Runaway Train
(Runaway Train #1)
by: Lee Matthew Goldberg
Release Date: April 29, 2021
Genre: YA
Everything changed when the police officer knocked on the door to tell me – a 16-year-old – that my older sister Kristen had died of a brain aneurysm. Cue the start of my parents neglecting me and my whole life spiraling out of control.
I decided now was the perfect time to skip town. It’s the early 90’s, Kurt Cobain runs the grunge music scene and I just experienced some serious trauma. What’s a girl supposed to do? I didn’t want to end up like Kristen, so I grabbed my bucket list, turned up my mixtape of the greatest 90’s hits and fled L.A.. The goal was to end up at Kurt Cobain’s house in Seattle, but I never could have guessed what would happen along the way.
At turns heartbreaking, inspiring, and
laugh out loud funny, Runaway Train is a wild journey of a bygone era and a
portrait of a one-of-a-kind teenage girl trying to find herself again the only
way she knows how.
Winter lives at the end of a
cul-de-sac in a small house she and her hippie mom Edina share. Edina is
British with orange hair like a pom pom, usually dressed in a chic muumuu with
statement jewelry dangling from her neck and wrists and a thin joint permanently
clamped between her lips. By now it’s after three and legit for Winter and
Jeremy to be home, although Edina could care less if Winter skips school.
Sometimes they’d take mother daughter days and drive to Joshua Tree to get
stoned in the sun. Winter’s dad had peaced out when she was young, and Edina is
always dating some crunchy, Birkenstock-wearing, grey-haired, patchouli-scented
dude who would talk about how great
the sixties were and how sexily Edina carries herself.
Sure
enough, a wafting of pot greets me as Edina opens the door and embraces me with
a kiss on both my cheeks.
“This
bone structure,” she says, examining my face like it’s art. “What I’d do for cheeks
sharp enough to cut an apple.”
Edina
says weird phrases like that, but because of her posh Brit accent they tend to
sound profound.
“Baby
doll, you’ve been crying.”
“I
hate my mother,” I say, wrenching out of her grasp.
“Don’t
we all?” Edina says, with a puff. “Mine was a bitch and half. Caught me once
with a boy in my room and called me the town whore.”
“You
and my mom would have a lot in common then.”
Edina
scrunches up her face, but she’s likely too high to realize what I’d meant.
“You
look like you can use a drag,” she says, placing the joint between my lips and
encouraging me to suck. “Marijuana cures all ailments. Just ask my migraines.”
“Is
Winter home?”
“Yes,
and I have a feeling you girls didn’t go to school today.” She places a finger
over her lips. “Our secret.”
“Thanks,
Ed.”
“Anytime,
Nic.”
She
waves me inside. Winter’s house is forever cluttered but homey, unlike my Dad’s
minimalist design. Tchotchkes galore from Edina’s far-flung travels. African
busts mix with Gaelic bowls filled with lemons and Asian paintings of naked
people bathing. Joan Baez softly sings from out of a record player. Edina sways
in delight.
“That
voice,” Edina says. “I’d drown a drifter to have Joan Baez’s voice. Yours is so
beautiful too.” She pets my hair, and I’m embarrassed because it’s probably
oily due to not washing it since the weekend. Edina doesn’t comment on wanting
my hair, not one for lies. “You used to sing sometimes in Winter’s room. I’d
hear it and think, wow, that girl’s got something bloody special all right.”
“I
really need to talk to Winter,” I say, not so into listening to any accolades
about my voice. I know I have a talent, but my vocal chords for the most part
stay silent. I hate singing in front of others, too shy I guess, forever afraid
I wouldn’t hit the right notes and I’d be brutally mocked. And yeah, I long to
sing in a band like any other alterna-chick. Like my dream is to be a female
version of Cobain, Weiland, Pirner, or any one of my heroes, but in this life
I’ve decided to remain mute, my voice primarily for the shower, never a crowd.
“All
right, darling,” Edina says, and dances me toward Winter’s room.
The
song “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” by Pearl Jam pours from
out of the doorjamb. Inside Jeremy is
braiding Winter’s Casper-white hair, a menthol cigarette bobbing between his
teeth.
“There’s
our hot little piece,” Jeremy says, like some old-timey radio announcer.
“Nico,
Jer will braid you next. He learned how to do cornrows.”
“I’m
thinking of going Barbizon in New York,” Jeremy says. “And then becoming a
beauty school dropout like Frenchie.”
I
hate Grease, but know that Jeremy
loves it and worships John Travolta on the same level I lurrrrv Cobain.
“My
mother’s the town Jezebel,” I say, flopping on Winter’s bed and playing with
her flannel sleeve.
Winter’s
room is like my own except Eddie Vedder rules the walls with a shrine-like
dominance. I expect him to put out a restraining order on her one day. A large Vs. poster monopolizes her ceiling, its
angora goat’s nose trying to wiggle through the barbed-wire fencing. The wall
with her lone window is devoted to the movie Singles.
“Luanne
the Jezebel?” Jeremy snorts. “Girl, no way. Your mom is firmly in the throes of
menopause.”
“I
caught her and our neighbor Mr. Ferguson humping their brains out.”
Jeremy
stops braiding. He and Winter’s mouths gape open.
“Fatty
Ferguson?” Winter says, clapping her hands.
“Bitch,
it isn’t funny,” I yell, yanking at her flannel. She covers her laugh with a
half-hearted apology.
“Look,
your parents probably haven’t touched in a thousand years,” Jeremy says. “They
are headed for a di-vorce.”
“No,
they aren’t.”
“Nico,
I saw it with mine. When they’re not fighting, they aren’t speaking, right?
They’ll be happier apart.”
I
think about which one I’d want to live with, deciding on neither: Mom too
pathetic, Dad too sterile and glum.
“Double
the gifts on Christmas,” Jeremy says, holding out his hand for a high-five. I
leave him hanging.
“Neither
gives a shit about me,” I say. “Like, even when Kristen was alive.”
I
see Winter and Jeremy eyeing each other carefully, both of them alarmed that I
mentioned Kristen’s name.
“Like,
Kristen was the easy daughter who brought home top grades and sports trophies.
They barely had to parent. And then there’s me. I require like four parents to
monitor my delinquent ass.”
“They
love you,” Jeremy says. “They just don’t know how to show it.”
“I
want to run away,” I mumble, to the Eddie Vedder poster behind my head.
Winter
pops up. “Girl, you should!”
She’s
probably still wired from the alcohol/pot we ingested earlier.
“We
all should!” Winter yelps, smiling her wicked smile and then hugging me tight
so our cheeks mushed together. “Like, forget school this semester, right?” she
adds. “We’re all pretty much flunking anyway. We should go to Seattle where
like the grunge scene is really happening. I want to go to dirty dive bars and
make out with boys who have hair covering their eyes.”
“You
do that here,” I say.
“Yeah,
but L.A. is so whack. Like, all the grunge kids here are so fake. They love Nirvana because Nirvana
is popular, but I want to interact with people who love grunge because they
need it in their soul to survive. Like I do.”
“You
just want to screw Eddie Vedder,” I say.
“And
you want to screw Kurt Cobain, so what? And Jer wants to screw all of
Soundgarden. We’ll whore it up and down Seattle and leave just when the
pitchforks come out.”
“You’re
not serious.”
Winter
pushes a lock of hair behind my ear and kisses me on the cheek. Her eyes are so
glassy, like looking into a pool. “Nico, you are really sad. I can feel it.”
“I
just caught my mom–”
She
whips her head back and forth. “No, like, you never talk about your sister, but
it’s okay, we’re here to listen. And then we want you have fun and get all that
melancholy outta your system.”
Hearing
Winter talk about Kristen makes my insides rumble and slap into one another.
Maybe I do need to talk about her more, but it’s just so damn hard. Especially
because deep down, I fear that Kristen’s fate would soon become my own. I’m
pretty sure my grandfather died from the same goddamn thing at a young goddamn
age, so what kind of chances do I possibly have to escape that wicked destiny?
“Isn’t
there like a million things you want to do?” Winter asks.
Secretly,
she’s completely right. After Kristen died, I’d made a bucket list I carry
around at the bottom of my backpack. Sometimes I take it out and pour over its
wild contents that ranged from surfing, to climbing a mountain and facing my
fear of heights, to kissing I boy I really had feelings for, to getting up in
front of an audience and singing my heart out, and even visiting Kurt Cobain’s
house and having the courage to knock on the door, push stupid Courtney Love
aside, and tell him how much his words mean to invisible me.
“I
wrote down a bucket list,” I say.
Winter
squeals, something she does often that annoys me. I cover my ears.
“Yes
bitch, yes! You have to do every item
on that bucket list. Like, Jer and I will help you do them. We’ll take your car
and go on a road trip.”
“What
about school?” I ask.
“My
mom will cover for us. She’s done it for me before and it’s always fine. Like,
our school is so dumb and big they don’t care who shows up. You’ll tell your
parents you’re staying at my house for a while and then just call home every
few days so they don’t get suspicious. It’s foolproof.”
She
jumps off of her bed, rummages through a drawer, and pulls out a baggie of
weed. She packs her swirly glass pipe and inhales. I know that’s causing her
neurons to fire so dramatically, but I can’t deny that the idea excites me to
no end. Winter then takes out her Pearl Jam CD and puts on STP’s Core.
“I
know you’re big into STP right now and Scott Weiland’s wang.” She smiles and
cues up “Sex Type Thing,” singing loud enough to make her throat sore. “We’re
gonna find you a boy, Nico, when we run away, a yummy, grungy boy who plays
guitar like the devil and screws like no L.A. jerkoff could.”
I
imagine this boy: Cobain-esque with a thin body, multi-colored hair, and a
sweater too big for his frame, big enough for me to fit inside of it as well.
He’d take me back to his room, turn on his black light, play me some delicious
Nirvana on his guitar and then kiss me hard, refusing to let go of my tongue.
And he’d taste like Zima because that’s what we’d drink until we reached
oblivion.
“Runaway.”
I giggle as Winter passes me the pipe. “Like, that would show my parents.”
“It’s
not about your whack parents, it’s about you, Nico. Being free. Becoming a
woman.”
I
take a hit, letting it tickle my senses. Jeremy squeals even louder than Winter
and says he’s in too.
“I
love you both,” I say, and Winter kisses me on the lips, tasting of the cherry
ring pop on her finger.
“I
love you more, lovely,” Winter says, and then starts dancing, flinging her arms
without abandon.
Jeremy dances with her, jumping
around like a fool. They both beckon me to join. I think of Kristen, who’d shake
her head at us being so ridiculous, but maybe she’d be happy at the fact I
decided to run away like this. From up above, she couldn’t be pleased that I’m
so miserable. She’d want me to live again, whatever it’d take to get there. So
I dance like no one is watching, like I’d entered my own universe while I
imagine all the travels I’d embark on, this runaway child ready.
After
about an hour of jumping around, the three of us collapse into a ball of sweaty
laughter as the CD ends with “Where the River Goes.”
“Will
you tell me what the rent’s like in heaven, Kristen?” I whisper, my mouth
feeling full of cotton. “Will you stop doing the Running Man with God for long
enough to tell me you’re okay? I miss you. I love you. I never gave you the mix
tape I made for your seventeenth birthday. I hate that you might’ve thought I
didn’t care. Because I always really did.”
I
get up and lurch out of Winter’s house toward my car with a million fallen
tears left in my path.
Buy Links:
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B & N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/runaway-train-lee-matthew-goldberg/1138950895
Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Runaway-Train-Lee-Matthew-Goldberg/9781953944047
Alibris: https://www.alibris.com/Runaway-Train-Lee-Matthew-Goldberg/book/49370076
Indie Bound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781953944047
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the
author of the novels THE ANCESTOR, THE MENTOR, THE DESIRE CARD and SLOW DOWN.
He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du
Polar. His first YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN is forthcoming in 2021 along with a
sci-fi novel ORANGE CITY. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his
writing has also appeared in The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor,
Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, the anthology
Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains
Review, Underwood Press and others. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of
Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots
and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage
32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood
Screenplay contests. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series
and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com
Tour Created by YA Bound Book Tours
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