Tuesday, July 5

AMSTERDAM to PRAGUE via BERLIN

No one had come back to their compartment yet.

It was just Aubrey.

Aubrey and the numb, gaping hole in the center of her chest.

Aubrey stuck on a train, speeding toward a place she didn’t know. She’d always wanted to go to Prague—in seventh grade, she’d even written a paper on it, complete with a poster board covered in pictures she’d found online. She could list every landmark she wanted to visit. She could close her eyes and see the way they all connected, everything neatly arranged the way it would be on a map.

But that wasn’t the same thing as knowing it.

She put in her earbuds and lay down across the empty seats, watching power lines twist and loop above her, like figure-skater tracks drawn in ice. She listened to a girl with a sweet, high voice sing about saying good-bye to someone she loved. And she thought about what would happen if Jonah came back to talk to her—if he sat down and told her he was sorry. If he told her that everything would be okay.

The door to the compartment opened, and she turned her music down. But it wasn’t Jonah who walked in. Aubrey could hear Rae and Clara talking to each other, and, a few minutes after that, Gabe’s low voice joining in. Aubrey squeezed her eyes shut and thumbed the volume back up until her friends were drowned out completely. She pretended to be asleep.

An hour later, the train began to slow into the Berlin station. As it ground to a stop, Aubrey sat up and pulled out her earbuds.

“Jonah isn’t here,” Clara said instantly.

“We’ve been trying to call him,” Gabe explained, “and I walked around a couple of times, but I couldn’t find him.”

“He’s not hurt,” Rae said. “There would have been an announcement if someone was hurt, right?”

“Exactly!” Clara said. “They would have asked if there was a doctor on board.”

“I thought that only happened on planes?” Rae said.

“Bryce?” Gabe said. “Did he tell you where he went?”

They were all staring at Aubrey, waiting for her to say what had happened. Maybe waiting for her to panic. But she couldn’t do either of those things. She knew he was avoiding her, and she wondered how long he could keep that up. Maybe until they went home. Or maybe he was staying away now so she would have to tell their friends that they’d broken up. Get it over with for him.

“Let’s take his bag,” she said. “I bet he went ahead to the next train.”

They walked to another level of the station, Aubrey’s gaze roaming the walls of glass panels, listening to the German voices around her.

Gabe and Rae found their platform and their seats, and they all piled their stuff onto a luggage rack. The rest of the carriage was still empty.

“Maybe we should look around,” Gabe said. “Jonah could be sitting somewhere else, I guess.”

“Great idea.” Clara smiled encouragingly at Aubrey. “He’s probably trying to find us right now.”

“Okay,” Aubrey said, but her voice sounded flat.

Rae’s forehead scrunched up. She probably wanted to ask Aubrey what was really going on, but Aubrey hoped she didn’t. She couldn’t lie to Rae, but she also couldn’t stand the idea of saying any of this out loud.

“We can go in opposite directions,” Gabe said. “Cover the whole train.”

“I’ll go with you.” Aubrey turned from Rae, following him into the next carriage and touching the top of every seat they passed. The deserted train made her think of these photographs Rae had shown her once of abandoned amusement parks. Wooden roller coasters with grass growing over them. Swan boats stuck in murky water. Places that should have been full of life left still and silent instead.

“It’s like Snowpiercer,” Gabe said.

“What?” Aubrey asked.

Gabe glanced over his shoulder. “This French comic my dad gave me when I was in middle school. It’s about a train that keeps circling the earth after it’s all frozen over. I think they made it into a movie.”

Aubrey touched another seat. “How is this anything like that?”

“I don’t know. I guess because the characters can’t ever leave the train. That’s almost what this feels like, isn’t it? Like we’re just going from train to train. Like we live here now.”

“Maybe.” Aubrey looked toward the window.

“Bryce.” Gabe stopped walking. “What’s going on? Do you know why Jonah disappeared?”

Aubrey gripped a seat. The lights above them were off, making everything look too dark. Too dark for the middle of the day. Too dark for the middle of a bustling station. “You want to know what the worst part is?” she asked.

He cocked his head. “About Jonah leaving?”

“The worst part,” Aubrey said, ignoring his question, “is that all morning, I was so worried we wouldn’t make this train. But look at us. Look how early we are. I waste so much energy panicking about things that don’t actually happen. And the things that do happen never even occur to me.”

“Sorry,” Gabe said, “explain that again?”

Aubrey blinked down at the scuffed carpet. “JonahandIbrokeup,” she said, like it was all one word. Like she was trying to get it out as quickly as possible.

“Christ.” Gabe pushed his hair away from his forehead. “Are you sure?”

Aubrey raised an eyebrow. “I was there, Gabe.”

“But how? When did this even happen?”

“A few hours ago.” Aubrey sat down in the closest seat.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Gabe sat across the aisle from her. “You mean when I left to get a soda? You just—broke up?”

Aubrey nodded. “We had this big dumb fight about Leah.”

“Why? What happened with Leah?”

“Nothing.” Aubrey turned, her knees jutting into the aisle. “That’s the whole point. I spent an entire day with Jonah and Leah, but they barely even noticed I was there. And when I brought it up with Jonah today, he made it pretty clear that’s who he wants to be now. The person he is when he’s with Leah.”

Gabe played with the armrest, pushing it up and then back down. “That just sounds like a fight. Jonah doesn’t really want to break up with you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Aubrey said, “because I want to break up with him.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was true. She didn’t want to be with Jonah anymore. She knew—she’d known for a while now—that something wasn’t right. That all her daydreams about what next year would be like could never be real. That things could never have gone the way she’d always planned.

Gabe’s knees faced hers now. “You seem eerily calm about all this. The last time I broke up with someone, Jonah took me out and we drank five pints of Guinness each. And, Bryce, I do not recommend that at all. But are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“I’m sure,” Aubrey said. And then she burst into tears. She doubled over, catching her face with both hands.

Gabe jumped out of his seat. “Damn. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“You didn’t,” Aubrey said through her fingers. “This isn’t because of you.”

And it wasn’t. It was because it felt real now. She and Jonah were done. She was moving to New York all by herself. And she didn’t want that—she’d never wanted that. She’d never wanted her future to feel this blank. She’d never wanted to face it alone.

Gabe knelt in the aisle beside her. “Text him,” he said. “Text him and tell him this whole thing was a big fuckup. Tell him he was dumb about Leah and hungover as hell. Just talk to him.”

“I did.” Aubrey wiped her eyes with her arm. “I—I asked him if he wanted to be part of my life next year. But, Gabe—he didn’t. He couldn’t even pretend.”

Gabe touched her elbow, and just like that, her mind went quiet. And in that quiet, a memory rushed in.

Just over three weeks ago—on a Friday in June, on a night when everything was different—she’d been standing backstage after the closing show of the musical. She’d been crying then, too, holding a bouquet of orange flowers a few underclassmen had given her. She kept trying to brush off the heavy sadness she felt, but she couldn’t. She could only think about how this was the last time she would ever turn off the stage lights, or check to make sure all the props were put away, or even stand backstage. Theater wasn’t her life’s passion or anything, but this was a place where she’d felt like she belonged. And now it was gone for good.

When Gabe had walked past her, he’d rolled his eyes and gone in to hug her. Instead, they’d kissed, Aubrey’s flowers pressed between them. Everything dim as they held themselves together, kissing like it was the only kiss either of them would ever have. Eventually, they broke apart, breathless and confused.

“Aubrey?” Gabe said now, drawing Aubrey out of her memory. He looked at where his fingers still rested on her elbow. “Should we try calling Jo—”

She kissed him. She kissed him, and immediately he kissed her back. Her worries about Jonah sank away. She felt Gabe’s hands move to her sides, and her arms wrap around his neck, tugging his lips closer to hers. And for those few seconds, these were the only things that mattered: his mouth, his skin, his warmth. She disappeared inside of them; she let them swallow her whole.

Until she opened her eyes.

Until she saw Jonah standing in the door of the train, gripping his bag with both hands.

“Jonah,” she said, and her mouth went cold. The rest of her body followed, all of her skin turning to ice.

Jonah shook his head. “I’m going,” he said. “I have to go back.”

“No.” Gabe stepped forward. “Fuck. Please just—wait a second.”

But when Jonah’s eyes met Aubrey’s, she knew it was too late. She watched him jump back onto the platform. She watched him fade into the crowd as the train began to fill with people. They hadn’t left yet, but it didn’t matter. Jonah was already gone—he was a thousand miles away.