Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
The first time Suzie caught a train on her own she was eleven years old. Her mum waved her off from the station as the train started to move. She waved back excitedly. Her aunt would be waiting at the other end and until then she had an hour and a quarter on her own. On a train. No one knew her and only the conductor even knew her name. She was an older lady with a slight limp who walked up and down and up and down the train and smiled and winked at Suzie each time she went past.
Suzie settled down into her seat and opened her back pack. She took out her ipod and hit random play, then took out her book, it was new. Every page was blank, there were no smudges, creases or rubbed out mistakes. She wanted it to be filled with only good stories, only good drawings. She could see it in her mind, how beautiful it would be. She pulled out her pencil case, she loved the bold flower pattern, pink, purple, blue and green, all of them her favourite colours. She rummaged through it and finally settled on the green glitter pen to write with. It was going to be her personal diary.
‘I am really excited…’ she began in her best writing. But it wasn’t her best writing because the movement of the train made her hands jerk a bit and gave even her most careful letters some wobble. Frustrated she ripped the page out and started again. Still her writing looked like she was a little kid just learning her letters, not much different to her little brother’s writing. She wanted to write about how it felt to get dressed for her big adventure and how her mum had let her pack her own bag without any advice. She wanted to talk about how Brice had been moping all morning because he had to stay home with mum and dad. She wanted to say how exciting it was to have a whole weekend with her Aunt Fiona in the city. But she decided not to write anything at all, she could do it tonight in bed.
She put her book and pencil case away and sat staring out the window, listening to her songs, unable to sing along like she would have in the car. That would have been weird. The train was going very fast, cows, horses, green fields, fences, dams and the blurry brown of the cut away rock when the train sped through a cutting. Her fingers itched to pull the book and pens out again, just to hold them. So she did.
Next minute the train slowed down and stopped at a station. There were only three people waiting. Two men and a teen-aged boy. They all got on the carriage in front of hers. Two women got off. Suzie watched them all curiously.
A few minutes later one of the men walked through the carriage mumbling under his breath. She heard him say ‘Who’s asking? Huh?’ He didn’t smell very good. The conductor came through and smiled and winked at Suzie and followed the old man as he made his way down the isle to the other end of the carriage. She was staring out the window, watching patches of bush wizz past and then it all opened up and she could see for ever. There was a mountain range in the far distance and the occasional dips and bumps in the landscape that was mostly just grass and fences.
He excitement had faded to boredom, now that she couldn’t write or draw, and slight unease as the old man kept staring at her. She tried not to look at him. The conductor hadn’t been through for ages. There were three other people on the carriage, an old lady knitting, a young couple kissing and whispering and a business man. She was sure that the old man couldn’t hurt her while they were all there. But he was staring a lot.
He got up form his seat and shuffled towards her, still muttering. The train was slowing again and the business man got up and walked to the door. The old man hovered near her seat and stood swaying and smelling and she couldn’t hear much of what he was saying but she did hear him say ‘sex in front of the fire’.
She didn’t know what to do. She hoped he was getting off, but he just stood there even as the train stopped and the doors opened. She thought about what it would be like to push past him and run off the train, but what if he followed her. Then she would be alone on a train platform with him and her aunt wouldn’t know why she wasn’t on the train. She was slowly putting her things back in her back pack and had taken her ear phones out so that she could hear and think better when a teen-aged girl said ‘Hey old man!’ really loudly. Both Suzie and the old man jumped. She must have gotten on at the last stop. She had half her hair and half a shaved head and tattoos on her neck and arms.
‘You coming or going?’ She said. Other people in the carriage looked up for the first time. She wasn’t being angry or mean, but she was loud.
He stopped muttering for a minute and seemed confused, then said loudly ‘who’s asking? huh?’
‘I am.’ Said the girl. She looked at Suzie and said ‘I want to sit next to my little sister and you’re in the way mate.’
‘Ok. Ok ok ok. Ok.’ He said, until finally he turned and walked back the way he had come. ‘Ok. Ok ok.’ Suzie could hear him say all the way back to the other end of the carriage.
The girl sat next to Suzie and said ‘I hope you don’t mind, it just looked like he was bothering you. I’ll just sit here for a while to make it look like I didn’t lie!’
‘I don’t mind’, and embarrassed she added ‘thanks, he was being a bit scary’.
‘Yeah, I could see that in your face. You were white as a ghost!’
‘I was just thinking about running off the train, but then my aunt would miss me at the other end.’
‘Well, then good, I’m glad I helped. No need for your aunt to be freaked!’
Suzie smiled. She liked this girl. She had a husky deep voice and her eyes were really nice.
‘Nice pencil case’
‘Thanks’
‘What do you put in your book?’
‘I’m going to keep it as a diary, but I haven’t written anything yet.’
‘Cool, I like to draw. Mind if i have a page?’
‘Sure, you can use it.’ Suzie handed over the book and the pencil case, explaining how hard she found it to write on the train.
‘Yeah, you get used to that.’ She said as she started to draw an intricate flower design.
Suzie said ‘Originally I was going to write about how excited I was to come on this trip, but now I might write about how that man was and how you helped me out?’
‘Sounds awesome. What’s your name?’
‘Suzie’
‘I’m Amanda’ and she wrote ‘Suzie I think you are cool’ in the middle of her flower drawing and then chose another colour and started colouring it all in. It was going to be a full page glitter flower drawing and already Suzie could see smudged on the next page as Amanda’s fingers picked up some of the colour from what she was drawing. She had also accidentally bent a few pages further in the book. Suzie didn’t mind. It was going to be the best book ever.
Amanda looked up and smiled. ‘What are you listening to?’