• About ten years before I was born, there was a squabble between my hometown and its neighbor regarding who got the train station. They were both little towns, huddled in on themselves in the great emptiness of the Nebraska plains, and the train was important.

    Of course, there were only so many stops that the circuit could have, so it was resolved that a compromise would have to be reached. The station would be in the middle, roughly a mile from each town, to the satisfaction of no one; except, twenty-two years later, Andy Bradshaw, who was running away.

    It was autumn, and the cold was just starting to get bad. I hiked up the collar of my jacket and pulled the wool of my cap down over my ears, but it didn’t do much, especially for the wind.

    Despite the usual perfect and terrible flatness of the land, the train station was hidden behind a little hump of dirt for the better part of the walk, and for a while all I could see was the sign. It was a lonely trip, just like Andy had been hoping. The backs of my legs ached by the end of it, and my box, double sealed with tape, was heavy in my arms.

    When I finally saw him, he was sitting on the edge of the platform, half-crumpled in on himself, his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees. The station was a sorry, neglected thing, a single platform on a circuit to bigger and better places, and looked like nothing so much as an old raft lost in a sea of yellowing grass. I wondered if Andy knew how miserable the beginnings of his grand adventure looked.

    “Hey, Andy,” I said. He jumped, then looked up and grinned like a coyote. Andy had the most wicked smile you could imagine, but I was nearly certain that he was faking it then.

    “Hey, Mary,” he said, “What’s in the box?”

    “Ma’s cake,” I said, and shrugged apologetically. Andy hadn’t wanted my mother to know about this, but his mother had needed her help in planning it, and he could never have pulled this off without his mother.

    “I didn’t ask for no cake,” he said, and tried to pull a face, but his heart wasn’t in it. “What kind is it?”

    I shrugged again, and sat down next to him. The old boards of the platform squeaked under me. “I don’t know. It’s got strawberries and cream and some silly pink things.”

    “Your ma puts those on everything.”

    “She got a whole pack of ‘em for ten cents.” I worked the tape off of the cake box and pulled it open. One side of the cake was smashed up against the side, and the cardboard was smeared with frosting and clumps of cake. Andy laughed.

    “Did you sit on it, Mary?” he asked, and pinched off a chunk of it.

    “No!” I said, glaring at him and pulling the cake away. “It’s your fault for makin’ me meet you here. And now you’ve got cake all over your fingers, stupid.”

    Andy licked the mashed cake and strawberries off of fingers with a grand nonchalance. “I don’t care.”

    “My ma says you’ve got to look respec’able on the train, or -- I don’t know.” Andy’s mother had said the same thing. He had put on his church clothes and brushed his hair until it shone like a handful of new pennies, and would have looked the picture of respectability if it hadn’t been for the crescents of pink frosting under his nails.

    “I don’t care,” he repeated, and glared down at his shoes. He must have polished them, because Andy’s shoes were always the greyish color of dust, and today they were slick and shiny in the dusky autumn sun. “Nobody’s gonna take any advantage of me. I got a knife.”

    “You’re dumb,” I said, and swallowed, because there was a lump in my throat. “You know what I was thinkin’ about on the way over?”

    “No.”

    “I was thinkin’ about that frog.” I glanced up at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. I wondered if his mind was in the same place, at the swimming hole, with socks of mud up to our knees and my dress soaked with grimy water. “Remember, last week? It wasn’t really a frog. Like a tadpole, but it was fat, and it had a coupla legs. Remember?”

    “Yeah,” he said, and stretched his legs out in front of him. They looked like two skinny brown sticks coming out of his shorts. “We named him Frank.”

    “Well, you’re never gonna see him become a real frog.”

    “Well, I’m never gonna see you become a frog, either.”

    “What?”

    “Nothin’.” He scowled at his shoes. Andy hardly ever wore shoes. “I wonder what Boston’s like.”

    “Real big,” I said, and chewed my lip. It was hard to imagine Boston. “Your uncle says it’s real big, and there’s hundreds of people, more’n you could ever meet.”

    “I know that,” he said, an insulted expression on his face. Andy had nearly memorized all of his uncle’s letters. “But I wonder what it’s like, really.”

    I tried to imagine it again, but it only made me feel sick. I rested my head on my palms, so my cheeks pushed up and turned my eyes into slits. “Maybe you could take Frank with you,” I mused. “I bet I have enough time to get him.”

    “I don’t want Frank,” Andy said, and blew a sigh up into his hair, so his bangs flipped away from his face. “I wish my ma was here.”

    “Your pa might get funny.”

    “I know,” he said. “Stop tellin’ me things I tole you in the first place.”

    “Stop sayin’ things you know’re dumb.”

    “They ain’t dumb,” he said softly. I shifted in my seat and fidgeted with the hem of my dress. It was an ugly, torn-up dress, but then I didn’t need to look respectable.

    “Sorry,” I said, then, in a noble voice, “I’ll take care of your ma.”

    Andy laughed. “You can’t do that.” Then he perked up and looked over his shoulder. He did that sometimes, and it always made him look like Howie, my squash-faced old dog. “You hear that? I heard a whistle.”

    “I didn’t hear nothin’,” I said, but maybe I did. “You all ready?”

    “Yeah,” he said, and pulled his suitcase upright. It was his father’s, just like the knife, but Andy had been stealing from him for years. Mr. Bradshaw was rarely sober enough to notice, and now it didn’t matter, anyway. “C’mon, give me the cake.”

    I pressed the tape back into place and handed it to him, a strange, sick feeling rising in my stomach. “You want any ribbons?”

    “No,” he said, appalled. “I don’t want any of your girly ribbons.”

    I ignored him and unbound one of my braids. I disliked ribbons as much as he did so long as they were in my hair, but once out of it they could lasso snails, or mark trees, or bandage needle holes after an oath had been sworn. Andy couldn’t leave without a ribbon.

    He scowled at me as I tied the ribbon around the handle of his suitcase, and the train whistle sang through the air, unmistakable this time. The train chugged on down the track, steady as death.

    I got up onto the platform and hugged him fiercely. He smelled like soap, which was strange and bothered me for reasons I didn’t understand. “You gotta keep that ribbon,” I told him, “because I’m your best friend. You gotta remember that forever.”

    Andy hugged me back awkwardly, the cake box bumping against my back. “Okay. I promise,” he said, and smiled and let go and stepped away, the platform boards creaking under his feet.

    “Swear,” I said.

    “I swear,” he said, and flashed his crooked coyote grin at me again. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

    The train rolled up to the platform with a long metallic screech and a breath of steam. It went quickly from then on. The doors slid open, and me and Andy and the doorman hoisted his suitcase in through it, my ribbon wavering a little in the breeze. Andy smiled, and said something – it was hard to focus – and then the doors were shut and the train was gone, with only long, thinning clouds of white where it had been.

    I stood on the platform and watched it for a while. The sun glinted brilliantly off the steel skin of the train, and after a while it was only a bright spot on the horizon.

    I walked home then, and thought about trains and frogs and Boston until I felt so sick that I threw up into the worn Nebraska grass by the path. It was just so big, I told myself as I wiped my chin off and got back to my feet. It was just so big. I could hardly imagine.