One Last Stop, page 29
She looks scared, like she just lived it all over again.
“You didn’t die.”
“But I should have, right?”
August pushes her glasses up into her hair, rubbing at her eyes, trying to think. “I’m not Myla, but … I think you touched the third rail at the exact moment of the power surge that caused the blackout. It must have been enough of a burst of energy that it did more than kill you. It threw you out of time.”
Jane considers this. “That’s kind of cool, actually.”
August pushes her glasses back down, blinking Jane into focus and checking her face for the warning signs she didn’t pay enough attention to the last time they brought back something big. She doesn’t see any.
She holds a breath. There’s one more thing.
From her pocket, she pulls out the postcard from California. She hands it to Jane, pointing at the signature.
“There’s something else,” August says. “This might sound crazy, but I … I think Augie sent you this. I just don’t understand how. Do you remember it at all?”
She turns it over in her hands, touching the paper like she’s trying to absorb it through her skin.
“He’s alive,” she says slowly. It’s not a recitation of a fact she already knew. It sounds fresh. August has shown this postcard to her a dozen times, but this is the first time she’s looked at it with recognition.
“It came out of nowhere,” Jane says. “I don’t … I don’t even know how he found me. I was fucking terrified when I got it, because I was sure he was dead and I was getting mail from a ghost. I almost didn’t call the number, but I did.”
“And it was him?”
“Yeah,” Jane says with a gradual nod. “Something happened, on his way to work that night. I don’t even remember—some neighbor needed help, someone had a flat tire or something. He missed his shift. He was supposed to be there when the fire happened, but he missed his shift. He wasn’t there. He survived.”
August releases a breath.
He told her, Jane says, that he couldn’t bear that he lived when his friends didn’t, so he left, sick and blind with grief. He borrowed a car and drove out of town and woke up three days later strung out in Beaumont and decided not to come back. Started drinking too much, started hitchhiking, lost himself for a year or two, until a truck driver dropped him off in Castro, and someone pulled him off the sidewalk and told him they’d get him some help.
“He was doing well,” Jane remembers, smiling a little. “He was sober, he’d gotten his life together. He had a steady boyfriend. They were living together. He sounded happy. And he told me he thought I should come home, that San Francisco was ready for people like us now. We’ll take care of each other, Jane.”
“Jerry said,” August says, “well, he said you were supposed to be moving back to California.”
“Yeah, it was … the way Augie talked about his family … that’s what did it for me,” she says. “He felt like he missed his chance with them, and I—I saw through the guilt for a second. I realized I didn’t have to miss mine.”
She swallows, palming her side, the dog inked there for her mother. August waits for her to go on.
“New York was—it was good. It was really good. It gave me a lot of stuff I hadn’t had since New Orleans. It was like I finally figured out who I was. How to be who I was,” Jane says. “And I wanted my family to know that person. So, I mailed Augie my record collection, and I was gonna call him when I got into town.”
“Did they know?” August asks. “Your family, did they know you were coming back?”
“No,” Jane says. “I haven’t talked to them since ’71. I was too nervous to call.”
August nods.
“Can I ask you something else?”
Jane, still examining the handwriting, nods without looking up.
“Did he say … did Augie tell you why he stopped writing home?”
“Hmm?”
“He used to write my mom every week, until summer 1973. She never heard from him again after that.”
“No, he—he told me he was still writing to her. He said she hadn’t written back in years, and he didn’t think she wanted to hear from him anymore, but he was still writing.” Her eyes move from the card to August’s face, studying her. “She never got them, did she?”
“No,” August says. “She didn’t.”
“Shit.” It hangs unsaid in the air: someone else must have gotten to those letters first. August has a pretty good idea who. “What a fucking mess.”
“Yeah,” August agrees. She slides her hand over Jane’s at her side and squeezes.
They ride in quiet for a few stops, watching the sun set behind apartment blocks, until Jane stands and starts pacing the aisle in that way she does, like a tiger in captivity.
“So, if you’re right about how I got stuck,” she says, turning to August, “what does that mean for getting me out?”
“It means, if we can … somehow re-create the event, and have you touch the third rail the same way you did last time, maybe it’d reset you.”
Jane nods. “Could you do that?”
She’s rallying, throwing memories over her back like luggage, cracking the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other like she’s getting ready for a fight. August would kill for her. Space and time are nothing.
“I think so,” August says. “We’d have to cause a surge, and we’d need access to the power controls for the substation that manages this line, but I’m close. I’m waiting to get some public records about exactly which one that is.”
“Then it’s only a matter of … breaking into city property and not electrocuting yourself.”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Jane says with a wink. “Have you tried a Molotov cocktail?”
August groans. “Man, how did you avoid the FBI watch list? That would have made this whole mystery so much easier to solve.”
* * *
Myla agrees with August’s theory. So now, they have a plan. But when they’re not trying to figure out how to take down part of New York City’s power grid, they’re selling out double Delilah’s capacity for the Save Billy’s Pancakepalooza, which means there are two weeks to find a new venue. They’ve been through bars, concert venues, art galleries, bingo halls—all booked or asking for a fee they can’t begin to afford.
For August, it’s nights waiting tables and days split between research on substations and every logistical snag of planning a massive fundraiser. With whatever she has leftover, she’s on the Q, threading her fingers through Jane’s and trying to memorize everything about her while she still can.
Her mom has given up on texting her, and August really doesn’t know what to say. She can’t tell her what she’s found out over the phone. But she also isn’t ready to see her.
It occurs to August that it’s just as fucked up to keep this information to herself as it was for her mom to hide things. At least, she tells herself, she’s doing it to protect her. But maybe that really is what her mom thought too.
It’s a train of thought that always brings her back to Jane. She thinks about Jane’s family, her parents and sisters, none of them ever knowing what happened to her. August has checked the records enough times to know that there was never a missing persons report filed for Biyu Su. As far as Jane’s family knew, Jane left and didn’t want to be found.
August wonders if any of them have boxes of files like her mom. When this is over, one way or the other, she’ll find them. If Jane goes back to her time, she’ll probably find them on her own. But if she stays, or if—well, if she’s gone, they deserve to know.
That’s what she’s thinking about when she clocks out of her late shift and takes her Su Special from the window. People who leave, people who get left behind. The Q closes in a month, Billy’s in four, and it’s all over unless they find a way to stop it.
“So,” Myla says when August slides into the booth. She’s been giving August significant eyes across the dining room since she and Niko sat down, so she must have some news. “You know how I’ve been, like, shaking down all my old Columbia classmates to find out if anyone has any MTA connections?”
August swallows a bite of sandwich. “Yeah.”
“Well … I found a lead.”
“Really? Who? What do they do?”
“Um,” Myla says, watching her pancake slowly absorb syrup, “he actually works at the Transit Power Control Center.”
“What?” August says, nearly upsetting a ketchup bottle. “Are you kidding me? That’s perfect! Have you talked to him about it?”
“Yeah, so, uh…” She’s being something she never is: cagey. “That’s the thing. It’s kind of … my ex.”
August stares at her. Beside her, Niko continues serenely eating his cinnamon roll.
“Your ex,” August says flatly. “As in the one you dropped the night you met him.” She points at Niko with a fork, but he looks unbothered, chewing like a contented cow.
“Yeah, so,” Myla says, wincing. “In retrospect, maybe not my finest moment. The Libra jumped out. In my defense, though, he, like, high-key sucked. Way too into himself.”
“Is he still mad?”
“I mean, uh. He has me blocked on social. I found out from a friend of a friend who talks to him. So…”
August wants to scream. “So, we have a perfect in at the exact place we need access to, but we can’t use it because of your inability to keep it in your pants.”
“Says the woman getting subway head from a revenant,” Myla counters.
“The heart wants what it wants, August,” Niko says sincerely.
“I’m gonna murder both of you,” August says. “What are we gonna do?”
“Okay, anyway,” Myla says. “I have an idea. The Billy’s fundraiser, right? Obviously we need a new venue. I’ve been looking into a lot of unconventional places, like public spaces, condemned warehouses—”
“I thought you meant an idea for the Jane thing.”
“I’m getting there!” Myla chides. “Have you ever seen what the substations look like?”
She’s pretty sure she’s read and looked at every shred of information on substations in existence over the past couple of weeks, so, “Yeah.”
“They’ve got a kind of old-school techno-punk industrial vibe, right?” Myla continues. “And I was thinking, what if we could convince the city to let us use the Control Center as a venue? People use decommissioned subway stops for art installations all the time. We could say we’re into the aesthetic and want somewhere with a greater capacity to bring in more people. I can reach out to Gabe and see if he’ll help—he used to work at Delilah’s, maybe he’ll be sympathetic to the cause. Then once we get in, we just have to keep people distracted while I fuck with the line, which should be easy with a party that size. It’ll only take a couple of minutes, I think.”
August stares at her across the table.
“So … your idea is … a heist. You want us to pull off a heist.” August gestures helplessly at Niko, who has given up on his meal with a quarter left to go. “Niko can’t even pull off that cinnamon roll.”
Niko pats his stomach. “It was really filling.”
“It’s not a heist,” Myla hisses. “It’s … an elaborate, planned crime.”
“That’s a heist.”
“Look, do you have any other ideas? Because if not, I think we should give this a try. And if we do it right, we can raise a shitload of money for Billy’s at the same time.”
August listens to the murmur of tables and the scrape of forks and maybe, if she strains, Lucie cursing out the cash register. She does love this place. And Jane loves it too.
“Okay,” August says. “We can try.”
* * *
It’s Jane’s idea, actually, that puts one of the last crucial pieces in place.
“I’m pretty sure,” August says, “that if you can walk between cars, you can walk on the tracks. So, on the night of the party, when Myla does the surge, you should be able to touch the third rail. But I don’t know how to prove it before then. The Q’s always running, so there’s not really a time to test it. We could jump out, but there’s no way to make sure we’d be off the tracks safely before the next train.”
Jane thinks and says, “What about the R/W?”
August frowns. “What about it?”
“Look,” Jane says, jabbing her finger at the subway map posted by the doors. “Right here, at Canal Street, they split off from the Q.” She traces the yellow line down to the bottom tip of Manhattan and across the river, to where it meets up with the blue and orange lines at Jay Street. “Those are the only two trains that run on this track.”
“You’re right,” August says.
“I’ve only met Wes three times,” Jane says, “but every single time, he’s bitched about how the R wasn’t running that day. So if the R isn’t running, we could have time to sneak out the back of the train at Canal and follow the R tracks toward city hall, and maybe, maybe it’d be close enough to the Q that I could walk on them. Maybe we could even see how far I can go.”
August thinks—she’s not sure, exactly, that it’ll work, but Jane’s also become a lot more solidly here lately. Tangibly rooted in reality. Maybe she couldn’t have done it months ago, but it’s possible the line will afford her a little more slack now.
“Okay,” August says. “We just have to hope the MTA fucks up soon.”
The MTA, reliably, fucks up soon. Three days later, Wes texts her bitterly from his evening commute: As requested, here is your notification that the R is out of service.
Hell yes!!! August texts back.
My night is fucked, Wes responds, but go off I guess.
She meets Jane on the Q’s very last car, and when it stops at Canal, they slide the door open as quietly as they can.
“Okay,” August says, “just, you know, a general reminder that the third rail carries 625 volts that will absolutely kill a person and should have killed you before. So, you know. Uh.” She glances down at the rails and wonders how Jane Su can get her to flirt with death so often. “Be careful.”
“Sure,” Jane says, and she jumps off the back of the train, and—
Like that first day when they tried every stop, she’s gone.
August finds her six cars up, and they weave their way to the back and try again.
“This is annoying,” Jane says when she reappears behind August like an exasperated Bloody Mary.
“We have to keep trying,” August tells her. “It’s—”
Before August can finish her sentence, Jane brushes past her and jumps off the platform—aiming straight for the third rail.
“Jane, don’t—!”
She lands firmly on her feet, both sneakers planted on the third rail, and she grins. No shock. Not a single singed hair. August gapes.
“I knew it!” Jane crows. “I’m part of the electricity! It can’t hurt me!”
“You—” The train’s brakes disengage, and August has to hold her breath and jump, throwing herself hard in the opposite direction of Jane. She lands in the packed dirt to the side of the tracks, ripping one knee of her jeans, and rolls to look at Jane’s smug expression. “You could have died!”
“I’m pretty confident I can’t,” Jane says, like it’s nothing. “At least, not that way.” She paces down the rail, one foot in front of the other, headed toward the fork in the tracks. “Come on! Next train’s coming soon!”
“Un-fucking-believable,” August mumbles, but she dusts herself off and follows.
When they reach the relative safety of the tunnel toward City Hall, the light from the station starts to shrink, and they’re lit only by blue and yellow lights lining the tunnel. It’s strange to walk alongside Jane without stopping, but when Jane shouts happily into the echoing dark, it’s infectious. She starts to run, and August runs after her, hair flying and the hard floor of the tracks under her shoes. It feels like she could run forever if it’s with Jane.
But Jane’s footsteps stutter abruptly to a halt.
“Oh,” she says.
August turns back to her, out of breath. “What?”
“I can’t—I don’t think I can go any farther. It’s—it feels weird. Wrong.” She touches a hand to the center of her chest, like she’s having existential heartburn. “Oh, yikes. Yeah, this is it. This is as far as I can go.”
She sits on the third rail.
“Still cool though, right?”
August nods. “Yeah, and, this is only, like, a taste. An appetizer. An amuse-bouche of freedom. We’re gonna get you the real deal.”
“I know. I believe you,” Jane says, looking at August like she means it.
August sinks down across from her, sitting gingerly on a track. She’s read that the other two rails are very lightly electrified, only enough to carry signals, so she figures she’s okay. “We can sit here for a while, if you want.”
“Yeah,” Jane says, pulling her knees up. She stretches her arms out like she’s trying to touch as much open air as she can, even in the stuffy confines of the tunnel. “Yeah, this is nice.”
“I have—” August feels around the bottom of her bag. “Um, one orange, if you want to split it.”
“Oh, yeah, please.”
August tosses it over, and she catches it smoothly.
More and more lately, August has stopped studying Jane. She’s stopped looking for clues in every expression or offhand comment, and it feels good to just see her. To listen to the sound of her low voice talking about nothing, to watch her fingers effortlessly work the orange rind, to soak in her company. August feels like one of the little packets of cream she always dumps into Jane’s coffee, steeping in sugar and warmth.
Jane piles bits of orange peel on her knee and splits the segments into halves. When August reaches out to take one, her fingertips brush the back of Jane’s hand, and she yelps and jumps backward from a short, sharp shock.
“Whoa,” Jane says. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” August says, shaking out her hand. “You’re, like, conductive.”
Jane holds her fingers up in front of her face, going slightly cross-eyed to examine them. “Cool.” She glances up to see August watching her. “What?”
