I
The end begins…
The sunlight penetrating the living-room window should've been enough to wake up Travis Bava, after all he barely slept last night, however since the sun chose to hide behind the dark gray clouds which blanketed the whole town, Travis was woken up shaken violently by his stepmother Joyce, who wasn't still in tune with her motherly side.
"C'mon Trav, wake up…" said Joyce.
"What time is it?" asked Travis, who tried to squint his eyes at the wall clock.
"It's almost eight-thirty, doesn't the train leaves at ten?" asked Joyce.
"Yeah, yeah okay I'm up…" replied Travis who now hurriedly got up from the couch.
"Why didn't you wake me up sooner?" asked an irritated Travis who was already out of the living-room, too rushed to hear Joyce's reason.
Although he was already overly prepared last night he still had to beat the traffic, and with Joyce's slow driving, he'd be lucky if he makes it at exactly ten o'clock. So now Travis quickly changed his into his plain white shirt, black denim jacket and jeans, and just grabbed a peanut-butter granola bar for breakfast and grabbed his luggage (nestled meticulously on the main hall), and met with Joyce who was already in their turquoise sedan. He looked at the watch and it was exactly eight-thirty when they left.
The journey to the train station was roughly twenty-minute drive however, this depended on how bad was the traffic conditions. Joyce's driving was quick which helped a lot but she did try to "bond" with Travis wherein he found it as some sort of interrogation.
"So how do you think Philly's going to be like?" asked Joyce in her over exaggerated intonation.
"Fine." answered Travis who was just trying to prepare his nerves for the train trip, but showed no sign of worry.
"Are you nervous about the trip?" asked Joyce who was now changing lanes. But Travis just shrugged and made an almost convincing "No"
"It'll be fine" she said with a slight tint of motherliness. Travis looked at her and Joyce looked back at him then smiled. However after that she started to pester Travis with questions such as "How are your friends?", "Do you think Philly's going to be cold?", and "How are you doing in school?" but though he felt like he was on an episode of "Jeopardy" her questions did not start up any meaningful discussions.
At last the car pulled up at the Train Station where Joyce it found impossible to find a parking space, so instead she headed out to the departure area of the station.
"Look, you can drop me off here, I'll be fine." said Travis who was already started to unbuckle his seatbelt.
"Are you sure?" asked Joyce.
"Yeah, I'll be fine. Now c'mon open the trunk I only have like five minutes." said Travis who was now completely out of the car.
"What about your dad?" Joyce asked.
"I'll call him…" answered Travis.
"Okay wait come here" said Joyce. Travis ran to her side of the car window where Joyce gave him a peck on the cheek. "Be safe and enjoy okay?"
"You too" Travis said where he motioned to her to open up the trunk for him to get his luggage. He took his bags hurriedly and waved goodbye to her as the car dove off.
Travis glanced quickly inside his backpack just to make sure his ticket and his wallet in his bag he looked up the train station's clock tower to look at the time (8:46) but he noticed a bunch of crows encircling the clock like a pack of vultures waiting for a wild animal to expire before they swoop for the feed.
"Travis!" yelled someone from behind him. He looked behind him and there stood a small blonde haired blue eyed girl with and accented nose ring that was named Alexia Barber, a girl who really wasn't a friend but instead just someone he knew and had occasional conversations with. And beside her was her younger brother Alvin Barber, a freshman who Travis finds annoying therefore making Travis suspect if Alvin suffers from ADD because of his hyperactivity.
"Hey Lexis, Alvin" greeted Travis before he gave off a pronounced sigh,
"I thought I was the latest, at least now it won't be that obvious." She chuckled but said nothing else and the three of them proceeded to the waiting area where most of the class had already been there. "Bava, Barber you're late, you got your tickets ready?" asked a man in his mid-forties with brown hair and green eyes behind his eyeglasses who was more commonly known to the class as Mr. Franco. They both nodded their heads then Mr. Franco continued "Okay just wait over there for further announcements." The teacher ignored the two of them and returned back to his last-minute head checks and panicked phone calls.
He automatically looked for the first people he always looked for in any ordinary day: Nicole Jackson and Jamie Price who he just calls Nic and J.P. He past around the rows of seats facing each other but predictably occupied according to cliques still trying to search for one ebony skinned girl who might have her dark brown hair either pony-tailed or braided with a noticeable charm necklace wrapped around her arms as a bracelet, and his other friend who repeated various grade levels for almost six times, giving him an appearance of a square-jawed bully. And so then Travis continued his search for Nicole and Jamie in the midst of the teenage crowd.
He stood up an empty chair to catch a glimpse of the whole area and soon enough he saw the Nicole, with her charm necklace wrapped around her left hand, talking to Jamie in his lucky blue sleeveless shirt to reveal his python tattoo again. Jamie saw Travis standing on the chair and yelled loudly "Travis. Over here!" Nicole also looked to his direction and waved her hand. Travis quickly grabbed his luggage and went to where Nicole and Jamie were.
"You made it, we thought you were gonna wuss out" said Jamie.
"Sorry to disappoint you," replied Travis "Are we now complete or what?"
"No, there are still a few more who aren't here yet" replied Nicole with her funky ghetto accent.
"If you guys don't mind I'm just gonna rest a little, I barely slept last night," said Travis as he removed his jacket and rested his head against the arm support of his chair.
"Okay, were just gonna get some snacks," said Nicole "You want anything?"
"No thanks. Just wake me up at nine," said Travis.
"Right" said Jamie who walked off with Nicole towards the food-court.
He didn't care about the noise of the people he just nestled himself in his seat and started to doze off.
And then there was the dream…
"Dude wake up, it's nine…" Jamie said as he shook Travis's shoulder to wake him up.
"Didn't feel like a nap," grunted Travis as he adjusted his head to a more comfortable position. "So do we have to go now? Or what?" asked Travis who glanced around the waiting area just to see that nobody seemed to go yet.
"No" said Nicole after she took a huge bite of chili fries that she bought.
"Can I have some of that," asked Travis who remembered that he didn't have breakfast yet. Nic handed him the carton basket as she licked her fingers.
"You want ketchup with those fries?" asked Travis who didn't wait for Nicole to answer but struggled to open the ketchup packet.
"Jeez, you'd think that these would be easy to open." said Travis who almost looked like he wrestled the packet.
"Give that to me" said Nicole as she grabbed the packet and immediately gave it to Jamie who was rhythmically nodding his head. Jamie also struggled with the packet too until the ketchup packet ruptured and spurted ketchup across their clothes which made it look like a slash mark of blood stain across their bodies.
"Nice J.P." yelled Nicole, as Jamie snickered silently. "Fuck you asshole, this shirt's brand new…" she yelled in anger and headed to the girls bathroom with her bag most likely to change her clothes.
"Here hold this…" said Jamie while he handed his I-pod to Travis to change his shirt. He listened to the earphones for a brief moment and knew the song was Placebo's Infra-red but what caught his attention to the song was the part of the song played "Someone call the ambulance. There's gonna be an accident" He quickly pulled the earphone from his ear and tried to relax himself.
"What, you're not gonna change" asked Jamie who now had a ketchup-free shirt on.
"Maybe later" said Travis who instead just wiped his shirt with a tissue and concealed it with his jacket.
The P.A. suddenly announced a message from the speakers: "Dear passengers of Transit 180, due to bad weather conditions the arrival of the train will be delayed until further notice." Scattered moans were heard across the room Nicole being one of them, Jamie on the other hand who was listening to his I-pod seamed neglectful. "That sucks." Travis commented as he just wanted to get the entire train ride over with as soon as possible.
Nicole came back a few minutes later, but still fuming over the ketchup incident, nonetheless they had a conversation on about how they aren't even that interested about the field trip (A topic which Travis had a lot to say). Their chat however was interrupted when Travis was hit hard on the back of his head with a punch. Travis looked back quickly then realized that the strike he felt came from none other than Lorrei Peterson whose arms were wrapped around Elliot Gordon. Lorrei sat on Elliot's lap kissing him, and with their chair back against Travis's chair, therefore this made her strike Travis accidentally.
The two of them were an attractive couple together, for a brawny tall and blonde jock, Elliot was seldom an ass (unless if he's with his other jock friends) and the skinny red-headed Lorrie could almost be tolerable with her exaggerated drama queen act sometimes (if she isn't in a bad mood, where she could be a total bitch). One of their flaws as a couple was that they were too attached with each other sometimes even reaching a point of being nymphomaniacs; they made the people around them feel uncomfortable. But aside from that they were a cute couple.
"Get a room!" Travis yelled as he rubbed the back of his head at the two of them, but Lorrie who was facing Travis just smiled in a slutty manner the seductively bit Elliot's ear.
"Can you believe those two," said Travis, as went over and sat on another row which faced the row of seat which Nicole and Jamie occupied.
"I'm just surprised they didn't die with AIDS yet" remarked Nicole as she looked at the couple who kissed so intensely.
"It's that kind of love that kills," said Jamie. Although Travis knew Jamie didn't mean that literally, he still felt watchful.
Their chat was once again interrupted when a tall, thin nineteen-year old girl from a distance as she came walking down the tiled floor of the train station effortlessly carrying a luggage. A slick black trench coat that hid most of the features of her body and matching stiletto heeled sandals that made a loud clacking sound with every step she took, gave her an air of mystery. Her face had an almost anorexic quality that went with her very pale complexion, she wore very dark sunglasses that concealed her dark gray eyes, and she had a short but very straight maroon hair that looked almost wig-like. The girl's name was Carolyn Pleasance, and she sat down beside Travis then grinned devilishly.
"How did you get out of your house, don't you burn in sunlight," said Nicole with her ghetto slang insult (Nicole and Carolyn didn't get along)
"That's really fucking cute Nicole" said Carolyn with a tint of British accent and again with her signature way of talking which consisted of the word "fuck" nearly in every sentence.
"Carol, just wondering, why are you here?" asked Jamie in a very politely fake intonation. Even if it didn't show it Travis wondered as well what she was doing sitting with the three of them. After all was hard to determine which social clique she belonged too, and at school she rarely acted like the three of them existed.
But she just continued her diabolical smile.
"I'm sorry" she started in a strange calm way, "I thought that you guys finally decided to get-fucking-real and finally evolve to something a bit more superior than those fucking retards and those fucking airheads who are pissing their fucking pants just to see a bunch of fucking places that real people don't give a fuck about. But hey at least I can safely say that I tried to escape the trip to the fucking Disneyland of cultural wasteland, My aunt made me fucking go and so I lied and I fucking told her that the train leaves at ten fucking thirty but the fucking train had to be delayed. That's just bullshit."
"It's okay for me if you're here," Travis said uncomfortably. She looked at him with those menacing eyes then lit a cigarette that she took out of her pocket.
"Pleasance, no smoking!" yelled Mr. Franco from behind though still busy with the organization of the trip. She took out the ember lazily but lit again when Mr. Franco looked away.
"That's not good for your health." said Travis who every now and then gets infatuated by Carolyn's rebelliousness.
"Compared to going to fucking Philly, I'd rather fucking die a slow and painful death." she said.
"Amen to that." said Nicole.
A loud announcement from the speakers boomed another message.
"Dear passengers of Transit 180, we are now boarding for Transit 180 for final destination to Philadelphia"
This time scattered applauses echoed across the waiting area. Just as Nicole, Jamie, and Carolyn picked up their bags carefree, the reality of actually riding a train dawned on Travis. "Nine thirty, God I can't believe I got up early for this," complained Jamie as he looked at his watch
"Yo J.P…" yelled a man to Jamie. Travis looked at his left shoulder and saw a slightly short Latino teenager carrying two duffle bags and a guitar casing, walking fast towards their group's direction. Ricardo Romero was one of Jamie's close friends who could sometimes be a bad influence to Jamie. He wasn't exactly a bully but he did spend a lot of his time putting Travis in awkward situations.
"So Travis, gonna fuck someone in Philly?" asked Ricardo.
"Whatever," Travis said taking his bags from the floor.
"Hey… I'm just kidding," said Ricardo as he placed his arms around Travis. He tried to ignore Ricardo who now let go of Travis and now talked to Jamie.
"C'mon let's go" yelled Nicole.
The five of went down the flight of stairs and was greeted by a crowd of their classmates all pushing themselves in the train to get a good spot. Nicole, Jamie, Carolyn and Ricardo were among the group who were pushing themselves in. Meanwhile Travis was at the opposite end of the platform waiting for the crowd to lessen while trying to calm himself down. Suddenly his serene state was ruined when an almost deafening roar from a train passed the tracks near him creating a whirlwind of vacuumed air blowing past Travis. The sudden gust caused a bunch of trash to blow around Travis, but torn piece of newspaper fell exactly in front of him with it's front page printed DEATH TOLL RISES IN TRAIN CARNAGE with a picture of a wrecked train below the headline.
Travis looked at the newspaper deciding whether he should just ignore what happened or run off in panic. He decided in ultimatum that he shouldn't let fear take over his life. He looked at the train still trying to shake off the feeling of fear. With less people left jamming their selves in the front railcars, Travis picked the last railcar where he's a bit sure Nicole and Jamie resided.
Travis took one deep breath and stepped in the train.