One Week - By Nikki Van De Car Page 0,5

idea what you're doing and are a dumbass, and we couldn't have that.”

I dig my fingernails into my palms and close my eyes. I want to scream. Clearly getting on the next train that was leaving was a stupid move. I have absolutely no desire to go to San Luis. I want to get out of California. And no, I have no idea what I'm doing, but if taking some long-ass route (involving a bus, gross) to get to New York is what I'm doing, as it apparently is, then that's what I'll do.

Wait a minute.

“If taking this train to get to New York makes me a dumbass, then what the hell are you?” I demand. “You're on this train, and you're going to New York!”

Goth Geek shrugs. “It was the cheapest way to get there. Not all of us are as quick with our credit cards as you are, Barbie. And I'm not exactly in any hurry.”

I sigh, and realize neither am I. “So I'll get there when I get there,” I say. “Whatever.”

“Well said.” Goth Geek shakes his head, still laughing. “Now, why are you being so chatty? You've been looking down that expensive nose at me since I saw you at the ticket agent.”

I glare at him. “My nose came as is, thank you very much, and I'm not being chatty. You started talking to me, remember?”

“Yeah, but I was just trying to get you to move so I could have the row to myself again.”

I stare at him blankly. Come again?

“The surest way to get someone to not want to talk to you is to start talking to them,” he explains.

“That's why you invited me to sit down before, when I first got on the train?”

“It worked, didn't it? You would rather go sit next to the fat slob than someone who wanted to sit next to you.”

I shake my head. “That's the craziest thing I've ever heard.”

“Like I said, it works.” He looks at me sideways. “But you're not moving, huh?”

“Well, where exactly do you suggest I go?” I gesture around the train car. “There aren't any other empty seats. Believe me, if there were, I'd be sitting anywhere else.”

“My next plan was going to be to spill soda on you, but somebody already beat me to it.”

“Yeah, and he ruined my shirt!” I complain.

“Like you don't have fifty more.” Goth Geek waves his hand dismissively.

“Well, not with me, I don't. It's frigging freezing in here.”

He looks below my throat for the first time—he had been studiously avoiding any chest-glances, which I was surprised by but appreciated—and sees my very prominent goosebumps. He sighs.

“Here,” he says, and digs in his duffle bag. He hands me an old sweatshirt. I eye it distastefully—who knows when it was last washed—but I'm desperate.

“Thank you,” I say as I pull it on.

“Don't spill anything on it,” he says.

* * *

I wake up to Goth Geek shaking my shoulder.

“You got drool on my sweatshirt,” he says.

I hastily wipe my mouth. Ugh, I did drool. Gross. “Sorry.”

“I need it back, anyway,” he says. “We're here.”

Here. Where's here? I sit up and look out the window. Right, Santa Barbara. Scene of many a summer weekend spent at yacht clubs and charity barbecues with my father, as he tried to get me to mingle with the right people and I tried to point out that I was eleven and eleven-year-olds don't mingle. I strip off the sweatshirt and hand it to the geek, who shoves it in his backpack and gets up out of his seat without a word. He walks down the aisle and off the train without looking back. Bye.

I stand up and stretch. My neck feels permanently bent sideways from sleeping in that tiny-ass seat. At least my shirt has dried. It's all stiff and weird-feeling and probably ruined, but it's opaque now, which is really all that matters. I hoist my bag over my shoulder and exit the train. I look around, yawning. Where did Goth Geek say I was supposed to go now?

Oh God. A bus. Right. Do they have first class on buses? Probably not. I stretch out the crick in my neck and contemplate another experience like the one I've just had, only probably worse. Just kill me now.

Or maybe they're not that bad. I mean, it's not like I've ever actually been on a bus before. Could be fun. I start walking over to the bus terminal, trying to bask in my newfound sense of