JENNIE

Always remember our first glance,

And I'll promise your heart that I'll be enough.

~ Romeo's Quest

The next day came fast. I was sitting outside of a train station on top of a large suitcase. I'd never been on a train before today, and it had been quite the experience.

Three things I'd learned about trains: One, sometimes strangers sit next to you and snore and slobber, but you had to act like it was normal; two, a can of soda would cost you more than buying a herd of cows; three, the train collectors looked exactly like the guy in the movie Polar Express—minus the whole computer-animated character thing.

Trains always seemed cooler in the movies and in books, but really, they were just cars that ran on tracks. Which made sense, seeing how they called each link of a train a 'car.' Well, almost each one. The front one was called the locomotive and the last one was called the caboose.

A smile ran across my face as I thought about the word caboose. Say that five times without giggling.

Caboose.

Caboose.

Caboose.

Caboose.

Irene.

Oh no. I was laughing out loud and crying at the same time. All roads led back to my sister. The people walking past me probably thought I was crazy because I was laughing so hard by myself. To scale off the crazy looks, I pulled out a book from my purse and opened it up. People could be so judgmental sometimes.

I tossed my purse back on my shoulder and sighed. I hated purses, but Irene had loved them. She'd loved everything about dressing up and being pretty. She'd been super good at it, too. Me? Not so much, but she'd said that I was beautiful, so that counted for something.

You know what the best thing about purses was? They could carry around books. I was reading Hamlet for the fifth time in the past three weeks. Last night, I stopped at the part where Hamlet wrote Ophelia telling her to doubt everything she saw except for his love. But the silly girl still went on to kill herself later in the story. The curse of being in a Shakespearean tragedy.

As I was reading, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman pulling her luggage out of the train station. She proceeded to lean the luggage against the side of the building.

This woman had also been in my car—car being our link of the train—and I'd noticed her right away. How could I not? It wasn't often that I found someone beautiful, but she was the top of the line. her hair was long—too long. At least that's what I thought until she ran her fingers through the dark brown hair and it lay perfectly on her head.

Total blushing from me.

On the trip to Wisconsin, she'd sat two seats behind me. When I'd gone to the bathroom, I saw her tapping her fingers against her thighs in a rhythmic pattern, and her head was rocking back and forth. Maybe she was a musician. Irene had always been tapping her feet and rocking her head.

She was definitely a musician.

She noticed me noticing her, and when she looked up to find my eyes, she smiled pretty wide. Which made me feel pretty small. So I adjusted my stare to the navy, coffee-stained carpet and hurried on my way. Her eyes were so beautiful brown eyes and filled with interest. For a second, I thought they were a passageway to a different world.

Beautiful.

Breathtaking.

Brilliant.

Brown eyes.

I sighed.

Maybe they were a passageway to a better world.

On another note, people should never use train bathrooms. They were pretty gross, and I'd stepped in someone's gum.

When I walked back to my seat, my heart tightened in my chest because I knew I would have to walk past Ms. Beautiful Eyes again. My eyes stayed down until I reached my seat. I released a breath, and then my head involuntarily turned toward her. What?! Dang my eyes for wanting another glance her way. She smiled again and nodded toward me. I didn't smile back because I was too nervous. The strange brown eyes made me so flipping nervous.

That was the last time I saw her. Well, until now.

Now, I was standing outside the train station. She was standing outside the train station. We were standing outside the train station. And I moved my eyes over to her for a moment. Heart putters. Major heart putters.

Trying to play it cool, I twisted my head in her direction to make it seem like I was looking past Ms. Beautiful Eyes to see if Richard was coming. In all reality, I was just trying to get a peek of the woman against the train station wall.

My breath picked up. She saw me. Moving my feet against the sidewalk, I hummed to myself, trying to play cool and failing dramatically at it. I held my book upright in front of my face.

"'Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt I love,'" she quoted.

My book dropped down to my lap. I stared at Ms. Beautiful Eyes with confusion. "Shut up."

Her grin disappeared and a level of apology filled her face. "Oh, I'm sorry. I just saw you were reading—"

"Hamlet."

A finger brushed across her upper lip, and she stepped closer. Putter. Putter. Heart. Heart. "Yeah… Hamlet. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you," she apologized, and her voice was very sweet. Almost what I thought honey would sound like if it had a voice. I didn't really need an apology though. I was just happy to discover that there were other people in the world who were able to quote William.

"No. You didn't. I-I didn't mean shut up as in the, 'close your lips and stop talking,' type way. I meant it more in the way of, 'Oh crapballs, shut up! You can quote Shakespeare?!' It was more that style of shut up."

"Did you just say 'crapballs'?"

My throat tightened up. I sat up straighter. "No."

"Um, I think you did."

She smiled again, and for the first time, I noticed how disgusting the weather was. It was ninety degrees outside. My palms were sweating. My toes were sticky. There were even a few specks of sweat dripping from my forehead.

I watched her mouth open and I parted my lips at the same time. Then I shut mine fast, wanting to hear her voice more than my own.

"Visiting or staying?" she asked.

I blinked. "Huh?"

She laughed and nodded once. "Are you visiting town or staying for a while?"

"Oh," I replied, staring at her for too long without saying anything else. Talk! Talk! "I'm moving. Here. I'm moving here. I'm new in town."

She raised an eyebrow, interested in the small fact. "Oh? Well." She pulled the handle of her suitcase with her right hand, moving closer to me. A full-grown grin brushed across her face, and she extended her left hand my way. "Welcome to Edgewood, Wisconsin."

I looked at her hand and then back up to her face. Pulling my book to my chest, I wrapped my arms around it. I couldn't touch her with sweaty palms. "Thanks."

She sighed slightly, yet her grin remained. "All right then. Nice meeting you." Pulling her hand back to her side, she began walking away toward the taxi that had just arrived at the curb.

I cleared my throat, feeling my heart pounding against Hamlet and Ophelia's pages, and my mind started to race. My feet demanded that I stand up, so I leaped from the top of my suitcase, knocking it over.

"Are you a musician?!" I screamed toward the woman, who was disappearing down the strip. She looked back to me.

"How did you know?"

I took my fingers and tapped them against my novel in the same rhythmic pattern she'd tapped her fingers on the train. "Just wondering."

She narrowed her eyes. "Do I know you?"

I scrunched up my nose and shook my head back and forth. I wondered if she saw the sweat fly from my forehead. I'd hoped not.

Slowly, her teeth bit down into her bottom lip. I saw her shoulders rise and fall from the small sigh she released. "How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

She nodded and ran her hand through her hair. "Good. You gotta be eighteen to get in. They'll make you wear a stamp and they'll double-check IDs at the bar, but you can listen and stuff. Just don't try to buy alcohol." I tilted my head, staring at her. She laughed. Ohhh, what a beautiful sound that is. "Joe's bar, Saturday night."

"What's Joe's bar?" I wondered out loud. I wasn't sure if I was speaking to her, to myself, or to those damn butterflies ripping my insides to shreds.

"A…bar?" She voice raised an octave before she laughed. "My band and I are performing at ten. You should come. I think you'll like it." She proceeded to give me argumentatively the kindest smile in the world. It was so gentle that it made me cough nervously and choke on air.

She held her hand up to me and smiled as she waved goodbye. With that, she closed her taxi door and she went her own way.

"Bye," I whispered, watching the car pull off. I didn't look away until it rounded the corner out of the lot and went far, far away. I looked down to my book clenched in my hands and smiled. I was going to start from the beginning again.

Irene would have loved this weird, awkward moment.

I just knew it.