Chapter Text
Virginia summers were never kind, at least not to Shayne. But sitting in a terminal for a train that was almost an hour late, he began the process of missing them. He looked up from the book he had in his lap and out of the terminal window, letting his gaze soften to take in the midday landscape of the train terminal. Both directions eventually curve out into the tree line, but he focused on the grey gravel that the charcoal-black train tracks were built atop and focused further to see the heat waves coming up from the ground. Shayne imagined the story he’d tell about Virginia summers- how the asphalt would look liquid, how storms would be fast and deadly, drowning a town in 30 minutes and leaving them in a drought for a month.
He thought about storytellers. The book in his hand was Big Fish, by Daniel Wallace. He’d seen the movie with Damien in their first year of college because it was one of Damien’s favorites, and ended up in a pile of tears at the end. Shayne thumbed page 18 in his hand as he tried to turn his focus back to the book. He couldn’t keep his mind on the book. His thoughts kept wandering away, and a part of him believed it was because he was saving the book for some special moment.
Shayne always took books too seriously. The summer before his senior year of high school, Shayne put himself on a book regimen, since he didn’t have a car and liked spending most of his time alone. He ended up biking in the heat of the day into town- or onto someone else’s property- and read underneath a tree, or outside of the bowling alley & Food Lion parking lot. He would sling his backpack over his shoulder and pretend he was nobody. It was difficult to seek out adventures in a small town, in a world that didn’t want any more adventurers, because most important, practical things had (for the most part) been found. It was hard to be freshly 18 years old and realize that you hadn’t had as many adventures as you thought you would. He hadn’t known that he had any thoughts about being young until he wasn’t quite as young anymore.
So here was the part of him that wanted a different, glorious youth. The part that was afraid of living any kind of dispassionate life, but was afraid of making any decision to go headfirst into anything he wanted to do. He was about to turn 21 years old. The thing about dread, he thought, was that if it sat with you for long enough you became complacent with it. It was like he was stuck on a train track, and his whole life he knew that he would have to move in one direction or another. So he took time to not make up his mind. Over time, some of the paths got blocked. When he was 18 the train was half a mile away. Looking up now, it was something like 100 yards.
All of this and more was spinning through his head, while his body sat waiting for a train in a crowded terminal, holding a book about a storyteller. At least it was an air-conditioned terminal.
Shayne was suddenly shocked out of his own head by loud music.
Across the room, a woman holds up a cell phone between herself and another woman holding a child. They both lean in intently, tuning their ear to the music despite the song being loud enough for Shayne to hear across the room. Without any sense of discomfort, the women sat through at least half a minute of the song, although it was the only thing breaking the silence of the terminal filled with absolute strangers. Beside him, an overweight family whispered into each other’s ears and shot the women a dirty look. He wished he hadn’t noticed that the family was overweight. Those were the kinds of mindless things he thought without thinking. Shayne tried to ignore both groups, deciding that the music, although an odd break in the quiet social dynamic of the group of strangers, was neutral to him.
He turned his attention back to his book and more time passed. The strangers in the terminal settled into the comfort of silently watching each other, whispering to their traveling group if they had one. Shayne stared at page 18 without taking much in.
Two women who had sat across from one another for an hour without acknowledging each other were suddenly involved in a conversation. The woman with a black handbag had noticed the dog.
“Pardon,” she started, leaning in to ensure eye contact and reaching out her hand, “What kind of dog is that?”
The other woman had on a white shirt, and her eyes shuffled uncomfortably from the stranger’s to her dog. “Oh, he’s a mixed lab.”
“Is he a service dog?”
Shayne tuned the rest of the conversation out. Or he forgot it. He was focused on how odd he must have looked to this group of strangers, with two full bags packed, along with his carry-on, wearing long sleeves and jeans in the summertime. He was too young and ill-dressed to be traveling business. If anyone gave him a second look, they might have thought he as a runaway.
He liked feeling invisible.