*Fiction — May 29, 2021
Orange Dream Pop
Image by Xiao Yue Shan
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Brandon is best at telling when a good train is coming—that’s something I wanna be able to do too by the end of the summer.
“Hush,” he says, taking his position as I start to notice the tremors through the station platform too.
He looks at the tiny screen of his camera to get ready to snap a photo. I follow his lead.
I have this idea of asking Megan Jones out to a date here at the station. I know the train station isn’t a typical place but that’s what’ll make her interested because she certainly wouldn’t be interested otherwise. I’m not ugly or a weirdo or anything I just am really average. Well I guess I’m skinny which means minus a few points but even some of the cooler 4th graders are skinny. Brandon is chubby which is weird to me because he’s always standing and walking around.
On the date me and Megan Jones can sit and I’ll tell her all the facts I know about trains which she’ll think is astounding because all the other boys just talk about video games or sports. I’ll be unique and romantic. She’ll be surprised and she’ll think to herself “I thought Nate was in the dumb classes how does he know all these things about trains?”
The truth is neither Brandon or me is really dumb we just suck at fractions. We both got lumped in with the dumb kids last year because we switched the bottom part of the fraction and the top which is totally a reasonable mistake. Before then Brandon and me weren’t that dumb. We were average. We’re going to be average again and then next fall when we’re 5th graders everything will be good and I’ll have a girlfriend (Megan) and Brandon will be… well he’ll be better at talking to people.
I thought feeling the train coming was play-pretend easy like just make it up when you get the feeling but you actually have to pay attention to the ground and the birds. Brandon taught me that—how the birds know before we do that the train is coming. They huddle together on the roof of the station.
“Ten bucks that it’s a double,” Brandon says and shifts his weight back and forth. Brandon stands funny with his butt out so he kind looks like a duck. I never really noticed till this summer. We’re going to 5th grade next year so we really have to think about these things—we don’t have that long to get it together before middle school.
Brandon always has his shorts pulled up too high and I wanna teach him to pull them down. I told him last week we should wear our pants low like models on billboards do and he thought that was funny so he tried it but it only lasted like a few days and then back up they went.
“It’s not a double,” I say because this time I’m actually trying to feel the earth like really play my feet listen to the stones.
“Ha! You’re going to give me ten dollars.”
Brandon is never wrong but it wouldn’t be fun if I always agreed with him. Plus, my mom gives me twenty bucks to have fun in town every day before she leaves for work so it’s not really a big deal. Brandon’s mom has never given him any money which I think is weird. Brandon says it’s because they’re “tight” but they can’t be that tight if he has a digital camera. She seems cheap. If I was Brandon’s mom, I would give him at least five bucks.
No matter how many times I see it the train still excites me, especially when it’s not stopping and just rushes by. I try to snap a picture but it’s blurry. It is a double which I knew it would be. I see flickers of faces in the windows. They’re headed to Penn Station. That’s the train my mom and dad take to go to work early in the morning. Brandon’s parents take it too and when we were little, we became friends because his parents would just tell him to wait there till they got back from work. Mom says that’s “not wise.” My grandma watched me then and started inviting Brandon along. He’s been to my house a bunch—even eats dinner there sometimes. We don’t need a sitter anymore but my grandma still comes sometimes to bring us lunch while we work taking pictures.
When I straighten up and look at Brandon’s camera his snap shot of the train is perfect.
“How do you do that?” I ask.
“Timing,” Brandon says.
“I wanna do that. You have to do something special.”
“Well I can share the picture so it’s like both of ours,” he says, tilting his camera towards me.
“I wanna learn so I can show someone else.”
Brandon looks confused and picks his camera off the tri-pod.
Sometimes I hate Brandon because he doesn’t understand anything. I’ve been trying to talk to him about girls for all of June and now it’s July and he still doesn’t get why I wanna learn all this stuff. I wonder what girl he likes—probably Lily because she’s chubby too.
I like Megan because she only lives a few streets over and she is also average but still pretty and she likes catching bugs so people think she’s weirder than she actually is.
“Brandon, I wanna take a girl on a date here,” I say. “That’s why I have to learn stuff.”
“To the train station?” he asks, furrowing his brow.
“Yeah, it’s unique.”
“What girl?”
“Megan Jones.”
Brandon yanks his shorts up which makes me angry. It’s like he’s not learning anything when I try to help him. It’s like he’s going backwards.
“She eats bugs,” Brandon says, setting his camera back up to look at the trains.
This makes me super more angry. I try to stay calm. Maybe Brandon is actually dumb. “She just appreciates them.”
“This place is our place though,” Brandon says.
“I can go here without you though,” I say. I feel bad—like that was mean, so I back track. “Like just once though, I won’t go on dates here a lot just once, just so she sees that I’m romantic. The trains are romantic I think for girls. Maybe you can bring a girl one day too.” I point to the newsstand. “You could even get snacks from there and share ice cream.”
Brandon’s favorite ice cream is orange dream pop. Mine is a nutty buddy. Brandon eats two orange dream pops a day. One with me and one when his mom gets home. I’ve only seen his mom twice because she works later than my mom. She’s young and looks like she should be a sister.
I always wonder what they do when they get home. Brandon never talks about anything but the station even when I talk about vacation or my mom or my dad or my dog Firecracker.
“I don’t want to bring a girl here I like that it’s just ours,” Brandon says.
“Well we can come here and bring girls here,” I say. “We can do both. Maybe you could just not be here while I’m here with Megan.”
“She’s not going to go with you here though you don’t know her.”
I’m trying really hard to be nice, I know I should be nice to Brandon because he’s dumb. He really is dumb. He’s supposed to tell me what girl he likes too so that I don’t feel weird about it and instead he’s mean. He doesn’t even know that and Megan would like me because we’re both average and the train station is romantic.
“I’m not giving you ten dollars,” I say.
Brandon looks away from his camera now and stands up. I feel a train coming but I don’t say anything. I think this is the first time I really know a train is coming and I know it all by myself.
“You don’t have to it was just a game,” Brandon says.
“I’m not giving you anything—I’m going to keeping it,” I say because I have to be mean—I have to let it out. “I only lose to be nice—you take my money all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” Brandon says.
“And I knew it was a double train I just let you win,” I say as the train comes into view and the horn blows loud. All the faces of the people in the train seem like they’re looking at us and I feel really bad and I wish I knew why I was so mean and why Brandon was so bad at everything.
We’re quiet for awhile after the train.
Brandon cries but not noticeably. I want him to stop crying but I don’t wanna touch him because I don’t know how.
I don’t know how to say sorry. I roll the ten-dollar-bill up and prod his chubby arm with it.
“I don’t want it,” he says.
“You’re probably right though. About Megan I mean,” I say. I don’t think he’s right but I need something to say like that.
“Brandon wipes his face with his shirt.” He swallows.
“You press the button before the train gets there. That’s how you take a picture even when it’s moving.”
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 9. View full issue & more.