The sound of steam

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve heard trains. The wheels, the whistle, the engine. I used to think there was a train inside me. The pounding of my heart in my ears as I fell asleep sounded like a powerful engine. I thought once that a train would come to take me away and I could go and explore the world from my steamy steed. I’ve only ever seen trains in movies and on the internet. There are train tracks in my little town, but they’ve been out of use since B&O found a more efficient route. My dad would tell me how the ground would shake when the giant box cars would roll through at ungodly hours of the night.

The trains got quieter for a while, I’ve only started hearing them again recently. Pounding through my head. I think they got quieter when I met Danny. We were the only two homeschooled kids in our town of around 2,000. We met when my mom followed the truancy officer to her house, complaining about the threats he had given her the whole way. We were both about eight, I was a bit older than him, my birthday is two months before his. After that day our mothers bonded over mutual hatred for the American school system, and we bonded over Archie comics. I always thought Betty was the best, but he liked Cheryl.

We hung out together, called each other on the phone, spent almost every night together, and grew up beside each other. It’s not enough to say that he was my best friend. We had a mock prom together, tried to replicate every beat of the normal school experience while making fun of the poor kids who got locked up every day. Call us hypocritical, but we were kids, we didn’t want to admit to one another that we felt as though we were missing out.

Danny always had a hard time with being himself. In a small mid-western town, nobody else was like him or wanted to admit they were, and I was the only one who truly knew the way he felt. His surroundings constantly reminded him of who he couldn’t be, slowly breaking him down. In the last few days, I saw him I almost didn’t recognize him. But the last time we talked I heard an inkling of resolution in his voice, an undertone that made me feel like he would be alright.

I didn’t know that would be the last time I heard from him. He went away one day. Like it was nothing. It hurt. We had always made plans, but I never thought he would abandon me, leave me so alone. I wallowed for a time, refusing to leave the house or partake in the world around me. But with time, the loss of my friend didn’t hurt so much. That’s when the trains visited me

I dreamt I was on a track, the one near my town. Standing at the entrance of a dark tunnel, Danny was calling from the other end. I woke up, but I could still hear the train. It was deafening, pounding in my ears. I knew where I needed to go. I ran to the tracks, about 2 miles and I didn’t even feel the fatigue of my body. I was like a machine, chugging towards my goal. He didn’t leave me behind, he had left me something.

I made it to the tracks and I saw it, there was a beautiful scrap of paper stuck under a rock, left there for me. It was a train ticket, or at least that’s what it looked like. I could feel the ground rumbling, I was going to see Danny again, all I could feel was excitement. I stepped out onto the tracks and I could see light at the end of that overgrown dark train tunnel, and I could hear Danny calling out to me.