Free The Steps by Rachel Cohn

train conductor shook his head at our “parents.”
    First class was nice (it didn’t actually look that different to me from economy, but I was impressed all the same), but it wasn’t like the extra seat space meant we would get any extra sleep. The adults riding in the car were drinking champagne and chattering, waiting for that “10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, Happy New Year” thing.
    Once the conductor left us alone at our seats, we burst out laughing for about fifteen minutes straight. We almost fell out of our chairs from laughing. If I had been drinking a Coke, I would have been snarfing it all over our seats. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard with Justine, Gloria, or Keisha.
    â€œWe are toooooo smooooooth,” I giggled.
    â€œOh, we were the bomb!” Lucy laughed. She got that expression from me. Nobody in Australia says that.
    After we stopped laughing, we sat side by side, silent for a few minutes, as if we were both wondering, Now what? When we shared her room, we rarely said much to each other. Well, when I first arrived, Lucy had talked a lot, but she had figured out pretty quickly from my silence that I did not want to be chatterbox queen with her.
    â€œWhen do you think they’ll figure out we’re gone?” I finally asked her, to break the silence.
    Lucy shrugged. “I don’t care.” I knew she was lying.
    I felt kind of freaky. As the train raced from the suburbs into the countryside, I pressed my nose against the window so I could see the landscape outside without the light reflected from the train car. Pitch-black darkness, with occasional bursts of street, house, or farm lights, whizzed by. Loud adults, drinking and smooching, partying, made the train ride seem especially weird and lonely. They did not notice us at all. Suddenly, I was scared. I had never been farther from Manhattan than Miami, and now I was a continent and a hemisphere away, a runaway, on a train bound for endless black sky.
    Lucy seemed to sense my nervousness. She handed me a blanket and wrapped it over me. “We’re okay,” she said very softly. Then she asked if I wanted anything to eat. I shook my head. “Well, I’m starving!” she said.
    She left for the food car and came back carrying Cokes and “pasties” (pronounced “PAH-stees” in Australianese), which are these weird pastry rolls filled with meat or vegetables, and which I had detested when I first arrived but had come to like a lot.
    â€œI’m surprised you didn’t come back with beers, too, Miss Actress,” I said. Lucy giggled.
    â€œNeed the pasties to grow up and out.” She jutted out her chest, and we started laughing all over again.
    â€œMy Bubbe and I were in Bloomingdale’s buying my first bra, and she told the saleslady that my chest was ‘perky’! I almost died right there,” I confessed to Lucy.
    â€œIf you think that’s bad, I heard my mum talking on the phone to her best friend and she told her friend that I had started my period and then described my bozzies as ‘gorgeous.’ Can you believe that?” Lucy blushed at the memory.
    â€œYour ‘bozzies’?” I asked.
    Lucy pointed at her bosom. That ie thing again.
    â€œYou started your period?” I whispered.
    â€œUh-huh, three months ago. I thought I would be happy about it, but really it’s a drag. I feel all cramped up and hungry all the time.” Lucy was not bragging about having started her period, the way Justine does. You would think that periods were invented just so Justine could tell you, “I’ve had mine, you know.”
    I’m still waiting for mine. At least I could console myself—my Kleenex bozzies were bigger than Lucy’s.
    Lucy shivered from the cold train air. I extended the blanket to her. We sat huddled under the blanket, maybe a little uncomfortable that we were telling each other private