twenty cents

The midnight train is not a popular one. It’s for teenagers having a late night out, for people that got caught up late at work under the scrutiny of their antagonistic boss or manager, or any maladapted soul that was unfortune enough to be more active while the moon loomed over the buildings, rather than the sun. The midnight train is also the last opportunity to get home, that’s just what small charming little towns are like.

The station is bustling somewhat, a humble but enthusiastic gathering, full of tired faces. A young woman, early twenties at most, paces restlessly, glaring balefully between her pocket money and the vending machine. She’s twenty cents short to get the only decent chocolate bar available, and twenty cents isn’t much, but it may as well be heaven-sent when she’s opening the most hidden zippers of her backpack that haven’t seen the light of day in years. The desperation plays out for a few minutes, and she thinks she’s reached into the depths of her satchel just enough when a pair of heels clack harshly on the cobblestone floor and oh, it is but a button and oh, the footsteps have stopped right behind her.

“I see your plight,” a voice says, and she whips around, her heart beating erratically, “What do you need? You look like you’re about to plunge down into the sewers if you don’t get something in your system.”

The woman is a head taller than her, with strands of long, pin-straight hair spilling out of the red woolen scarf she’s wrapped around herself. Her cigarette, caught between the middle and index finger of her right hand, is doused in the bright vending machine light.

“Twenty cents. But my mum told me to not accept money from strangers.”

Her eyebrows shoot up, judgmental. Her heel taps against the ground, judgmental also. The twenty cent coin comes out of one of her coat pockets, glinting and shiny.

“Clementine,” She says, before throwing the coin into the air. She lunges for it without thinking. When it’s safely in her grasp, and this lady, Clementine is biting back an amused smile by taking a drag out of her cigarette, she turns around to face the vending machine again.

“My mum also told me to not give away my name to strangers.”

She can smell the exhale, a puff of smoke, as she beeps in 037 on the machine. The metal hook holding back the chocolate bar unlatches. The bar tips over, its violet foil gleaming under the bright fluorescent lights.

“How unfortunate for me. I was already making plans to follow you home and skin you alive.”

She unwraps the foil and takes a bite as she looks at her saviour. Her eyes must be the darkest brown, because under the night sky, they look pure black.

“Are you a student?”

“Yeah, I am”, She lightly kicks at her heavy satchel that’s on the floor, the culprit that gave it away.

“I’m getting a degree in biology,” She makes a face, worried and frantic, “Final year, too.”

Clementine lets out a whistle.

“That’s the same course I did. Graduated five years ago.”

She stops chewing. It’s been a rough few years. The professors, the assignments and the projects. The fieldworks in the bugs and soil, the exams, the groupworks where no one does anything. The late nights at the lab or the library, and the running to reach the last train home. She’d never met a graduate from her course out and about in the real world. Clementine got to the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Were you any good?”

She cocks her head as she asks, feigning innocence.

“Top of the class,” She responds, voice more bored than proud, her eyes glued to the train tracks.

“So what are your demons now? Your PhD? Some PCR machine? Your pipettes and test tubes? Or your grant applications?”

Clementine shakes her head and smiles. It borders on self deprication and pure, unbridled joy.

“My students. I teach middle schoolers. Sometimes I’m even in charge of the chemistry experiments, and I watch thirteen year olds botch up titrations.”

She almost chokes on her chocolate bar, and sputters out a response.

“But you were top of the class!”

Clementine rolls her eyes at the whining.

“The dean said the top graduate is guaranteed to be accepted into a Masters in Research,”

“It’s true,” Clementine interjects, “I did that-"

“And then into a PhD program. And you can collaborate with other universities, and go abroad and get out of this little town and-"

“And what?” Clementine asks. She stares at her, mouth dry.

“And be somebody? Be extraordinary. Do something more than teaching middle schoolers?”

Clementine turns and faces her head on. She doesn’t look upset at the outburst. Maybe she’ll slap her for being so invasive, or ask for her twenty cents back. But she just rests a hand against her right shoulder. She can feel the cool butt of the cigarette bumping against the bone there.

“Do you even want any of this?”

She struggles for breath.

“I was just like you, you know.”

She doubts it.

“Cheer up, Twenty Cents. This isn’t forever.”

“It doesn’t feel like it will ever end, though.” She says, a little more earnestly than she’d meant to.

“I’m living proof, aren’t I?”

The train rounds the corner, like a beast, like a wild hog. Steam puffs out like Clementine’s cigarette, and the wheels creak and groan against the train tracks. She can feel her eyes burning as the conductor calls them aboard.

Clementine bends down and reaches for her satchel.

“You coming?”

“Yeah” She mumbles.

“I wish I was an insect. Life would be simpler. You come into this world, reproduce, and go off to die.”

Clementine nods along, throwing her cigarette into a nearby bin before boarding.

“I used to think that way too. But then we covered the metamorphosis of caterpillars in biochemistry.”

When she finds her seat across from Clementine, the world is blurry. She’s holding on to the remainder of her chocolate bar so tightly, that it might as well be a lifeline.

“They turn to goop into their cocoons before they can emerge. Everything that they are, and everything that they will become is reduced into about five functioning cells.”

She takes in a breath and its burning hot.

“Do you think the caterpillar knows what it takes to become a butterfly?”

Clementine lets out a hum. She rests her head against the window, as the world passes them by and the train races forwards, with the boundless energy of a wild horse in a never-ending field.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think butterflies would exist if caterpillars really know what becoming is like.”

“That sounds tragic,” She says weakly.

Clementine offers a small smile. She seems solid and sure.

“I think it’s comforting to know that caterpillars are meant to become something that can fly. It looks impossible. But we can all change and become unrecognisable. We’re not too far apart from insects, are we?”

She swallows around the tough ball in her throat. When she speaks, her voice stumbles in and out of a whisper.

“I think insects are better than us.”

“Agreed,”

Clementine crosses her legs. She watches the motion, sees how the material of her heel gleams under the lights of the train.

“But we can be good too.”

She nods along and fixes her gaze against the window, tries to see something beyond buildings and dark skies, when the conductor announces the next stop.

“This is where I get off,” She says a little miserable, grabbing at her satchel in a hurry.

Clementine nods along, fishes for something in her handbag and without showing it to her, slips it into her hoodie pocket.

“Just in case,” She says.

They share an awkward, abrupt hug. Clementine huffs out a laugh, and she smells like cigarettes.

“Do you catch this train often?” She asks into her scarf.

“Every Wednesday.”

She squeezes her hard one more time, as if she can take this fully grown middle school teacher with her, and then rushes off the train. The doors slam shut behind her, and she doesn’t look back as the train groans and moves again, its tail following the head dutifully.

Right on cue, thunder booms from the belly of the sky. Under the light of the nearby lamppost, she can see fat raindrops darting through the air and patter onto the ground, can feel it on her torn-apart sneakers and her sleeves. She’d forgotten the weather forecast, forgotten the predicted rain and her umbrella. She pulls her hoodie up, because it’s only a drizzle for now, and even if the downpour is enough to baptise an adult, running in the rain only makes you wetter. She’d heard her mother say that once, and it sounded like something Clementine would say too, with her immaculate coat and her pristine heels.

She drags her sleeves under the bags of her eyes to remove the lingering wetness, despite the yawning, open sky.

Before she starts walking, she fishes around in her pocket and feels something small and stone cold in her grip. Curious, she pulls it out.

It’s a twenty cent coin, golden and glittering under the orange, swelling light of the lamppost.