I was still thinking about yachts, even at the zoo, as I walked to my day’s assignment: the train ride station. It was one of my favorites. When I rounded the ticket booth, I saw Seth up ahead, clipping the metal chains for the line onto their respective poles. Seth and I got stationed together a lot. I knew Carol liked to partner up similar age groups and there were only a handful of high school students. But still, odds dictated I should only be with Seth around once a month. Probably even less.
Why was I questioning this? It was a good thing. I had fun with Seth. I hoped he was having fun with me, too, otherwise this really sucked for him.
He smiled my way.
I waved and, when I reached him, helped clip up the tail end of the chain.
“Maddie. How are you?”
“I’m good. How are you?”
“I’m bored out of my mind.”
“Still no phone or television?” That would explain his continued lack of knowledge about my lottery win. He’d have to be completely cut off from the online world right now not to know. People were tweeting and Facebooking and Instagraming about it constantly. Even though Seth and I didn’t go to the same school, we were online friends and people were tagging me all over the place.
“No,” Seth replied. “This is the torture of our day.”
“I figured,” I said, feeling relief. “I haven’t gotten any texts from you this week.”
“I know. My thumbs are going through withdrawal. It seems my friends are all going through withdrawal as well. I didn’t think my texts were that great. Can you even remember what the last text I sent you said?”
I was surprised to find that I could. Should I admit to that? “It’s more about being able to instantly communicate with someone. There’s power in that, don’t you think?”
He nodded. “We’ve gotten used to instant validation for sure.”
“So how have you kept yourself busy without the time suck that is the online world?”
“Starbucks and I have become the best study partners ever. Maybe that was my mom’s goal from the beginning. Take away my phone and suddenly even homework looks interesting.”
“You study at Starbucks?”
“Almost every night. I’m becoming you, Maddie.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “You’d be lucky to have my grades. You shouldn’t make fun of what it takes for me to get them.”
“True.”
“Do penguins have knees?”
“What?” He grabbed a rag off the railing and began wiping down the cars of the train.
“That was the last text exchange we had. Well, before my texts started going into a black hole.”
He met my eyes, giving me a curious look, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. “That’s right,” he said. “Why were we talking about penguins, anyway? We don’t have any here.”
“I think we were talking about all the animals we don’t have at the zoo that we wished we did.”
“I don’t think we came to a conclusion on if penguins have knees.”
I retrieved a trash bag from the cupboard beneath the booth. I lined the can that we’d soon fill with used tickets. “They do. I looked it up.”
“Of course you did.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“There’s something about just pondering a question.”
“About penguins’ knees?”
He laughed. “Yes. That’s a particularly deep question.”
I smiled. “You should major in philosophy.” My phone said we had ten more minutes until our station opened. I looked around to make sure we were ready for the horde of kids that would soon be surrounding us.
“I totally should,” Seth replied.
“But you’re not, right? You’re majoring in screenwriting or filmmaking or something movie-related.”
“That’s a really hard industry to break into and … ”
“And what? Is Seth backing down from a challenge?”
“Seth?” He looked around.
“Are you mocking me for referring to you in the third person?”
“No, but if we’re going with third person, maybe you should call me Zoo Seth. It makes me sound like a superhero or something.”
I smiled. “My friend has been calling me Batman lately.”
“Batman? Why?”
“Oh … because … ” There I went again, speaking before thinking.
He laughed a little. “You love bats as much as anteaters?”
“I love all animals.”
“Of course. But she should at least call you Batwoman.”
“True.” I went to the podium and removed the microphone and bell. “Well, I think you should try screenwriting. You can always change your major later.”
Seth put his arms out to either side. “Hold the phone, Maddie.”
“Hold the phone? Did you really just say that?”
“I did, and I’m owning it.”
“You can have it. It’s up for grabs from where it was left in nineteen seventy.”
“People have used it more recently than nineteen seventy.”
“I’d like recorded proof of that.”
He laughed.
“So wait, why am I holding the phone? Not your phone, because you don’t have one.”
“Ouch. Rub it in a little more.” He pointed to the ground about ten feet away from us. I followed the line of his finger.
“What am I looking at?”
“You don’t see it?” He took me by the elbow, leading me over to the spot, then pointed again. A penny, dull with age, sat head-side up on the cement between us. “That’s your penny, Maddie.”
We stood nearly forehead to forehead as we stared down at it. “Did you put that there?”
“No, I swear.”
“I think it’s your penny. You saw it first.”
“No, I already found five pennies’ worth of luck here. It’s only fair.”
I smiled, then bent down and picked the penny up, sliding it into my pocket. “Do you really believe in lucky pennies?” I looked up at him, not realizing how close we still were. If I backed up, it would seem like it bothered me. It didn’t bother me. Maybe it should’ve. But he smelled really nice—like hair product and soap.
“I believe in making our own luck,” he said. “But a talisman now and again can help motivate us.”
“You’re kind of a dork,” I whispered.
A smile took over his face. A really cute dork.
“Is this where we can ride the train?” a voice to my left asked.
That’s when I finally stepped back from Seth and took a deep breath, clearing my head.
“Yes, this is it,” I said to the little boy.
A line of kids and their parents, twenty deep, had formed between our set-up chains.
“Who’s ready for some fun?” Seth asked, pulling the train whistle three times.
The kids cheered.
I picked up the microphone and clicked it on. “First we need to talk about the rules of the train,” I told the kids. “No standing up in the cars.”
The kids laughed, and I wasn’t sure what was so funny until I turned and saw Seth walking from train car to train car pretending like he was going to fall with each step.
“Yes, don’t do what Seth is doing or you might get hurt. And keep your hands and feet in the car at all times.”
“And when you get to the tunnel,” Seth said, “yell as loud as you can. I want to hear you all the way from here.” He stood in the middle of the train, one foot balancing on two separate cars. “Maddie, come help me, I think I’m stuck.”
They laughed and I rolled my eyes. “This is why we follow the rules. Just like all these kids will, right?” I asked them.
“Yes,” they all sang back to me.
Seth said, “No, really, my shoelace is stuck.”
I walked over and tugged it free from where it had caught on a hinge. He jumped down and gave me a hug from behind. “You saved my life, Batwoman.”
The kids laughed even more, and I wriggled out of his hold. “A huge dork,” I whispered as I headed over to collect the tickets, hoping he couldn’t see my red cheeks.
“I love this station,” I said after the last load of kids had exited the train.
“You do?” Seth asked.
“Don’t you?” I sat up on the railing, facing where he stood by the turnstile.
“It’s not my favorite,” he said. “Why do you like it so much?”
“Because the kids love it and they get to look at the animals while sitting in a train. That’s pretty awesome.”
“Yes, I remember loving it as a kid.”
“Did you grow up here in Santa Ana?”
“Westminster and then North Tustin. You?”
“I didn’t know you lived in Tustin. That’s probably why we ran into each other at the Mini-mart on my birthday.”
“You live there, too?”
“Not in Ritzville, like you, but yes.”
“Ritzville?”
“It’s a place. So what’s your favorite station to work here if not the train?”
He seemed to consider this question intently.
“Answer carefully,” I said when he was taking too long. “I can interpret your entire personality and future based on what you say.”
He grabbed my foot and gave it a tug, nearly pulling me off the railing. I kicked my foot free and settled back into place.
“I like the Outpost,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “With the python and the cockroaches and the world’s biggest spider?”
He leaned against the fence next to my leg. “What did that tell you about my personality?”
“That you like icky things.”
“Icky? Is that an SAT word?”
I smiled. “It’s accurate. That’s all that matters. What do you like about the Outpost?”
“I feel like it’s the only place left in the zoo where they actually let the animals still behave like they would in the wild. They eat live mice. Live insects. They would never put a live animal in the ocelot cage. Can you imagine the outrage if they did?”
“That’s true. I think that’s what I don’t like about the Outpost.”
“Yeah, it can be disturbing. But it’s real life, you know? That’s how things really work. No pretense. No faking.” He said it with such intensity that it surprised me. I hadn’t seen that side of him before. Then just as quickly as he’d gone serious, his smile was back. “But snakes are also just really cool.”
“I think you mean icky.”
He chuckled, then we were silent for a couple minutes. I watched kids climbing onto the carousel across the way from us, squealing in excitement. I could hear the music emanating from the ride. Rachel was working the carousel today. She held up a bubble wand and was filling the area around the horses with bubbles and then popping them right along with the kids. I noticed Seth watching Rachel, too. Or watching the bubbles. Or both. I wondered if Seth liked her. She seemed like his type—fun and loud and pretty.
Even though I’d been joking, maybe Seth’s station choice really had given me insight into his personality. He didn’t like fakers, which is all I’d been with him for the last several weeks.
“I need to tell you something,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“Let me guess. You want to go on a train ride?” He gestured toward the front car.
“No. There’ll be a line of kids waiting when we get back. And we’ll get in trouble.”
“Those are two different reasons.”
“And they’re both valid.”
He shrugged one shoulder as if disputing that fact. “So what do you need to tell me?”
Before I could answer, a kid and his mom came to the front of the line and asked, “Is the train still going? We bought a ticket.”
“Yep,” Seth said, “come aboard.”
The boy wound through the chain ropes, then pushed through the turnstile and ran up and down the length of the train looking for the perfect seat. On his second pass, Seth smiled and the mom shook her head.
“Do all the kids do this?” she asked.
“About half,” Seth said. “The other half know exactly where they want to sit. Like me, I always know where I want to sit on a train.”
The woman smiled at Seth, then said, “Really? Do you ride a lot of trains? Where are you from?”
“I just meant this train,” he said. “I only live about fifteen minutes east of here.”
She nodded. “What about your parents? Where are they from?”
“My parents? They live there, too.”
“Oh. Right. But I mean where were they born?” she asked.
“Oh! Where were they born?” he said, acting like he hadn’t understood the real implication of her question. “In San Diego. What about your parents? Where were they born?”
“I found one!” her son exclaimed. “Come on, Mom!”
“I’m coming.”
“I got this ride,” I said, sliding into the conductor seat.
“Thanks,” Seth said.
I pulled the whistle and set us in motion.
When we were done, the lady said, “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Seth said, still as friendly as ever. Then he looked at me and his smile fell a bit. “Was that rude?”
“What? No.”
“I don’t mind telling people my family’s history, but only people who aren’t asking out of some weird need to categorize me.”
“Really, Seth, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. It wasn’t rude. I thought you handled that perfectly.”
“We’ve been in America for over forty years. My grandfather came over with the first wave of refugees out of Vietnam. He’d served in the military there. But my parents were born here. I was born here. I’ve never even been to Vietnam.”
I put my hand on his arm. “People are idiots. Do you get that a lot?”
“With the Asian population around twenty percent here, I get that more than I should. I can’t imagine how often Asians outside of Southern California hear things like that.”
“You’ve never lived outside of California?” I asked.
“No, I grew up in Westminster. Have you ever been there?”
“Yes, to Little Saigon for the world’s best phở,” I said. “Or at least Southern California’s best phở.”
“You like Vietnamese soup? I knew you had good taste.”
I looked at my feet, which were pressed up against the railing, and tried not to smile.
“Did you know that nearly half of the population in Westminster is Vietnamese?” Seth went on.
I shook my head no.
“Growing up, I thought I was the majority!” Seth laughed. “Then we moved to Tustin when I was twelve and my parents put me in a private school.”
“The whitest town your parents could find?”
“It was a culture shock. It’s weird, though. I mean, I was born here. English is my first language. My grandparents spoke English before even coming here. But I don’t look American. My immigration story is just a bit too close to the surface for people. Not as far removed as theirs.”
It was hard to relate, having never experienced that myself. But I felt for him. “I’m sorry you have to deal with that.”
He sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go off.”
“You are allowed to vent whenever you need to.”
“I try not to let myself get frustrated or I’d spend my life in a constant state of frustration. That’s no way to live.”
“I’m just reviewing every stupid thing I’ve ever said to you or anyone in the past.”
“You’ve been fine.”
I nodded my head to the left and hopped off the railing. “Come on. I’m going to buy you a slushy lemonade.”
“You’re going to buy an overpriced lemonade? What are you—made of money now or something?”
I met his eyes for a second. Wait. Was he making the same kind of jokes I’d been hearing for the last several weeks? It didn’t take long to realize he wasn’t. That he’d said it in innocence. “Yes, I am,” I answered truthfully, “a lot of it.” But he only laughed.