to release his iron grip on his sweatshirt sleeves, but he finally gives in and laces his fingers through August’s. They’re clammy and as bony as they look, but comforting. He tentatively picks up Isaiah’s on his other side.

Across the table, Niko closes his eyes and releases a long, steady breath before speaking.

“This works better if everyone is open to what’s happening,” he says. “Even if you don’t know that you believe, or you’re afraid, try to open your mind and focus on radiating a sense of welcoming and warmth. We’re asking for a favor. Be kind about it.”

August bites her lip. Isaiah’s usual bright glow has dimmed to a reverent smolder as he brushes his thumb across Wes’s hand. It’s pretty late on a weeknight for a post-drag séance, especially considering he works a desk job, but he looks unbothered by the time.

“August,” Niko says, and she snaps her eyes to him. “Are you ready?”

Focus. Welcoming and warmth. Open mind. She releases a breath and nods.

“Spirit guides,” Niko says, “we come to you tonight in search of understanding, in the hopes we’ll receive a sign of your presence. Please feel welcome in our circle and join us when you’re ready.”

Should August close her eyes? Leave them open? Myla slides her eyes shut, totally at peace; August guesses she’s had a lot of time to get used to this kind of thing. Niko’s signature look of mild constipation is taking over his face, and August chews on the inside of her cheek, fighting a wave of nervous laughter.

“Jane,” Niko says. “Jane, if you’re there. August is here. I’d love for you to come forward. She’d love to talk to you.”

And suddenly, August couldn’t laugh if she tried.

It was one thing to talk in hypotheticals—if Jane isn’t what she seems, if they can reach her, if she’s dead. It’s something else to be here, breathing in smoke, face-to-face with whatever the answer might be. This girl August has spent almost every morning and afternoon with since she moved to the city, who’s made her feel things she hasn’t felt since she was a kid, like reckless hope—

Niko’s eyelids flicker open.

“It’s gonna be okay, August.”

August gulps down a breath.

“Jane,” he says, louder and clearer this time. “Maybe you’re lost, or you’re not sure where you are, or who you can trust. But you can trust me.”

They wait. The second hand on Myla’s watch ticks on. Isaiah’s fingers twitch. Wes exhales a shaky breath. August can’t look away from Niko’s face, from the set of his mouth, from his lashes twitching and fanning out on his cheeks. Minutes go by in silence.

Maybe she’s imagining it—maybe it’s the fear, the uncertainty, the atmosphere creeping under her skin—but she swears she feels it. Something cold brushing against the back of her neck. A hoarse whisper into the creak of the old building. A charge in the air, like someone’s dropped a toaster in a bathtub down the block, a surge of power just before the lights go out. The flames on the candles list to one side, but August can’t tell if it’s from her sharp inhale or something she can’t see.

“Hm,” Niko grunts suddenly, his lips pulling into a frown. Myla’s knuckles go white, gripping Niko’s hand tighter, and August wonders fleetingly how many times she must have done this—grounding Niko to this side while he drags his fingers through the other.

Niko mumbles under his breath, his brow furrowed, and somehow, the air settles. Something that’s been unfolded tucks itself back in and ties itself off. August’s ears start ringing.

Niko opens his eyes.

“Yeah, fuck, she’s not there,” he says, shattering the mood, and Wes deflates with relief. Niko looks at August almost apologetically. “She’s not a ghost, August. She’s not dead.”

“You’re sure?” August asks. “Like, totally sure?”

“The spirit guides are telling me wrong number, so,” he says with a small shrug.

He leads them through a closing prayer and thanks the spirits politely and promises to talk again soon like they’re a grandparent he calls on major holidays—which, August realizes, they might be. He blows out the candles and starts bundling the herbs back up. The others pull themselves to their feet, tucking shirts back in, rolling sleeves back down. Like nothing happened.

August is sitting there, frozen in her seat.

“What does it mean?” she asks Niko. “If she’s not a ghost? If she’s not dead, and she’s not alive, what is she?”

Niko dumps the crystals into a bowl of coarse salt and turns back to her. “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never seen anything like her before.”

Maybe there are more clues, something she missed. Maybe she needs to go back over all the information she has. Maybe she can break into the employment records at Billy’s. Maybe—

Shit. She sounds like her mother.

“Okay,” August says, standing and dusting off her jeans. She’s across the shop in seconds, dodging a table of pendulums and tarot cards, whipping her jacket off the back of a chair. She jabs a finger at Niko. “You. Let’s go.”

---

When the doors of the train hiss open, there are a few terrible seconds in which August glances at Niko and wonders if she’s about to make a complete ass of herself.

It’s the middle of the night. What if Jane’s not on the train? What if she never was? What if she’s a loneliness hallucination brought on by too little sleep and too many years of not getting laid? Or worse—what if she’s some nice, normal, unsuspecting woman just trying to get through her commute without being harassed by freaks who think she’s a sexy poltergeist?

But Jane’s there. In the middle of an empty bench, reading a book, as matter-of-fact as the scuffs on the tunnel walls.

Jane’s there, and the world tips.

The skeptic in August wanted to believe it wasn’t real. But Jane’s here, on the same train, at the same time as August, again.

Niko nudges her on, and Jane keeps being there, long legs stretched out loosely in front of her, battered hardback open in her lap. Niko steps on behind her, and Jane looks up and sees them.

“Coffee Girl,” she says, tucking a finger between the pages.

It’s the first time August has seen Jane since she was rejected by her. And despite the whole undead mystery of her—whether Jane is a vampire or a ghost or a fucking teen wolf—that remains humiliating. And Jane remains distressingly hot, all kind brown eyes and ripped jeans and a soft, conspiratorial smile. It would be really helpful if Jane would stop being confusing and gorgeous while they’re trying to figure out whether or not she’s human.

The train jerks into motion, and Niko has to grab August’s waist to keep her from tripping over her feet. Jane eyes them, Niko’s fingers clenched in the fabric of August’s jacket.

“You’re out late,” she observes.

“Yeah, we’re meeting my girlfriend in Soho,” Niko lies smoothly. It’s a trick of the light, August thinks, when a muscle in Jane’s jaw twitches and relaxes.

Niko nudges August toward a seat, and she focuses on not letting their impending interrogation of Jane’s corporeality telegraph across her face.

“Neat,” Jane says, a little sarcastically. “This book sucks anyway.” She flashes the cover—it’s an early edition of Watership Down, the orangey-red print rubbed halfway off. “I feel like I’ve read it a dozen times trying to figure out what people like about it. It’s a depressing book about bunnies. I don’t get it.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be an allegory?” Niko offers.

“A lot of people think that,” August says automatically. Her voice clips up into daughter-of-a-librarian mode, and she’s powerless to stop it. She’s too nervous. “Like, a lot of people think it’s religious symbolism, but Richard Adams said it was just some bunny adventures he made up for his daughters as a bedtime story.”

“Lot of carnage for a bedtime story,” Jane says.

“Yeah.”

“So, where have you been?” Jane asks her. “I feel like I haven’t seen you around.”

“Oh,” August says. She can’t tell her that she changed her entire commute in mourning of the joint Netflix account they’ll never share. “I—uh, I mean, we must keep missing each other. Odds are we were gonna get on different trains one of these days, right?”

Jane leans her chin on her hand. “Yeah, you would think.”

Niko crosses his legs and chimes in, “You two have really always been on the same train until now?”

“The same car, even,” Jane says. “It’s nuts.”

“Yeah,” he says. “The odds of that … wow.”

“I’m just lucky, I guess,” Jane says with a grin. And August is too busy trying to figure out everything else to figure out what that means. “I’m Jane, by the way.”

She leans forward and extends her hand to Niko, and excited curiosity sparks in his eyes like Myla presented him with an antique alarm clock. He takes it gingerly, folding his other hand on top, which would be weird or creepy if it was anyone but Niko. Jane’s smile softens, and August watches the faintest expression flitter across Niko’s face before he lets go.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” he asks her.

“Are you?” she says.

“I’m from Long Island,” Niko tells her. “But I spent a lot of time in the city before I moved here.”

“You came for college too?” Jane asks, gesturing between Niko and August.

“Nah. My girlfriend. College wasn’t really for me.” He runs a thumb along the edge of his seat, contemplative. “These trains always have the most interesting smells.”

“What, like piss?”

“No, like … you ever smell, like, petrichor? Or sulfur?”

Jane eyes him, tongue in the corner of her mouth. “I don’t think so? Piss, mostly. Sometimes someone spills their takeout and it’s piss and pork lo mein.”

“Uh-huh,” Niko says. “Interesting.”

“Your friend is weird,” Jane says to August, not unkindly. She doesn’t look annoyed, only mildly entertained, like she’s enjoying the turn her night has taken.

“He’s, uh,” August attempts, “really into smells?”

“Super into smells,” Niko says vaguely. “Love an aroma. You live in Brooklyn? Or Manhattan?”

She pauses before answering.

“Brooklyn.”

“Us too,” he says. “We live in Flatbush. What neighborhood are you in?”

“Um, I’m in Flatbush too,” she says.

That one surprises August. Jane’s never mentioned living in Flatbush. She’s also never looked quite this shifty. Niko adjusts his shoulders. They both know Jane is lying, but that doesn’t mean anything—maybe she doesn’t want this guy she just met to know where she lives.

“That’s interesting,” he says. “Maybe we’ll see you around sometime.”

“Yeah, maybe so,” she says with a small chuckle.

August doesn’t know how long Niko needs, or what exactly he’s reading off of Jane, but he watches her return to her book with his hands palm-up on his knees, fingers relaxed, holding up the weight of the air.

August keeps waiting for him to bust out another question. Hey, ever walked through a wall? Or, Do you have any unfinished business in the realm of the living, like maybe a tragic unsolved murder, or a loved one who needs to give all the workers at the factory Christmas off? Or, Do you happen to see horned creatures when you close your eyes? But he sits there, and Jane sits there, both of them incomprehensible.

Finally, as they’re pulling into the first Manhattan station, Niko announces, “This is our stop.”

August looks at him. “It is?”

He nods decisively. “Yep. You ready?”

She glances over at Jane, like she might have disappeared in the last few seconds.

“If you are.”

They have to pass by Jane to exit, and August feels a gentle hand close around her elbow.

“Hey,” Jane says.

When August turns, that muscle’s twitching in her jaw.

“Don’t be a stranger.”

Niko pauses on the platform to look back at them.

“Okay,” August says. “Maybe I’ll—I’ll see you on Monday.”

She turns to Niko as soon as the train pulls away, but he’s eyeing the ceiling thoughtfully. She waits like she’s one of the nuns at her Catholic middle school waiting to hear if they picked a new pope.

“Yep,” he says finally. “Okay.” He uncrosses his arms and turns, striding off down the platform. August has to jog to catch up.

“Okay, what?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s the verdict?”

“Oh, tacos,” he says. “I decided tacos. There’s a stand that’s open late a few blocks from here; we can pick some up and take the 5 home.”

“I meant about whether or not Jane is dead!”

“Oh!” he says, sounding genuinely surprised. Sometimes August wishes she could know for even a second what goes on in Niko’s head. “Yeah, no, I don’t think so.”

Her heart does an uncomfortable sort of parkour maneuver. “You—you don’t? You’re sure?”

“Mostly,” he says. “She’s really, like, present. Solid. She’s not a ghost. She’s corporeal. Do you think I should try the seitan this time?”

August blows straight past his question. “So, she’s an alive person?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he says. The crystals around his neck bounce against his chest as he walks. “Yeah, I’m gonna do the seitan.”

“Then what is she?”

“She’s alive,” he says. “But … also not? I don’t think she’s dead. She’s sort of … in between. Not here, not on the other side. She feels really … distant, like not totally rooted here and now. Except when she touched you, then she felt super here. Which is interesting.”

“Is—is there any other way to test this?”

“Not that I know of,” Niko says. “Sorry, babe, it’s not really an exact science. Ooh. Maybe I should do the shrimp instead.”

Right. Not an exact science. This is why August has never consulted a psychic before. Her mom always said, you can’t start with guesses. The first thing she learned from her: start with what you absolutely know.

She knows … Jane was in 1976, and Jane is here. Always here, on the Q, so maybe …

The first time August met Jane, she fell in love with her for a few minutes, and then stepped off the train. That’s the way it happens on the subway—you lock eyes with someone, you imagine a life from one stop to the next, and you go back to your day as if the person you loved in between doesn’t exist anywhere but on that train. As if they never could be anywhere else.

Maybe, with Jane on the Q, it’s actually true.

Maybe the Q is the answer.

Maybe the Q is where August should start.

She glances over to the opposite platform, and she can just make out the arrival board. Brooklyn-bound Q, incoming in two minutes.

“Oh,” August says. It’s punched out of her, involuntary. “Oh, fuck, why didn’t I think of it before?”

“I know,” Niko says, “shrimp, right?”

“No, I—” She spins around, lunging for the stairs, shouting over her shoulder. “Go get your taco, I’ll meet you at home, I—I have an idea!”

She loses sight of Niko as she throws herself downstairs, skittering into a trash can and sending a pizza box flying. There’s one way she can prove totally, definitively, that Jane is more than she seems. That this isn’t in her head.

August knows this route. She memorized it before she started taking it, determined to understand. It’s a two-minute ride between Canal and Prince, and Jane left in the opposite direction. There’s no physical way Jane can be on the next train to pull up, even if she ran for it. She should still be on her way through Manhattan. If she’s on this train, then August knows.

One minute.

August is alone. It’s nearly four in the morning.

The rush of the train comes, headlights spilling onto the toes of her sneakers.

The brakes grind, and August pictures the night fifty feet above, the universe watching as she tries to piece together one tiny corner of its mystery. She stares down at her shoes, at the yellow paint and chewed-up gum on the concrete, and tries to think about nothing but the place where her feet touch the ground, the absolute certainty of it. That’s real.

She feels unbelievably small. She feels like this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened in her entire life.

She lets the train cruise past until it coasts to a stop. It doesn’t matter if she chases down a particular car. The outcome will be the same.

August steps through the doors.

And there she is.

Jane looks exactly the same—jacket slouched, backpack at her side, one shoe coming untied. But the train is different. The last one was newer, with long, smooth blue benches and a ticker of stops along the top next to the advertisements. This one is older, the floors dustier, the seats a mixture of faded orange and yellow. It doesn’t make any sense, but here she is. She looks as confused to see August as August is to see her.

“When I said not to be a stranger,” Jane says, “I didn’t think you’d be back quite so soon.”

They’re the only two people in the car. Maybe they’re the only two people alive.

Maybe one of them isn’t alive at all.

This is it, then. Jane did the impossible. She is, whatever she is, impossible.

August crosses over to her and sits down as the train sways back into motion, carrying them toward Coney Island. She wonders if Jane has ever, even once, gotten out at the end of the line and sunk her feet into the water.

August turns to her, and Jane’s looking back.

There’s always been a schematic in August’s head of how things are supposed to be. Her whole life, she managed the noise and buzz and creeping dread in her brain by mapping things out, telling herself that if she looked hard enough, she’d find an explanation for everything. But here they are, looking at each other across the steady delineation of things August understands, watching the line blur.

“Can I ask you something?” August says. Her hand fidgets up to her ear, tucking her hair back. “It’s—uh. It might sound weird.”

Jane eyes her. Maybe she thinks August is going to ask her out again. Jane’s beautiful, always improbably beautiful under the subway fluorescents, but a date is the last thing on August’s mind.

“Yeah,” Jane says. “Of course.”

August curls her hands into fists in her lap. “How old are you?”

Jane laughs softly, relief flashing in her eyes. “Easy. Twenty-four.”

Okay. August can work with that.

“Do you…” She takes a breath. “So what year were you born, then?”

And—

It takes only a second, a breath, but something passes over Jane’s face like the headlights of a passing car over a bedroom wall at night, gone as soon as it was there. Jane settles into her usual sly smile. August never considered how much of a deflection that smile was.

“Why’re you asking?”

“Well,” August says carefully. She’s watching Jane, and Jane is watching her, and she can feel this moment opening up like a manhole beneath them, waiting for them to drop. “I’m twenty-three. You should have been born about a year before me.”

Jane stiffens, unreadable. “Right.”

“So,” August says. She braces herself. “So that’s … that’s 1995.”

Jane’s smile flickers out, and August swears a fluorescent light above them dims too.

“What?”

“I was born in 1996, so you should have been born in 1995,” August tells her. “But you weren’t, were you?”

The sleeve of Jane’s jacket has ridden up on one side, and she’s tracing the characters above her elbow, digging her fingertips in so the color flows out of her skin under the ink.

“Okay,” she says, trying on a different smile, her eyes dropping to the floor. “You’re fucking with me. I get it. You’re very cute and funny.”

“Jane, what year were you born?”

“I said I got it, August.”

“Jane—”

“Look,” she says, and when her eyes flash up, it’s there, the thing August glimpsed before—anger, fear. She was half-expecting Jane to laugh it off, like she does her cassette player and her backpack full of years. She doesn’t. “I know something’s … wrong with me. But you don’t have to fuck with me, okay?”

She doesn’t know. How can she not know?

It’s the first time Jane’s let it show, her uncertainty, and the lines of her are filled in a little more. She was this dream girl, too good to be true, but she’s real, finally, as real as August’s sneakers on the subway platform. Lost. That August can understand.

“Jane,” August says carefully. “I’m not fucking with you.”

She pulls out the photo, unfolds it, smooths out the crease down the middle. She shows it to Jane—the washed-out, yellow-tinted booths, the faded neon of the sign above the to-go counter. Jane’s smile, frozen in time.

“That’s you, right?”

It comes over Jane in a breathless rush, like the train blowing August’s hair back as it hurtles into the station.

“Yeah … yeah, that’s me,” Jane says. Her hands only shake a little when she takes the photo. “I told you. I got a job there right after it opened.”

“Jane.” The train trundles on. The word is almost too quiet to be heard over the noise. “This photo was taken in 1976.”

“That sounds right,” she says distantly. She’s stopped tracing the tattoo on her arm—instead tracing the shape of her chin in the photo. August wonders what the distance is between the person in front of her and the one in the photo. Decades. No time at all. “I moved here a couple of years ago.”

“Do you know what year?”

“God, probably.…’75?”

August concentrates on keeping her face and voice calm, like she’s talking to someone on a ledge. “Okay. I’m gonna ask you something. I swear to God, I am not fucking with you. Try to hear me out. Do you remember the last time you weren’t on this train?”

“August…”

“Please. Just try to remember.”

She looks up at August. Her eyes are shining, wet.

“I—” she starts. “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s—it’s blurry. It’s all blurry. As far back as I can remember. I know I—I worked at Billy’s. 1976. That’s the last thing I remember, and I only know because you reminded me. You—you brought that back, I guess.” Her usual confidence is gone, a shaky, panicked girl in its place. “I told you, I think, um. Something’s wrong with me.”

August settles a hand over Jane’s wrist, bringing the photo down into her lap. She’s never touched her like this before. She’s never had the nerve before. She’s never ruined somebody’s life before.

“Okay,” August says. “It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you. But I think something happened to you. And I think you’ve been stuck on this train for a long time. Like, a really long time.”

“How long?”

“Um. About forty-five years.”

August waits for her to laugh, cry, cuss her out, have some kind of meltdown. Instead, she reaches for a pole and pulls herself to her feet, her balance practiced and sure even as the train takes a curve.

When she turns to August, her jaw is set, her gaze steady and dark. She’s heartbreakingly gorgeous, even now. Especially now: squared up to the universe.

“That’s a long fucking time, huh?” she says flatly.

“What, um,” August attempts. “What can you remember?”

“I remember…” she says. “I remember moments. Sometimes days, or only hours. I knew I was stuck here, somehow. I know I’ve tried to get off and blinked and opened my eyes in a different car. I remember some people I’ve met. That half the things in my bag are something I traded for, stole, or found. But it’s—it’s all fuzzy. You know when you drink too much and black out except for random pieces? It’s like that. If I had to guess, I would’ve said I’ve been on here for … maybe a few months.”

“And before? What do you remember before you were on the train?”

She fixes August with a flat gaze. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing but a flash of Billy’s.”

August bites down on her lip. “You remember your name.”

Jane looks at her like she feels sorry for her, one side of her mouth pulling into a joyless approximation of her smile. She takes her jacket off and flips it around, inside-out. The worn fabric tag sticks out from the inside of the collar, block letters embroidered in careful red thread.

JANE SU

“I know my name because this jacket says it’s my name,” she says. “I have no fucking idea who I am.”