“Holy shit,” August says, panting. “Holy shit, I can’t believe I did that.”
Jane leans on a pole to catch her breath. “You did. And that is what you need to trust in. Because you got what you need. And sometimes, the universe has your back.”
August inhales once, exhales. She looks at Jane, forty-five years away from where she’s supposed to be, and yeah, she guesses in some ways, the universe does have her back.
“So,” Jane says, “let’s take it down to one thing. What scares you the most?”
August thinks about it as her lungs level back out.
“I—” she attempts. “I don’t know who I am.”
Jane snorts, raising an eyebrow. “Well, that makes fuckin’ two of us.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Stop, okay? For five minutes, let’s pretend everything else doesn’t matter, and I’m me, and you’re you, and we’re sitting on this train, and we’re figuring it out. Can you do that?”
August grits her teeth. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Jane says. “Now, listen to me.”
She crouches in front of August, bracing her hands on August’s knees, forcing her to look into her eyes.
“None of us know exactly who we are, and guess what? It doesn’t fucking matter. God knows I don’t, but I’ll find my way to it.” She rubs her thumb over August’s kneecap, poking gently into the soft part below her thigh. “Like—okay, I dated this girl who was an artist, right? And she’d do figure drawing, where she’d draw the negative space around a person first, and then fill in the person. And that’s how I’m trying to look at it. Maybe I don’t know what fills it in yet, but I can look at the space around where I sit in the world, what creates that shape, and I can care about what it’s made of, if it’s good, if it hurts anyone, it makes people happy, if it makes me happy. And that can be enough for now.”
Jane’s looking up at her like she means it, like she’s been riding these rails all this time on that hope. She’s a fighter, a runner, a riot girl, and she can’t be any of that down here, so she runs between trains to feel something. If she can be here and live with that and have enough left over for this, she must know what she’s talking about.
“Shit,” August says. “You’re good at this.”
Jane smiles wide. “Look, I was gay in the ’70s. I can handle an emergency.”
“God,” August groans as Jane clambers into her own seat. “I can’t believe I made you talk me down from an existential crisis.”
Jane tilts her head to look at her. She’s got this ability to move between pretty and handsome from moment to moment, a subtle difference in the way she holds her chin or the set of her mouth. Right now, she’s the prettiest girl August has ever seen.
“Shut up,” Jane says. “You’re spending your life riding the subway to help a stranger with no evidence she can be helped, okay? Let me do one thing for you.”
August releases a breath, and she’s surprised at the proximity when it ruffles the ends of Jane’s hair.
Jane keeps looking at her, and August swears she sees something move behind her eyes, like a memory does when she’s thinking about Mingxia or Jenny or one of the other girls, but new, different. Something delicate as a spark, and only for August. It’s the same feeling from the platform: maybe this time, for real.
August isn’t supposed to care. She’s not supposed to want that. But the way her heart kicks up into a fever frequency says that she still goddamn does.
“You’re not a stranger,” August says into the few inches between them.
“No, you’re right,” Jane agrees. “We’re definitely not strangers.” She leans back and stretches her arms over her head, turning her face away from August, and says, “I guess you’re my best friend, huh?”
The train eases into another station, and something clenches in the vicinity of August’s jaw.
Friend.
“Yeah,” August says. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“And you’re gonna get me back to where I’m supposed to be,” Jane goes on, smiling. Smiling at the idea of going back to 1970-something and never seeing August again. “Because you’re a genius.”
The train rattles and groans to a stop.
“Yeah,” August says, and she forces a smile.
* * *
“You’ve been doing what for research?” Myla asks. It’s hard to catch the question when she’s got a screwdriver between her teeth, but August gets the gist.