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Jane touches her chin with the back of her knuckles. “There are worse reasons to break the laws of space and time.”
Next stop: Coney Island. The station where Jane’s long ride on the Q started years ago, where they’re going to try to save her. Slowly, the Wonder Wheel slides into view in the distance. They’ve seen it a thousand times from this train, lit up on summer nights, cutting yellow and green lines through the midday sky. August told Jane once about how it stayed when half the park was swept away. She knows how Jane likes stories about surviving.
“Don’t, uh…” Jane says, clearing her throat. “If I go back, after tomorrow. Don’t waste too much more time on me. I mean, don’t get me wrong—wait a respectful amount of time and all. But, you know.” She tucks August’s hair behind her ear, rubbing the side of her thumb once against her cheek. “Just make sure you make them nervous. They shouldn’t underestimate you.”
“Okay,” August says thickly. “I’ll write that down.”
Jane’s looking at her, and she’s looking at Jane, and the sun’s going down, and the goddamn thing is that it’s right there in both of their throats, but they can’t say it. They’ve always been hopeless at saying it.
Instead, August leans forward and kisses Jane on the lips. It’s soft, shaky like the rattle of the train but so much quieter. Their knees bump together, and Jane’s fingertips tangle in the ends of her hair. She feels something warm and wet on her cheek. She doesn’t know if she’s crying, or if Jane is.
Sometimes, when they kiss, it’s like August can see it. Just for a second, she can see a life that’s not here on this train. Not a distant future, not a house. An immediate present unspooling like film: shoes in a pile by the door, a bark of laughter under bar lights, passing a box of cereal over on a Saturday morning. A hand in her back pocket. Jane, walking up the subway steps and into the light.
When they break apart, August tips her head against Jane’s shoulder, pressing her cheek to the leather. It smells like years, like a lightning storm, like engine grease and smoke, like Jane.
There’s so much to say, but all she has is: “I was really lonely before I met you.”
Jane’s silent for a few seconds. August doesn’t look at her, but she knows how the shadows of telephone poles and rooftops slide over the high points of her cheekbones and the soft dips of her mouth. She’s memorized it. She closes her eyes and tries to picture them again, anywhere else.
Jane’s hand wraps around hers.
“So was I.”
15
peopleofcity
[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.]
peopleofcity My parents split up when I was a kid, and I lost touch with my dad, but I knew he was in New York. I moved up here a year ago after my mother died. I couldn’t stand the thought of having a parent who was still alive and not even trying to have a relationship with him, you know? I’ve been looking for him since I got here. Dad, if you see this, I forgive you. Let’s have a burger.
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.”
