Marcel Winatschek

Halfway to the Train Station

Things are slowly sorting themselves out. The graduation cramming has brought Ana and me closer—she’s a full-on study machine who’s offered to help me with Spanish and maths, which I’m going to need. With Becca, something more honest is settling in: an open friendship, less loaded than before. Probably better for both of us.

Yesterday Irina marched me through her town for a solid hour in the cold and the dark, then compensated with spaghetti in tomato sauce and sausages and a few episodes of According to Jim on a plasma screen large enough to feel faintly excessive. I did not complain once.

Afterward I helped Ana with Latin—please bookmark that sentence—and got out of there around ten, which felt closer to two in the morning. She walked me halfway to the train station. Strange crowd at the platform at that hour. I didn’t hang around.