FicWad

The dining car wasn't full at all, in fact there were only three other tables that housed people. On the right were two tables with six young girls, all around sixteen years of age. They looked up at him as he entered the car and began giggling with fury. He strolled passed them and flashed a simple smile, which sent the girls right over the edge. She followed him, clutching her bag closer to her, and looked on in amazement. First, this guy has his pictures all over the interent, and now he's sending teenage girls into mere hysterics with a glimpse of his teeth. She nearly ran him over when he suddenly stopped at the second to last booth, and climbed into the seat across from him, still staring at the tables of estrogen rumaging through their purses in search of something.

"So, is that what you meant by 'teenie-bopper'?"

"A common household pest."

She nodded her head, and began too shift herself around to face him. The occupant of the other table in the car got up and sauntered over to them. He whipped out a notepad and the pen stuck behind his ear and waited for them to speak.

"I'll have the pancakes with bacon and a coffee."

"Same."

"You can get whatever you want, you know."

"Then," she said, turning to the man, "can you bring mine with peanut butter?"

The waiter turned on his heals and made his way behind the counter. The two of them looked at each other slightly confused, for neither of them had ever been waited on without a single word spoken from their waiter.

"That was odd."

"Maybe he's a mute."

"No, not him, he obviously has issues beyond repair. I was talking about the peanut butter."

"You should try it, it's really good."

"Yeah, okay. Patrick has been trying to get me to try it for years, and I still look at him like his hat's been screwed on a little too tight."

She giggled, an honest to goodness giggle. The new day had brought some heat into the world, and with sitting next to the window, she began to warm up a bit. She pushed the sleeves of her hoodie up to her elbows and pulled a hair-tie from her wrist, exposing a thing mark that lay beneath it. As she pulled her hair into a ponytail, her gloves moved slightly forward, exposing even more of her scar, and introducing it's match on her other wrist. He noticed. She noticed that he noticed.

"Are you going to ask, or just stare at them?"

He looked at her, not with fear, but with understanding.

"When?"

She smirked and furrowed her brow.
"Most people ask how first."

"I can see how."

"I know, but it's just that most people ask anyway."

"So, when?"

"Four years ago now. Wow! Almost five."

He shrugged his shoulders and wrapped his hands around the cup of coffee the voiceless waiter had just set down. She reached over for the sugar and took in a deep breath, unsure if he was going to ask the next question she knew was brewing in his mind. As the sugar poured into the coffee, she wondered if she would answer him when he did.

"Why?"

He asked. She smiled.

"I was cold."

"What!?! You were cold?"

"Yup."

"That's not a reason for slitting your wrists, that's a reason for putting on a coat. Come on, what's the point in not telling me?"

"Ever think I don't want to live it over again?"

"Well, sure, but I talk about it every once in a while."

"You talk about why I slit my wrists?"

"No, I talk about why I ended up in the hospital last winter."

They looked at each other. Maybe he was telling the truth, and if he was, she felt like she owed him something. He had saved her last night, and bought her breakfast this morning. She did owe him, and if this story was all he wanted, then she could at least give him that.

************************************

"I used to have nightmares, when I was little, really bad ones. I would thrash about and scream and yell and stuff. I think they call them night-horrors, or night-terrors, something like that. Anyway, when I was eight, I was having a really bad one, and my mom came into my room to try and console me. I must have been really frightened, because I was throwing my arms all over the place, and I must have hit my mom, because she lost her balance and fell backwards, hitting her head on the corner of my toy-box. It snapped her neck. When I woke up, I saw paramedics doing CPR on my mom and a decective talking to my stepdad. He just kept looking over at me, my stepdad, and shooting me this evil look. No pity, just hatred. I mean, I'm pretty sure that he always hated me, but he looked down-right livid that night. After the funeral, he didn't really want anything to do with me, he took care of me and all, because he was my legal guardian, but he did it with minimal contact and even more minimal dialouge. When I was thirteen, he fell in love with another woman, and shortly after married her, introducing me to a step-stepmom and two step-step brothers. I lived there, like a boarder in some stranger's house, until my stepdad said the first words to me me in three years. 'Get the hell out'. He threw a bag into my hands and pointed to the door.
" I swear the winter was colder that year than any other year I've been alive. It was snowing and I the only clothes I had were a short sleeve and long sleeve t-shirt, both of which I was wearing, niether of which were keeping me warm. One night,I was walking in the mist of this horrible snow fall, it could have been a blizzard for all I know. I spotted this old building down the street and began to head towards that, hoping that there was something inside that I could start a fire with. Of course, I stumbled into the only empty building in the entire world to be completely cleaned out, there wasn't a thing in there to start a fire with. So I curled up against the far wall, furthest away from the windows and doors, and fell asleep.
"I woke up suddenly, unable to breath. I felt like my lungs were frozen solid. I couldn't move my breaths in or out of my chest. Icicles had formed in my hair that was wet from the snow. I could barely open my eyes, and my body ached like I had just gotten the shit kicked out of me. I could have sworn I was warmer walking around on the streets, so I tried to move and get to the door, but I couldn't stand up, I could barely get myself to crawl, but I did. I started to make my way towards the entrance I had come in by, when my hand slipped out from under me and I fell on my face. When I managed to pull myself up to my knees, I looked down at my hands to see them covered in blood. I was crawling through broken glass. I fell on my stomach and laid there for a little while, letting myself get weaker and weaker by the moment. I felt myself dying, I knew that I couldn't get up, that I couldn't make it out of that factory. I knew. I was freezing to death. So I looked around and saw my only outlet in a large shard of glass lying next to me. I figured that bleeding to death was going to be a lot faster, and even if it wasn't, I would eventually pass out and just, not wake up. So I did it, I slit my wrists. I cut hard and fast, and felt the tears freeze to my cheeks as they fell from eyes."

"So...how come you didn't die?"

"A police officer responding to a call across the street slipped on some ice on his way back to his car. He grabbed the windowsill of the building I was in to stop himself from falling. When he pulled himself up, he saw me inside and called for back-up and an ambulance."

"And they just let you go after that?"

"Oh god, no. I spent about fourteen months in a hospital, getting diagnosed as 'manic depressive with suidcidal tendencies'. I told them over and over that I was just freaking cold, and was going to die anyway. But they didn't believe me. The loaded me up with meds and I felt as numb as I did that night for the entire time that I was there."

"So why aren't you there now?"

"You get to leave when your eighteen. Whether they like it or not."

"They didn't try and keep you there?"

"They did, but I didn't care. The only thing that made any difference there was drawing. They told me to write my feelings down on paper, get them out of my system. But, like I said, I don't have a way with words. So I drew instead."

There was a long silence between them, and she spread the peanut butter on her pancakes that just arrived. She watched him as he sat there, staring at his own pancakes, taking in everything she had said to him. She worried that the lack of expression on her face would put him off, that her emotionless retelling of her history would make him feel like she was always this emotionless. She started to feel uneasy with him, the first time since he found her in the last box-car of the train. She decided that this was as good a time as any, if not the best time of any, to part with him. She didn't want to have a drawn out goodbye or a weird moment where he would ask for some sort of repayment for the kindness he had shown her so she figured that she would excuse herself from him in order to use the bathroom, escaping away from him, never to look back. She pushed her plate away from her slightly and made to get up and leave the booth, when she felt a hand round her wrist. She turned to face a boy, not the guy that had saved her last night, but a boy that looked worried and scared.

"Is that why you are always on the move?"

"What?"

"Is that why you don't stay in one place. Do you keep moving so you won't freeze to death again?"

She sat back down, still letting him hold her wrist. She looked at him with meaningfull eyes. She looked around the booth, unsure of her next move.

"What's the matter, Jane?"

"I feel captivated."

He picked up his fork and reached over to her plate, cutting a piece of her peanut butter covered pancake and slipped it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.

"Shit, I have got to tell Patrick that he is insane. That is the most disgusting shit I have ever tasted. You are a weird little freak, you know that? Pass me the turpentine, I got to get this taste out of my mouth. Yuck!"

He smiled, proud that he had made her smile too.