A Date They Won’t Forget

Felix Fuglesen arrives five minutes early for his first date. He sits in front of the Lincoln Mall on the rim of a planter that’s empty except for trash. For ten minutes, he looks around--there are neglected brick buildings, a few trees choked by grates around their trunks, and maybe ten people walk by like they have a specific place they need to be. He resists the urge to take his phone from his pocket. Once you do that, you’re no longer present and if this date is going to be a success, Felix will need to be totally present.

Five minutes late is pretty late, isn’t it? Or is that a rounding error and it’s not until fifteen or even twenty minutes that you can be annoyed--or maybe even give up, because there are many places Felix would rather be. For one thing, the river would be great today. You could sit under the trestle and wait for trains. He’d also rather be at the sculpture park, where he had originally proposed they bring frozen custard and take a walk. But Jess will not be at those places--she will be here, at the mall, where she wanted to meet. And Felix agreed because, as Dad says, compromise is the grease of human machinations. Also, how dumb would it be to argue, and increase the non-trivial risk that Jess might have second thoughts?

Places are weird, because in reality they are pretty static, but in your memory they can be completely different. Looking at the Tudor-style façade of the Lincoln Mall in this bright sun, the window trim is split and curling, the stucco is crumbling, and weeds grow from the pavement. But it’s the same place Felix came with his family one Christmas to see the lights and hear the choir and check out the yule-tide displays. It can’t be that long ago. But he yearns for the Lincoln Mall from those days and how could this possibly be the same place? It seems weird to be seventeen and yearning for something lost. You’d think that would come when you’re older.

Fifteen minutes and still no Jess. Felix stands and puts his hands in his pockets and walks, but there’s nowhere to walk to, really, so he makes a circle around the bronze sculpture of the 16th President, whose nose and privates are polished from people touching. On the other side, an old man lies against the base of the sculpture, hugging plastic bags stuffed with plastic bags. He and Lincoln are both flecked with the droppings of starlings.

Felix nods at the man and says hello, which seems to wake the man from a trance, followed by a slow smile. It’s like he recognizes him. The old man raises his arm and points a finger at Felix and laughs, silently, and his eyes are watering. Felix pauses longer than he means to, because maybe you’re supposed to give the old guy money? Or probably food would be better?

Then Jess appears at the mall entrance with three friends. Eighteen minutes late. Okay, that’s a rounding error.

However, they had not agreed that there would be friends on the first date! If Felix had known that, he might have brought his friend Conor, although Conor would have been scared to hang out with girls of this level. Now Felix will have to re-factor his plans to make things fun and worth doing again for four girls. That is non-trivial--it’s so much better to plan ahead so you don’t have to think on the fly.

But holy mackerel Jess is beautiful! Why is this a new discovery each time? You get a strange sense of weakness that’s also nice—nicer than anything—and your legs feel heavy and it’s hard to keep your head up. She runs toward him and on tiptoes makes a kiss beside his cheek without touching it (but still, it’s a kiss! Is that the first kiss, officially? Hopefully not) and grips his wrist and pulls him toward the mall. In long strides, he catches his shoe on a crack in the pavement and trips. When he recovers, he remembers Dad reminding him of posture, and he stands straight before the group of girls, because it’s best even if it makes you feel conspicuous.

Jess says, So… this is Ashley, and that’s Ashleigh, and that’s Neveah.

Felix raises his hand in hello, although he recognizes all of them from the hallways of Middling Central. How would a clever guy--or even Dad--how would they start this conversation?

Felix takes a breath and says, Well isn’t this my lucky day? Four lovely ladies for the price of one!

The girls stare at him. Ashleigh is chewing gum.

Ashley says, I didn’t know you were so tall.

I like your teeth, Neveah says, Do you use whiteners?

Sometimes when a joke falls flat you double down, so Felix says, I mean, we could field a basketball team with this many, right?

Jess says to her friends, Find your own tall boy. He’s mine.

She puts her arm around his waist and presses her hip against the side of his femur. This is a lot of contact, starting from no contact ever, but it would be rude to just stand there receiving the contact without reciprocating. So Felix cups his hand around the bump of Jess’s shoulder. It feels like a pose, which probably needs some correction to be natural. But Ashleigh, apparently inspired, leaps in front of them and points her phone camera, exclaiming, Adorable!

To which Jess says, Okay! Enough! Enough!

She makes swatting motions toward her friends.

Ashley and Neveah study their phones to see what Ashleigh has sent them.

The double doors of the mall these days have a dark film over the glass so you can’t see through. But the old ornate logo, an elaborate cursive LM, remains. The sight of it brings back that yearning for old times.

Jess pulls him inside.

When Felix was young, there were bronze sculptures of bison at the center of the Lincoln Mall, enormous and bright under the round skylights. Your hands tasted like pennies after you played on them while Mom bought socks and books. Now the bison are gone, along with most of the stores. There’s a place that sells plastic bathroom supplies. There’s an acupuncture place. There’s the arcade, where nothing good happens. And there’s the teriyaki restaurant, where Felix is taking Jess for lunch. Which brings up the question: Do you pay for the three friends too? Or split a bill? And if that, what if the amount’s not evenly divisible?

They are still holding hands, but as they approach the center, where bison once roamed, they tug in opposite directions. Felix turns toward the hall with the teriyaki restaurant, and Jess turns toward the hall that leads to the arcade.

Ope! Says Felix. We’re going this way!

Jess drops her hand and looks at him, narrow-eyed and puzzled. Um, no, she says, the arcade is down here.

The three friends are coming down the hall now.

We said we were getting teriyaki, Felix says. He would remember if they had ever talked about the arcade.

Well whatever, Jess says, the arcade is amazing! My dad says it keeps this place afloat, which is good for the economy. Come on!

Felix’s dad says ‘On the world, take action, lest it act on you.’ He painted that on a smooth river stone and keeps that river stone on his desk. That’s how Felix had achieved this date—by taking action on the world. He made up his mind that the hardest and most awesome thing he could think of was a date with Jess Hollerman, and so at an optimal moment during passing period, he set his intention, and pushed upstream through the crowd of students and books and backpacks until he reached Jess’s locker and, seeing that she must have been crying, nearly lost his nerve, but kept it, and asked the question, which took her by surprise but then after a moment of thinking and looking first one way and then the other down the hallway, she accepted and they called each other’s phones right then and the deal was done.

Now there is no way Felix is going to see all that effort go right down the drain, with a sudden change of plans, to visit the arcade of all places, where nothing decent happens, so people say. Dad says you can judge a place by its people (especially when arguing against vacations in Florida) and by that logic, the arcade should be judged very severely. The kids who go to the arcade are not honor students, let’s just say. They don’t ever get out of Middling, either. But you don’t change a person’s mind by just contradicting them—you need to provide alternate paths. Life is an infinite web of alternate paths, each suited to an array of possible scenarios—Felix says this. Needs work though; not quite ready to paint on a stone.

The three friends are just strides away, though still studying their phones and bumping shoulders. On the world Felix needs to take action again, and pretty quick.

Let’s go down to the river! He says. I know a great spot. Way better than the arcade. It’s so peaceful…

No that won’t work.

He tries again … There are ghosts! Under the train trestle. There’s this amazing story…

Jess is looking at her friends. She looks back into Felix’s face, once again narrows her eyes in puzzlement. But then she laughs and hits his chest with her open palm, saying, You are so random!

The friends look up and witness this. Ashleigh takes a picture.

Jess presses her bosom against Felix’s ribcage and looks up into his face. He can see the pink of her tongue and smell the mint of the gum beside her teeth. The whites of her eyes are just white, with no imperfections, but her irises have flecks like a stained-glass window.

She whispers, This is our first date! Aren’t you excited?

It’s as if the reality has just sunk in, and Jess is not having second thoughts. Wow, unexpected.

An alternate path will present itself. Felix follows her into the arcade.

Inside the music is deep and repetitive and you can feel it in your stomach, and after a while it’s as if your heart has modified its beat to the rhythm. This is where the old movie theater was--you can tell by the sloping floor. But otherwise, everything in the arcade is new and unlike anything outside. Vague blue light comes from bulbs strung just above their heads, far below the vaulted ceiling. There are rows of the vintage machines their parents used to play, muttering and exclaiming like droids. And there are rows of densely-packed consoles and gaming PCs with curved monitors. The vintage machines attract the crowds, though. Why? Nostalgia? But for a time when you weren’t born? Doesn’t that contradict the definition of nostalgia? Or maybe that’s not exactly what it means.

Jess turns suddenly so Felix bumps into her. She holds out her cupped hand in a way they might admire a bird’s egg. Jess is holding a triangular pill.

Do you party? she asks. She has in her eyes a look you would call sultry. The blue light enhances it. So this is the arcade.

Felix deflects the question, Well. I can see you have only one, so I wouldn’t want to…

Yeah, no, Jess says. I did one earlier. I’m good…

She holds her cupped hand up to his mouth, like how you might offer an animal water, and her eyes are still sultry but also sparkly and mischievous. Also, coming from her wrist there is a fragrance of perfume like bunches of delicate flowers. This is how it happens. Certainly an unexpected path among the infinite paths. But who’s to say?

Then Jess’s eyes switch away from him, over his shoulder. They switch twice like this, and then she pockets her hand, stiffens her body, and says

Shit!

Felix turns to look. Jess says, Don’t look! Okay now look.

Here comes Donnie Martin. There is no mistaking Jess’s usual boyfriend. He already has the face of a middle-aged man, with the bulging brow and the skin creased around the mouth. As he marches through the arcade, with two friends flanking him, people move aside. This happens despite him being probably the shortest guy here. Rumor says he stacks insoles inside his high-tops to gain an inch. Rumor says he missed his junior year because he was in rehab and another rumor says he was in the Marines but got kicked out because he lied about his age. That rumor doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, but people don’t care. They say he once stole a boat in Wisconsin. They say he sold half his dad’s gun collection and bought bitcoin. They say he’s double-jointed, that he had a twin who died in utero, that he had intercourse with the crossing guard.

As a peer tutor, Felix once reviewed one of Donnie’s essays, ‘Making My Personal Brand,’ which was actually a series of paragraphs copied from career help websites. Felix rewrote it for Donnie, and changed the title to ‘Cultivating A Unique Identity,’ and Donnie turned in the re-write, but kept the original title. Plagiarism or not, Donnie did have a brand—quite literally. In the true meaning of literal. That is, Donnie has a logo. He took his initials DM and mashed them into the outline of a mean-looking eagle, or some bird of prey. You see the eagle from the side, and it looks prepared to obliterate something. This logo seems to be in motion wherever it appears--on Donnie’s flat-brimmed cap, on patches on his friends’ jackets, on stickers on people’s laptops, in spray-paint on dumpsters downtown. So maybe the essay doesn’t matter. On the world Donnie Martin is taking action.

We should say hi, Felix says to Jess. He looks at Donnie, who hasn’t returned the eye contact. In fact, he seems to keep his gaze pointed just over everyone’s heads. He talks to his friends with a side-mouth, without looking at them.

Jess stands behind Felix, in the leeward side from Donnie’s wind, you might say. She’s gathered her arms and wrists like an insect in a cocoon and presses Felix.

Are you freaking crazy? She whispers. We have to go right now.

Felix turns around. Well I don’t think so, Jess. We’re on a date, aren’t we? No need to be weird or secret about it. Didn’t you break up with Donnie?

Jess compresses her face, clenches her hands, and has a kind of convulsion, which ends in a fierce but almost silent scream. Then that’s done and she looks at Felix with weary eyes and says, It’s complicated. You don’t need to… Come on let’s go.

Well just hold on a second, Felix says. And he begins to explain the principle of the matter, but Jess interrupts him to say

Show me the ghosts!

Sorry, what? Felix asks, though he has heard her plainly. You do this sometimes so you can think.

Take me to that place—the river. I want to see your ghosts.

Jess puts a finger through his belt loop and pulls. As she stares up, he can see her pupils are the size of dimes.

Together they slide through the rows of the arcade, down the sloping floor, and burst through the emergency exit into blinding sunlight.

When Jess sees Felix’s dad’s car, she says, Oh let’s put the top down!

Felix knew this would happen, and almost decided against taking the fun car, because what’s the point? But the top is not to be taken down because it’s maple seed season and those whirlygigs are a bear to get out from in-between the seats. So Felix says,

I thought you didn’t want to be seen. This car is kind of conspicuous, you know, with the top down?

As Felix drives away, Jess rolls down the window, puts her face in the wind, lets her hair flow backward. Oh man she’s so beautiful! Why is this a surprise, every time? The air currents whisk her hair so that sometimes he can see all of her neck, but then it curls her hair around like a scarf. Briefly, Felix sees a mark just behind her ear. A birthmark? Then it’s covered again, secret. But now there’s a sudden awareness that Jess is a real human animal who needs oxygen and has to eat and processes that food with the same organs as everybody else—the organs are right there, inside her—and just like everybody else she needs to…

You can just take me home, Jess says into the wind. I think maybe Daddy will have the pool open. You know where my house is?

Felix swallows. Is this an invitation? What about the river? How do you clarify this. Casually…

Oh I don’t have my swimsuit, he says. We could swing by my place?

Jess turns her face into the car, her hair still in the wind. She says, No need.

She says this as if it’s an obvious answer to his question. But what does it mean? Felix tries again. Joking…

Oh, so I can just borrow your dad’s trunks?

Jess sits back against the seat and studies the side of his face. You’re funny, she says. You’re one of those funny people where almost nobody knows they’re funny? But at the ten-year reunion or somebody’s wedding you make a speech and everybody’s like, ‘I didn’t know he was funny!’

Jess appears pleased with her anecdote. She looks through the windscreen nodding in a slow rhythm.

So… Felix says. Are we going swimming at your house or the river? You wanted to see the ghosts?

Hearing himself say this, he realizes that if she were to choose the river, he would need to produce some ghosts. No, no he wouldn’t. Just a story would work. Just a walk along the river there (and maybe a real kiss?!) Just an interesting experience like she’s never had, given her lifestyle—that would be enough. That would be fair and honest, mostly.

Jess shudders as if coming out of a trance and laughs loudly, once. Okay, funny man. Yeah, no, I really appreciate this time with you, okay? If you just take the highway, that’s to my house. Drop me off at the corner or something and then you can go to the trestle and maybe tell me about it some time?

Maybe he should have put the top down after all.

Then Jess makes a gesture of remembering something suddenly, and Felix anticipates her reaching into her back pocket to retrieve her phone, and he swerves the fun car just enough that she grabs on to the dash and says, Easy! Geez.

Felix drapes one hand over the steering wheel and lets the other rest on the seat between them, as the cool guys do. While driving straight, he looks at Jess, and holds eye contact.

He asks, Do you have a medical issue, or a legitimate concern about how this date is going?

Jess pulls her chin back and says, Excuse me?

Felix’s question sounds weirder when spoken than when just thought. But now he has to persevere. You don’t let a little setback ruin your plans.

Felix replies, Well because those are justifiable reasons for why we’d end our date early—if you were sick or not happy with how it’s going. But if that’s not the case, then I’m assuming we’re still going to hang out. We’re going to have this date like we said we were.

Now he wonders if that was too harsh.

He adds, Does that make sense to you?

Jess blinks a few times, as if to clear her vision. She combs her hair with her fingers and then shakes her head to settle things in place. Then she looks at him, now again with the puzzlement, and asks, Do you have anything to drink?

Funny you should ask, Felix says, still draping his hand but now looking down the road that will take them to the trestle. There’s a cooler in the back seat.

Jess turns and pulls herself between their seats and now she’s very close to him, her waist against his shoulder and her hip just inches from his chin.

You call this a back seat? She says. Then, Oh sweet!

She brings forward two damp cans of hard seltzer and opens them and hands him one.

Can you hold mine? Felix says. Just till I’m done driving? We’re almost there.

Jess shrugs and sips from one can, and then the other.

They park the fun car along the shoulder of County Road 1250, where on one side there’s the woods and the river, and on the other side, as far as you can see, fields of ankle-high corn in gray soil. The rows come almost to the road, as if the farmer had crayons and obsessed about coloring right up to the line. All that’s left is a strip of weeds, littered with plastic grocery bags that rattle in the wind blowing across those fields. Probably tomorrow that farmer will come with a mower and shred those bags and some animals will eat them and die. Didn’t someone in town try to ban those bags?

Felix knows a trail, and he shows Jess how you push through the wall of honeysuckle bush and then suddenly you’re in the woods. Behold the woods! Water maples, white oaks, and hackberry trees soar up to a new green canopy. On the forest floor bluebells are still in bloom and mayapple creates this kind of stage of giant green leaves. And there are the tiny white and pink flowers he can’t identify yet, all tucked into secret places like somebody planned it. This is better than the arcade, right? Woodpeckers swoop beneath the canopy in parabolic lines, chattering. You can hear other birds sing but you can’t see them. Dad would know what they are, by what words they make. What says ‘teacher-teacher-teacher?’

Jess stands with her arms hanging loosely, jaw slack, a slight frown.

She says, What is this place? I didn’t know this was here.

Felix shrugs, It’s the woods. Wait til you see the river.

Now’s the time to take her hand and Felix does and she holds on. But Jess doesn’t move yet. She asks, How do you know about this place?

The truth is Dad took him here first, but instead Felix says, I like to explore, you know? Just get out and find interesting places, outside Middling.

This is also true.

Felix leads them down the path, with Jess a step behind, gripping his hand but looking in one direction and then another.

Weird, Jess says. It’s like some kind of nature show.

Felix affects an English accent and says, Then I shall be your guide, here, in the remote riparian woods of Middling County!

He looks back to see how his bit landed and sees only the puzzled face.

At the top of the bluff to the river, he says, It’s best if you just run down.

Felix demonstrates, in basically a controlled fall and stumble, and grabs a willow branch to stop himself.

Jess hesitates at the top of the bluff. If I fall, she says, that’s on you.

Felix stands at the base of the bluff and holds out his arms, and Jess stumble-falls down gracefully and stops in his embrace. How perfect! Felix lowers his face and prepares for a kiss.

Jess places her forearm in his chest and pushes herself back, finding balance, and says, Okay, now what?

The river is high and brown and carries loads of fallen trees that snag and make dams at the curves, where trash piles up. It’s not as scenic as he was picturing. But a kingfisher darts past, makes its distinctive rattle, and perches on a dead limb.

Felix points and whispers, so Jess can share the sighting. But she is slapping her calves to brush away some insects. Then she looks up and says, You didn’t bring the cooler did you?

Well you drank it in the car, Felix says.

Yeah, Jess says. She takes a deep breath, as if suddenly overcome by exhaustion, and says, Okay let’s see your ghost and then we can go.

Now what? Felix had rehearsed topics of conversation for a teriyaki lunch. None of that will work now—he’s not going to ask her if she remembers the party after their first communion when she dropped her jello cup and he got her a new one. He’s not going to ask if she still goes to the used book sale at the library with her mom like he saw her once. Or how funny it was when they had to share a seat coming home from the district meet and they had to triple up and he kept falling off. Those topics will have to wait for date #2, which is definitely going to happen, somehow, along one of the infinite paths.

People sometimes laugh at Felix’s watch, because it’s an outdated relic, but who’s laughing now as he glances at it with urgency and declares, We better hurry! The train’s coming soon and that’s when they appear!

He begins to jog down the dirt-and-sand beach, and turns to call back, Come on!

Jess raises both eyebrows, shakes her head no slowly, slips off her sandals, and sprints after him. Felix turns and runs, now more quickly, and hears her steps coming rapidly, rhythmically, like a metronome set too high. He wills his knees to rise faster, but Jess passes him easily, tearing away down the sand toward the trestle. As she crosses the shadow of the high railroad tracks across the river bank, she throws her arms in the air. He lumbers in a moment later, and they stand, hands-on-hips, breathing.

Felix says, Now we sit and wait quietly.

He drops to the sandy bank beneath the tracks. Jess sits beside him, not as close as he’d like but all right, and looks across the water. She’s still breathing, with renewed energy it seems, and there’s a shine of sweat along her hairline.

They wait. The river makes a trickling noise as water flows around a massive block of concrete and rebar. This is peaceful, right? Better than a mall?

But Jess is not reading his mind. She says, This place is kind of creeping me out. It’s like you can hear your thoughts.

Felix continues looking toward the other bank and says, That’s good, right? You gotta let yourself think.

Jess says, Most of what I do when I’m not sleeping is whatever it takes to not think. Thinking is what makes people crazy.

That’s a good line, Felix says. Though he would not recommend it for painting on a stone. Still, it’s better than his.

It’s not a line, Felix. It’s just the sad truth. If you think hard about it, everything is shit. So, don’t think.

There was a thrill that came when she said his name. It came as kind of a surprise, that she knew it—well that’s stupid, or silly rather. Of course she knows it. But still.

When’s the train coming? Jess asks.

The shadow of the tracks moves with the sun, marking time, and now they are sitting just barely in the shade.

Pretty soon, I think, Felix says.

I hope so, says Jess. Hey do we have service here? Let’s play some tunes or something.

Jess leans to the side to get her phone. That must not happen! If that happens, the date’s over. Effectively.

No! Felix says. He reaches over and puts his hand on her knee. She looks at his hand, puzzled again. But at least she sits back and leaves her phone in pocket.

He says Service is shit here--don’t bother. I’ll tell you the story. The story about the ghosts!

Okay, sure, Jess says. She lays back and cradles her head with her hands and looks up where the tracks make dark hash marks against the sky. Make it good, she says.

That’s a weird thing to say, because Felix is just going to tell her what the story is. There’s no real making, just telling.

Back in the 1880s, he begins…

No, no, no, Jess says. That’s too long ago. Make it like the 20’s.

Well but it happened in 1887.

Who cares? The 20s have flappers and prohibition and like Al Capone. He used to come down here right?

Yeah but that’s not the true story. Not this story anyway.

Fine.

Felix continues, Around here, in Illinois, there was a terrible drought that year. It was super hot and no rain.

Jess sighs, Oh god. Can you make it a little less depressing?

Felix’s rare temper flares. He turns to face her and says, Can you just let me tell the story for a minute? It’s not polite to interrupt like that. Okay? Can I tell the story now?

Jess rolls her head to the side to look at him. Her eyebrows lower and the fine corners of her mouth turn down. It’s a joke sad face, mostly, but her eyes are complicated. Felix ignores his instinct to apologize and goes on.

They had just built this trestle, he says, especially for excursion trains. A lot of people then paid to just ride these trains for fun—to get out of their towns, to go to Chicago. Lots of them went to Niagara Falls.

Jess lets out a breath and whispers, That sounds nice.

Now her expression is kind and soft. Felix moves a little closer as he talks.

Well in that drought, they were trying to give people things to do and one thing they did was burn weeds along the railroad tracks. Some guys were right here, on that day, the day before it happened, burning weeds. And in the heat and the dry, these beams and what do you call—ties, railroad ties—they caught fire and burned all night. But nobody knew.

So the next day the excursion train was completely full of people. You can imagine ladies in long dresses and hats and gentlemen in gentlemen’s clothes and the long jackets and hats too. They all crowded into this excursion train, which was made almost entirely out of wood, you know, and they were partying and leaning out the windows. This train was going to Niagara Falls—probably some people on honeymoons.

Now Jess is just listening.

Oh and one thing, Felix says, is that there were two engines pulling all the wooden coaches full of people. There were so many people—hundreds—that they added a second locomotive to the front. And they were coming fast along these tracks, the big party train, blowing smoke and tooting the whistle, just chugging along, coming toward this exact bridge over the river—this trestle.

Felix pauses to let that soak in. He decides to improvise on the story and says, Places are weird, because it’s hard to imagine them any other way than the way you see them now, so when you hear about some big event happening right there--it’s hard to process, you know? In this place, where you and I are lying, that train full of people came. On this sand, with some of these big trees here. Under this sky. Sometimes don’t you think about this—all the layers of people and what happened in places?

He looks at Jess and she looks back at him.

He continues, The first engine made it across the bridge. That was Engine 21. That engineer saw the bridge smoking, he said later, but couldn’t stop. He felt the bridge sag and sway when he went across, and knew it was bad but couldn’t do anything about it. So the next one, Engine 13 (totally true) wasn’t so lucky. The trestle collapsed right under it and it tipped off the tracks and fell into the river, right here. And you can see the huge dent it made in the bluff right there—can you see it? And all the cars, the coaches, slid right off the tracks into the river and on the banks here. They were all just smashed terribly—those wooden cars with all their people. Hundreds of people. It took like a few seconds, from having a party headed to Niagara Falls to lying crushed between benches and roofs and wheels and other people and suitcases and…

Okay, I get it, Jess says. She has turned on her side. She whisks her hand for him to go on.

It took weeks to sort it all out. Even then, some of the bodies—the people—were never recovered. Specifically, seven people just disappeared. They looked and looked and never found them.

Jess says, And now those seven ghosts haunt this bridge!

She lies with her head on one forearm, her other hand massaging the sand. Did I get it right?

Well, yeah, Felix says. That’s kind of the punch line—I was just getting to it. But yeah, there are seven ghosts of the seven lost people.

Okay cool, Jess says. Keep going.

Well, that’s kind of it. That’s the story. Felix’s enthusiasm is suddenly drained. It’s hard to get momentum back when this happens.

Right, but what about the ghosts? You just told, you know, the setup. Now what happens with the ghosts?

Well, at least she’s interested. Felix resumes,

Sometimes, when the train comes, you can see the ghosts under this trestle. They are up there, under the tracks, with their arms in the air and their hands on the beams—just holding the thing up, you know? Helping trains make their way. They say they light up and flicker in their places while the train goes across.

Jess turns her mouth down. Sometimes? she says. Like how often?

It depends, Felix says. Now an opportunity presents itself to him. A little deception is okay, every once in a while, right, if your intentions are good?

It depends, he says, on how the watchers do. If you’re very quiet and respectful. You have to sit close together, to show respect for the people who loved the ghosts and who the ghosts loved. Then you’re likely to see them.

Felix adds, My folks saw them on the day they got engaged.

This was true, but also, maybe not a good idea to bring parents into the conversation?

Jess’s phone rings from her pocket—a melody from a children’s movie he can’t remember.

That’s weird, she says, Who calls?

She rolls on her back and looks at the screen and says,

Shit.

What? Asks Felix, but somehow he knows.

It’s Donnie Martin. He’s been messaging me too. Oh my god.

Jess sits up.

He saw us. He knows. People are talking about it. We have to go.

No we don’t.

Um, yeah. We do. You gotta drive me home. Or drop me off and I’ll walk.

Felix feels his pulse in his temples. There’s pressure everywhere and he can’t swallow. That old man by the statue pointed at him and laughed. But he seemed nice, didn’t he? What is he doing here? What the mind should be doing is saving what’s left of this date…

Felix says, Why? I mean, seriously, what will that do? Nobody knows we’re here. And isn’t it better if we wait until he chills out anyway? The best thing we can do is stay here. The best thing to do is to keep having our first date and spending time together like we said and that’s what we’re going to do!

With this last statement, Felix drops his fist on the sand. And then he adds

I mean, as far as I’m concerned.

Jess looks at him, her eyebrows up. It takes some time for her to speak again. Felix waits.

Then she says, quietly, Okay. But what are you going to do if Donnie Martin shows up?

I’ll tell Donnie Martin that he had his chance and he blew it. Too bad, Donnie Martin. You didn’t know what you had. Because now I’m with Jess Hollerman, and I appreciate her. And also, you’re a cheater, and if you don’t back off I’ll let people know how you got an ‘A’ on that paper. How’s that?

This all seems a bit extra. But Felix had said it anyway and Jess watched him intently the whole time.

She lets out a long breath and says, Come over here.

She pats the sand beside her hip. Come over and we’ll wait for the train and the ghosts.

Felix holds out. He says, Turn off your phone first.

Jess shrugs, and turns it off.

Felix crawls across the dirty sand of the river bank and sits beside Jess so that they’re touching and he leans on his hand behind her back. Jess lets her arm rest on his knee. The river trickles around the block of concrete and rebar. A bird goes ‘teacher-teacher-teacher!’

Carolina wren, Felix whispers.

What?

That bird, it’s a wren.

Oh.

It’s hard to know how much time passes. They are still sitting close, their sides touching, their ribs moving in and out together. A sound comes from the train tracks. A high, metallic hum—you can barely hear it. Felix turns to Jess and she looks in his face, very close, and he can see she hears it too.

The sound grows louder, gradually. But there is only that sound, and nothing more. No train whistle, no rumble of wheels at junctions, no chug-chug-chug. Just the high, metallic hum, getting steadily louder.

Jess says in Felix’s ear, You think there are ghost trains here too?

Felix looks down but keeps his face close and says, I’ve heard of them. So maybe.

Then a silent, mutant vehicle appears on the track above them. It has the body of a truck but the wheels of a train. The body is white. The wheels are silver, polished from rolling down the tracks. When it’s overhead on the trestle, it just looks like a single coach. It might be an old wooden coach. But from an angle, you can see its truck body, mounted too high, weirdly. There is no sound except for the high hum on the tracks and now a gentle ‘clunk’ as it rolls over joints of the bridge and then the mutant vehicle vanishes and the high hum fades away.

A cloud passes over the sun and a breeze comes down the river and the temperature drops. The breeze is strong, and it ripples the surface of the water and shakes the trees like applause. Then the air is still, but the shadow remains over them and it’s still cool. Felix can see bumps rise on their arms.

Did you see them? Jess asks.

He looks at her face. It’s an honest question.

What? He asks, buying time.

The ghosts, silly! Jess whispers. Did you see them? Was that them, what happened then? When the ghost train came through?

Her lower lip is damp and he can see her teeth. He can smell her breath, a little sour from what she’s had that day, but also nice like cut hay.

Felix looks away from Jess and now at the river. The water just keeps coming, from all the drainage ditches and field tiles, carrying the soil, day after day, year after year, down the river and into the next river and the one after that and finally the sea, and then what? They say that most of the original topsoil is gone, they say it’s going to run out, and if someone doesn’t stop this at some point, well then.

Jess waits. Felix swallows.

No, he says. To be honest.

You didn’t see them? Just under the bridge when the ghost train came over?

Sorry. I thought that was probably a maintenance vehicle. But weird for sure.

Now Jess looks down at the sand between her legs. She picks up a stick and flicks it.

When she looks back at him her face is like it was at her locker. It makes him want to do something. To take away that suffering.

Jess says, Is it too much to ask to have a few ghosts? I mean, is that gone now too?

Just because I didn’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t here. Who’s to say?

Jess says, With everything else, and now we don’t even have ghosts.

She drops down now, rests her head on her forearm. Our parents, she says, they had all kinds of cool spooky shit—like your parents and their engagement? And our grandparents, they had ghosts all the time, they just lived with them, like one haunted story. That’s where all the stupid stories came from. And now those stories are all we have, which are dumb to be honest. No ghosts. It’s pathetic. I’m so tired.

Jess closes her eyes. Felix watches her for some time. Her nostrils dilate slightly as she breathes. A breeze returns and lifts some strands of her hair, which shines backlit in the late afternoon sun. The breeze lifts more hair and Felix can see part of the mark behind her ear. It looks like a soft ‘v,’ like a seagull you’d draw by a sunset. He reaches out with a finger and lifts her hair away to see all of it.

That is not a seagull. That is an eagle. A tattoo made of initials mashed into the outline of a mean-looking eagle, on the delicate skin on the bone behind Jess’s ear.

Felix holds his breath. Maybe there aren’t infinite paths. Maybe there’s only one.

He draws Jess’s hair back over her neck.

He unbuttons his dress shirt and takes it off so now he’s only wearing his white t-shirt. He lays the dress shirt over Jess’s shoulders and tucks it under her arm so the breeze won’t take it.

Then Felix stands and walks down to the river. The brown water just keeps coming. Why doesn’t it run out? Well, sometimes rivers do. This one might. The breeze stirs up the leaves of the tall trees along the bank. And he stays here, in a cloud of whirling maple seeds, waiting for the next thing to happen.