Wheels of Fate

Chapter 1

“Ten years of talking about this, and it’s finally happening.” I glance around the train, taking it all in.

“Isn’t it unreal?” Raquel bends to rummage through the bag under her seat, her brown hair falling like a sheet around her face. “I wasn’t sure it would happen. You were so busy.”

I was. It turns out blowing up my life plan really freed my schedule.

“Do you remember when we first got the idea to go to Jamboree?” Raquel sits up again, sliding a hair tie onto her wrist.

“Sixth grade.” I smile, slipping into the memory. “There was a full spread on Jamboree in Cosmo.”

“Yes.” She looks past me, toward the train window. “I remember the pictures. All those bands. Concerts for days. I was ready to sneak past Catalina and hop a train right then.”

Was she ever, and she probably would have convinced preteen-me to go with her. “Your sister would have killed us. I saved your life by making us stay.”

She laughs, but it’s tinged with something bitter. “Catalina still wants to kill me for going, so not much has changed there. But.” Her lips twist into a smile. “Remember your obsession with the Jonas Brothers? You were ready to sneak out with me when you saw they were going.

“So true.” I would have risked death and more for the Jonas Brothers. “But it wasn’t an obsession. More like a very normal reaction to their angelic voices.”

She smiles. “You said Nick’s soul spoke to yours.”

“Still sounds normal.”

She laughs, and my eyes drift to the train window. Outside, the red sands and yellow brush of Albuquerque race past. No wonder 12-year-old me was captivated with that Cosmo spread. Five days of bands in the California desert felt like the adventure of a lifetime back then. Now, post college, it feels like a way to hide—from the lies and expectations I left back home.

A high-pitched screech pierces my eardrums, scattering my thoughts. The train brakes, sending Raquel and me tipping in a wave before righting ourselves. And then we’re just…stopped.

“What’s that about?” I ask.

Unease ripples through the cabin—phones light, voices murmur, heads turn towards the front. I’m braced for the train to start moving again. Or at least for an announcement.

But there’s nothing.

“It’s probably fine,” Raquel says, but her shifting gaze says she doesn’t believe it.

A few passengers glance around, but several are reclined with their eyes closed.

“Let’s check out photos from past Jamborees.” Raquel slips her phone out of her purse, and I can tell she’s trying to distract me. “We can relive that Cosmo spread, and, Noelle.” She stops and turns more fully to me. “In case I haven’t said it, I’m glad you’re here. I think—we needed this.”

Her words catch me by surprise, and my insides tighten. “We did,” I say.

She waits.

And I don’t know what she wants me to say.

Then something in her expression shifts, the tightness around her eyes disappearing. She pulls up Jamboree photos, leaning her shoulder against mine like the moment never happened. And I’m simultaneously relieved that it’s gone and desperate to catch it again.

“I’m excited to see Lucky Sevens,” she says as she flips through photos of their performances. She pauses when she gets to a pic of Montage, their drummer. He’s famous for his wild hairstyles, and in this one, he’s shaped his hair into a rainbow. “What do you think Montage will do with his hair?” she asks. “It’ll have to be good to top this rainbow from last year.”

The guy in the seat in front of us spins around, popping his head in between me and Raquel. “The rainbow was epic! Are you guys headed to Jamboree? Me too! I’m Warren! Isn’t it lucky we’re sitting by each other? Mr. Doodles loves to wear his hair in that rainbow style. Wanna see?”

There’s a beat while his head lingers there, in the middle of our girls’ trip—long black hair tucked behind his ears, framing his round cheeks.

“What’s a Mr. Doodles?” Raquel asks, then raises both her hands, flashing her French manicure. “Scratch that question. I don’t care.”

But the question cannot be un-asked, and those squishy cheeks bunch into a smile. “He’s my ferret. He loves being photographed! He even has his own Instagram. Look!”

The guy hands me his book, War and Peace, while he rummages in his pocket for his phone. I take the book without thinking. It’s a beat-up copy with a highlighter tucked into the pages, University of New Mexico stamped on the cover. He must be a college student. This isn’t going to be one of those stranger-talking-to-us-for-the-whole-train-ride scenarios, is it? I don’t want to be rude, but this trip is supposed to be about me and Raquel, not me and Raquel and…Mr. Doodles.

Warren grabs the book back and thrusts his phone in my face to show me a picture of a ferret in a tux, its hair slicked back, and, oh, he is adorable. “Is that the rainbow hairstyle? It’s so cute!”

Raquel blasts me a look that says, “What are you doing?”

“Mr. Doodles has such a wide range of expressions.” My seatmate flips to a new shot, and, alright, I see I’ve stumbled into a TED Talk on Ferret Faces. “See, this is Mr. Doodles’ Saucy Smile face,” he says. “Oh, but in this one, it’s like he’s stealing your soul. Don’t look at that one too long.”

I sweep my eyes to the ceiling. What the hell, Mr. Doodles?

Raquel places a hand over his phone, her sleek nails contrasting with the beat-up Samsung. “Warren, wasn’t it? Look, this is—” her eyes move to the phone and then back to Warren—“a long train ride.”

“Very long!” Warren says it like it’s a selling point. “Twenty hours!”

“Exactly,” Raquel says. “And we’re only fifteen minutes in. So you can see why this isn’t a good time to start—” She gestures among the three of us— “this.”

Two small creases form between Warren’s eyebrows. “Isn’t it always a good time to start a friendship?”

Raquel says nothing, just flattens her lips in a way that communicates her answer. I want to agree with her, but the expression on Warren’s face is twisting my insides.

“Oh.” Warren swallows. “I get it. You don’t want to be my friend. Or hang out at Jamboree. Or even look at my photos. Unless—” His slumped shoulders perk up again. “Unless I’m reading this wrong! Grandma always says people want to be friends with me, and I just imagine they don’t. And you!” Warren’s eyes dart to me. “You want to look at my Mr. Doodles photos, don’t you?”

I can feel Raquel’s gaze on me, and I can do this. I can tell him that I want to hang out with my best friend on our epic girls’ trip, not look at 20 hours of ferret photos, and—Warren’s lower lip quivers the slightest bit. Oh, who am I kidding? “Maybe just, like, one or two photos?” I say.

Within seconds, Warren’s phone is in my face, and he’s scrolling and narrating. Raquel’s shoulders move up and down with the sigh of a thousand disappointments. And the guy in the seat across from us snorts.

But that last one was probably a coincidence.

Warren is around picture 42, explaining Mr. Doodles’ Terrified of the Family Cat Face, when I look up and—No. It can’t be. But it is.

I squeeze Raquel’s thigh, and she jumps. “That tickled! What?”

“Hey, Warren,” I say. “Can you find me those pics of Mr. Doodles in his Uncle Sam costume? They sound great.”

“Absolutely!” Warren is already on the job, lost in his Doodles’ world. “I’ll show it to you from four different Fourth of Julys so you can compare his patriotic looks.”

“That’s perfect.” I shift toward Raquel and drop my voice. I’m swimming in adrenaline. “Three o’clock. In the aisle seat. It’s Craig Chen. It’s really him, right? Don’t stare!”

Raquel looks and then looks away, looks and then looks away. Then she breaks into one of her huge smiles, displaying her even teeth made possible by several awkward middle school years of orthodontics. “I can’t believe it. It is him. What a coincidence.”

“Not a coincidence. It’s Fate.” Five minutes ago, my life was nothing but question marks. But Craig Chen, on this train? That’s an answer. “I have to talk to him, but what should I say? I could be casual, but...” I shake my head. “If Fate is giving me this opportunity, then I should grab it with both hands. I’m going to walk up to him and say, ‘Hi Craig. How are you? I’ve been in love with you since eighth grade.’”

Another snorting sound—from that guy across the aisle. I’m really starting to think he is snorting at me.

Raquel’s still craning around the mass of standing passengers to catch another look, then flicking her gaze away before he notices. “I can’t believe we ran into him, here of all places. It’s almost making me believe in your whole, ‘I can’t contact him because I have to wait until Fate brings us together’ thing.” She waves her hands and makes her voice higher pitched when she says this, like it’s her impression of me. Like I’m a chipmunk performing a Broadway musical number when I talk about Fate.

“But now!” she says. “He’s really here! On the train to Jamboree for the preconcerts and full festival! Don’t you dare mess this up by going off about Fate.”

“Please. I’m not going to do that.” I was totally planning to do that.

“Look at me.” She spins to face me, then starts arranging my hair, untucking it from behind my ears, bringing some of the not quite straight but not fully curly brown strands in front of one shoulder, sweeping some behind the other. “You’re going to say something normal, like, ‘Hey, Craig. How’ve you been? I heard you went to Cornell.’”

“That’s…incredibly boring. Whoever forged a lifelong connection from ‘I heard you went to Cornell?’” I mentally flip through Craig’s Instagram over the last four years. “He played intramural soccer. I could ask about that. He was also in Chess Club. Double majored in History and World Civ. Had zero girlfriends.”

Raquel places both hands on my shoulders. “Noelle, this is going to be hard for you. I need you to pretend you’re not a creepy stalker who knows everything Craig Chen has done for the past four years. Can you do that?”

I smile and shake my head. “It’s not stalking when you do it online. It’s called ‘following,’ and people like it.”

Raquel presses her brown lipsticked lips together, wobbling between amusement and lecture mode.

“Look, I’m kidding!” I’m not kidding. “I’ll be normal.” As normal as possible considering my future husband is sitting five rows up. “I won’t say anything about Fate.” Unless it comes up, which—you never know. I chance another look at him. “Can I at least tell him that when we danced together at Homecoming I saw actual stars? That’ll be a great story to tell our kids.”

There’s another snort from the guy across the aisle, and, yeah, that was totally directed at me. I look over at the stranger with a penchant for pig noises. He has wavy hair that falls past his shoulders and tightens into curls at the bottom. The lower half of an eagle tattoo peeks beneath his shirt sleeve, revealing the tips of the spread wings and the curled talons. I want to hate everything about him, but the tattoo is cool, and I wish my hair had that kind of body.

I point at him in a way I never do at strangers. “That was the third snort. Do you need a Kleenex, or were those directed at me?”

“I heard them, too, and they were totally directed at you.” Raquel lifts her chin at him. “Hey. Snort Guy. This is my best friend, and I’m the only one who gets to be all condescending and disdainful to her.”

This falls a little short of the defense I was looking for.

Snort raises one pierced eyebrow. “It’s none of my business.” He nods towards me and Raquel and Warren, who is immersed in his search for Mr. Doodles’ patriotic montage. “But you three are the most entertaining people on this train.”

Three rows back, there is a guy with a parrot on each shoulder, one of which has been Frenching the man’s ear for some time. So this is really saying something.

“Oooh, this isn’t the one you asked for, but it’s a good one!” Warren thrusts his phone at me and Raquel, then looks over at Snort. “Do you want to see pictures of my Mr. Doodles too?”

Snort smiles. “I would rather have someone hammer a nail into my forehead.”

Warren starts to extend his phone, then pauses. “So, no then? Unless—”

“It’s a no, Warren,” Raquel says.

I stand. “I’m going to talk to Craig.” I pull a Kleenex out of my pocket and hand it to Snort. “For you. It may or may not have been used.” It has definitely been used.

He makes a noise that is closer to a laugh this time but does not take my offering.

Raquel pats my back. “Go make me proud! And remember to act like you’re totally uninterested and un-obsessed. And whenever you think you’re acting that way, act more that way. And remember that asking which minivan you should buy for your future children isn’t acting uninterested. And—”

I put out a hand to stop her. “Hey, you don’t have to worry. I’m going to act so un-weird, it’ll be weird.”

“See, when you say things like that, it doesn’t make me less worried.”

I smile, feeling all sorts of stomach flutters. It’s not often my next step in life is so obvious, but after the year I’ve had, I need obvious. I spin away from Raquel towards the aisle.

And run into Snort’s outstretched arm. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.” His light brown eyes soften into what I guess is conflicted concern, and they are not the ugliest eyes I have ever seen. “But I heard the whole thing.” He nods towards Craig. “You’ve been obsessed with this guy for who knows how long, even after he left for college and you never saw him. And now you imagine there’ll be some big moment when you talk to him. Do I have that right?”

“Are you asking me to grade your eavesdropping skills?” What is up with the strangers on this train? Does no one keep their head and ears in their own space anymore? “Because that would be a D. I clearly said our love story started in eighth grade.”

A smile flits across his face, and he drops his arm. “You’re right. It’s none of my business. Go do what you want to do.”

I take a step forward. But a groan claws its way out of my throat, and I spin back to him. “You have to tell me now. I can’t go over there not knowing.” What if I was meant to hear what he has to say? What if Fate is choosing to drop wisdom from the mouth of an eagle tatted, condescending stranger with good hair?

His features all lift a little. “It’s just that you seem to think this guy’s feeling all the things you’re feeling. But he isn’t. If he liked you, he would have called. Emailed. Found you on social media. Anything. I don’t know what you’re imagining is going to happen, but that guy over there? He’s just a guy you went to school with.”

Something inside me cracks, and I suddenly wonder if he’s right, if I should sit down before I make a fool of myself. I picture Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally, and he’s telling Meg Ryan that they’re just friends, and Meg is crying because their romance is doomed before it ever began. But, no. That wasn’t the point of that movie. The point was that women have been effectively faking orgasms for years and that some things are meant to be.

“Snort,” I say. “Can I call you Snort?”

“Absolutely not.”

“It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there…If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.”

It’s a quote from Love Actually. I don’t expect him to recognize it, just to let it melt his cold and cynical heart.

But his face is hard and not at all melty. “Tell me you’re not planning on saying that shit to him.”

I mean, not anymore.

“Found it!” Warren’s head pops up, as it’s wont to do.

“Can’t wait to see them!” I tell him. “I’ll be right back—right after I take this call.” I mime answering a phone. “Hello, Fate, is that you? Of course I picked up! I’d never let a call from Fate go to voicemail.”

As I walk away, I hear a distinct and particularly grunty snort behind me.