One Last Stop

by Casey McQuiston

The rats are almost definitely unionizing.

August cannot believe her fucking luck.

August’s brain tries “hi” and her mouth goes for “morning” and what comes out is, “Horny.” Maybe it’s not too late to crawl under the seat with the rat poop.

Mood

Subway Girl is … a Brooklyn hipster? Is that a point against her? But when she turns back to August with her tattoos and her slightly crooked front tooth and her undivided attention, August knows: this girl could be hauling a gramophone through the subway every day, and August would still lie down in the middle of Fifth Avenue for her.

Her eyes are so bright, and her knuckles are square and sturdy, like she knows how to knead bread or what the insides of a car look like.

This is such a queer description of someone & I love it

August cracks up, and Subway Girl snorts, and fuck if that sound isn’t an absolute revelation.

August can feel her face glowing red to match the scarf, like a giant, stammering, bisexual chameleon.

August hovers outside the kitchen all morning, watching the door and waiting for Jane to sweep through like Brendan Fraser in The Mummy, rakish and windswept with her perfectly swoopy hair.

What an extremely sexy proposition. Really out here smashing pussy, Landry.

All she’s thought about the whole walk home is mainlining YouTube eyebrow tutorials and passing out next to a personal pizza.

This is so real

You’re, like, a reformed girl detective.”

“You’re like this hotshot film noir private eye, but you retired, and she’s your old boss trying to get you back in the game.” “I feel like you’re missing the point.”

Like it’s another inconsequential quirk of someone she loves.

“That sucks. I’m your mom now. The rules are, no Tarantino movies and bedtime is never.”

“You wanna hear about my mom’s second graders?” she says. “They’re nightmares. She had to get one off the roof the other day.”

My middle schoolers would do this

She listens to the bass lines spilling over one another, and it starts to make sense. The music, and why it might mean so much to someone.

Crazy how August can imagine a whole life for this girl she doesn’t even know, but she can’t begin to picture what her own is supposed to look like.

“Never thought I’d see a vampire I absolutely didn’t want to fuck.”

“Annie Depressant. Pride of Brooklyn.” She thinks about it for a second. “Or at least Flatbush. Northeast Flatbush. Kind of.” She shrugs and returns the straw to her mouth. “Anyway, I’m very prolific.”

“We’ve kissed, like, three times, but he has that thing where he’s terrified of being loved and refuses to believe he deserves it. It’s so tedious.”

“Does it ever, like … I don’t know. Make you lonely? To love somebody who can’t meet you there?” She regrets it immediately, but Annie laughs. “Sometimes. But, you know, that feeling? When you wake up in the morning and you have somebody to think about? Somewhere for hope to go? It’s good. Even when it’s bad, it’s good.”

The first is her usual: anxiety meets full-on dread. The part of her that says, trust nobody, even and especially anyone that pushes softly into the chambers of your heart. Do not engage. Carry a knife. Don’t stab them, but also, maybe stab them if you have to.

The other, though, is the one that really freaks her out. It’s hope.

And worst of all, for the first time since she was a kid, she wants to trust in something.

August looks at her, and hope blooms like crepe myrtle blossoms between her ribs. Like fucking flowers. How absolutely mortifying.

Physically, August doesn’t react, but spiritually, she’s fully on fire.

August has never wanted to be kissed so badly in her life.

So, there they are. The two of them and a train full of strangers, trapped.

She has this way of moving through the world like she owns every place she walks into, like she’s never once been told she can’t do something.

August cannot keep thinking about kissing if she wants to make it out of this alive.

And August, who was pretty convinced this was the most unattractive side of her, sits back and lets Jane have it.

Jane laughs, which is rocketing straight up August’s list of favorite sounds in the universe. She’s gonna trap it in a shell like a sea witch. It’s fine.

“Okay. A seamstress and a pierogi smuggler.” “Every woman a universe.”

August can’t tell if that’s good or bad. She just knows Jane’s cheekbones look really nice from this angle.

“I’m mysterious by nature, August.”

Baby. It’s just the way Jane talks—she probably calls everyone baby—but it still goes down like sweet tea.

She can’t believe she asked Jane out. Jane. Jane of the effortless smiles and subway dance parties, who is probably a fucking poet or, like, a motorcycle mechanic.

Great. Fine. She’ll never see Jane again. Or ask anyone out for the rest of her life. She was on a solid streak of belligerent solitude. She can pick it back up. Cool.

It’s annoying, because Jane is just a person on a train. Simply a very beautiful woman with a nice-smelling leather jacket and a way of becoming the absolute shimmering focal point of every space she occupies. Only marginally the reason August hasn’t altered her commute once all semester.

“You’re fine.” “I’ve been maimed.” “You knew the risks of the game.”

G & I would say this to one another

“When y’all kill one another, I’m inheriting the apartment.”

“Who do we need to frame for murder?”

Yes

She’s switched to peppers and is slicing them with a reckless enthusiasm that suggests she doesn’t care if a finger has to be reattached later.

“Oh, that’s a Kate Winslet movie. Trapped in a survival scenario. Did you have to huddle naked for warmth? Are you bonded for life by trauma now?”

I thought we were having a moment, so I asked her out for a drink, and she turned me down, so I’m just gonna figure out a new commute and hopefully never see her again and forget this ever happened.”

“Maybe she was busy,” Myla adds. “Maybe she was on her way to dump her current girlfriend to be with you.” “Maybe she’s, like, in some kind of complicated entanglement with an ex and she has to sort it out before she gets involved with someone.” “Maybe she’s been cursed by a malevolent witch to never leave the subway, not even for dates with super cute girls who smell like lemons.”

It’s easy for Myla to say, with her perfectly highlighted cupid’s bow and self-satisfied confidence and hot boyfriend, but August has the sexual prowess of a goldfish and the emotional vocabulary to match.

It’s funny. That’s one big thing out of the way between the four of them, but it’s also a small thing. It makes a difference, but it also makes no difference at all.

“Those countertops are a hate crime.”

She hears the snap of a magnet—he’s added August to the fridge.