Just One Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

certain style can pull off: mismatched
     pieces that don’t work on their own but somehow all come together. The angles are
     deep, almost sharp, but his lips are pillowy and red, and there are enough apples
     in his cheeks to make pie. He looks both old and young; both grizzled and delicate.
     He’s not good-looking in the way that Brent Harper, who was voted Best Looking in
     the senior awards, is which is to say predictably so. But I can’t stop looking at
     him.
    Apparently I’m not the only one. A couple of girls with backpacks stroll down the
     aisle, their eyes dark and drowsy and seeming to say,
We eat sex for breakfast
. One of them smiles at Willem as she passes and says something in French. He replies,
     also in French, and helps her lift her bag into the overhead bin. The girls sit across
     the aisle, a row behind ours, and the shorter one says something, and they all laugh.
     I want to ask what was said, but all at once, I feel incredibly young and out of place,
     stuck at the children’s table for Thanksgiving.
    If only I’d studied French in high school. I’d wanted to, at the start of ninth grade,
     but my parents had urged me to take Mandarin. “It’s going to be the Chinese century;
     you’ll be so much better able to compete if you speak the language,” Mom had said.
Compete for what?
I’d wondered. But I’ve studied Mandarin for the last four years and am due to continue
     next month when I start college.
    I’m waiting for Willem to sit down, but instead he looks at me and then at the French
     girls, who, having deposited their things, are sashaying down the aisle.
    “Trains make me hungry. And you never ate your sandwich,” he says. “I’ll go to the
     café for more provisions. What would you like, Lulu?”
    Lulu would probably want something exotic. Chocolate-covered strawberries. Oysters.
     Allyson is more of a peanut-butter-sandwich girl. I don’t know what I’m hungry for.
    “Whatever is fine.”
    I watch him walk away. I pick up a magazine from the seat pocket and read a bunch
     of facts about the train: The Channel Tunnel is fifty kilometers long. It opened in
     1994 and took six years to complete. The Eurostar’s top speeds are three hundred kilometers
     per hour, which is one hundred and eighty-six miles per hour. If I were still on the
     tour, this would be exactly the kind of Trivial-Pursuit fodder Ms. Foley would read
     to us from one of her printouts. I put the magazine away.
    The train starts to move, though it’s so smooth that it’s only when I see the platform
     is pulling away from us, as though it’s moving, not the train, that I realize we’ve
     departed. I hear the horn blow. Out the window, the grand arches of St. Pancras glitter
     their farewell before we plunge into a tunnel. I look around the car. Everyone else
     seems happy and engaged: reading magazines or typing on laptops, texting, talking
     on their phones or to their seatmates. I peer over my seat back, but there is no sign
     of Willem. The French girls are still gone too.
    I pick up the magazine again and read a restaurant review that I don’t absorb at all.
     More minutes tick by. The train is going faster now, arrogantly bypassing London’s
     ugly warehouses. The conductor announces the first stop, and an inspector comes through
     to take my ticket. “Anyone here?” he asks, gesturing to Willem’s empty seat.
    “Yes.” Only his things aren’t there. There’s no evidence he ever was here.
    I glance at my watch. It’s ten forty-three. Almost fifteen minutes since we left London.
     A few minutes later, we pull into Ebbsfleet, a sleek, modern station. A crowd of people
     get on. An older man with a briefcase stops next to Willem’s seat as if to sit there,
     but then he glances at his ticket again and keeps moving up the aisle. The train doors
     beep and then shut, and we are off again. The London cityscape gives way to green.
     In the distance, I see a castle. The train greedily gobbles up