It All Started With A Boom

Prologue

IT is very interesting to think that something as trivial as deciding where you want to sit on a train can determine the course of your entire life. I probably would not have believed the statement had I not been sitting alone in 30th Street Station freshly dumped by my fiance of four years on none other than Christmas Eve. It seemed my life would do nothing more than spiral into the unfortunate cliche it was destined to become until I was snapped back into reality by the booming sound of the overhead speaker signaling I could finally board my train.

As I walked through the crowded station, My path was blocked momentarily while a laughing toddler ran past me and her exhausted looking mother chased after her. To my left, a couple looked lovingly into each other's eyes and kissed goodbye for probably the hundredth time before one of them had to go back to wherever it was they were from. It always seems as though places like train stations and airports harbor the truest types of love with every difficult goodbye and long awaited hello that passes through. Not for you, Sydney. I thought to myself as a memory of Jason and I came to the forefront of my mind. Not anymore.

Feeling sorry for myself I carried my single piece of tan, leather luggage to the steps of the train that would take me to Baltimore. A man in a blue uniform with a silver stripe down the side collected my ticket as I climbed the four steps onto the train. As I passed by the control room I peeked inside and the engineer and I made awkward eye contact. He had sandy brown hair and was probably in his mid-forties. As I made my way down the aisle, I found myself wondering what his life story was and why he became a train engineer in the first place. I shook the thought when I noticed how crowded the train was becoming and realized that there were only a few seats left for me to choose from. I sighed as I moved forward, deeper into the quickly filling train.

My luggage was starting to feel extremely heavy and I scanned the rows for an empty seat. There was an opening next to a mother consoling her crying baby, another beside a snoring elderly man, and my final option was in the back next to a girl with headphones who looked to be in her mid twenties like me. I decided to sit next to the girl in the third row from the end of the train. She smiled at me as I sat down and slid my luggage under the seat. I decided to smile back and she took it as an invitation to remove her ear bud and introduce herself. She seemed friendly and I figured it couldn't hurt to make conversation during the hour long train ride we had ahead of us.

_____*_____

"And he just left you there?! Alone while he chased after HER?! Without any explanation as to why he was with another girl in YOUR bed?" Cait boomed while the train shook a little as it went over the tracks.

"I guess so." was all I could get out before the girl I just met interrupted me again.

"So let me get this straight one more time," she started, "you were engaged to this guy Jason for four years of your life and decided to surprise him with a trip to Baltimore for Christmas...and when you walked into your bedroom you saw them in bed together ...I just cannot believe it!"

"And here I am, clearly on the most romantic holiday get away for two..except as a party of one." I forced a laugh.

"Oh I am so sorry! This must be so terrible for you! But you can't let him win. You deserve to enjoy this trip. If you don't, you might end up hating Christmas for the rest of your life!"

Cait's bluntness was a little hard to swallow at first, but her honesty and comforting nature made me feel as though we had been friends for years. I learned she was in her third year of grad school studying to get her masters in business and had a fiancé that she swore she would 'cut the testicle off of' if he ever did to her what Jason did to me. After the first half hour of drowning my sorrows onto the shoulder of a stranger, the second half hour was flying by as we were laughing at all of her stories of dating horrors before she met the man of her dreams with whom she claimed she would live out her own version of the Notebook, without the life altering dementia and dramatic deaths of course. Her words, not mine.

In the middle of our laughter I decided I would try to make the most of my holiday vacation in one of my favorite cities. I deserved to be happy and my new friend was helping me realize I had the ability to choose happiness over sadness or anger. There would be plenty of time to deal with that when I get back.
Cait mentioned we would be arriving to our destination soon and suggested that we exchange numbers so we could grab dinner later that evening. I agreed.

As I was reaching down for my cell phone in the zipped compartment of my luggage, the train began to shake. At first it rumbled and swayed from side to side. I sat up and looked nervously at Cait whose frightened expression did not offer any reassurance. 

"It shook earlier when we were going over that one part of the tracks but not this hard!" I thought I heard Cait say over the noise that was growing louder.

"What?!" I yelled to her over the commotion surrounding us. The swaying turned to violent motions accompanied by screeching sounds that signaled the train was no longer on the tracks.

"I said.." Cait would have repeated herself louder and maybe I would have heard her, but instead we were thrown forward into the seats in front of us as our train jerked off of the tracks and onto the gravel road. The next moments were flashes of fear while my body was ejected from my seat like a rag doll as the train tumbled over and over again. The shrieks and sounds of bones cracking, metal breaking, train rolling were the background noise to the frightening atmosphere and deafening silence that followed soon after.

When my eyes flickered open, I was on the floor of what was left of the now sideways train. I could barely lift my head as it pounded from pain that seemed would never end. Before I closed my eyes again I noticed that the entire front of the train had broken apart from the back. As I looked around I eerily realized that only the row in front of me to the back of the train remained in one piece.

My mind was racing trying to sort through what just took place but it could not comprehend anything. I did not think of Jason at all, but instead I found myself picturing the eyes of the sandy haired engineer and wondered why he became an engineer in the first place. My eyes closed again as I rested my heavy head on my arm and drifted off into the darkness.