I'll Be Right There Read Online Free

dinged, I looked up and watched the display change. After a while, I would tell myself it was time to get to class, and I would leave the waiting room. But before I knew it, I would find myself heading toward the train station instead and boarding a train. Some mornings, I even made it to the steep road that led up to the school only to turn around and head for the station. There, I would buy a ticket for the first train out.
    There were always empty seats on the train in the middle of the day. I could sit wherever I wanted regardless of the seat number printed on my ticket. Some days, I was the only person in the entire train car. I would stare out the window until the conductor announced that the train had arrived at the station in the small town where I was born. Along the way, when the river appeared, I turned my head and stared until I could not see the water anymore, and when distant mountains suddenly slid into view, I leaned back in my seat. Once, a flock of birds appeared from out of nowhere and flew across a field. I watched them until the train went into a tunnel, and then I shut my eyes tight even though there was nothing to see anyway. I was always famished by the time the train stopped. I would slurp down a bowl of noodles in a shop in front of the station, and only then would I realize where I was and murmur to myself, Mama, I’m back .
    My mother’s death was not the only reason I decided to take a break from school. I was studying at a university forthe arts. The campus had a freewheeling atmosphere that was characteristic of art schools. Some people fit right in, while others were left out. I was in the latter group. I doubt anyone there even knew what my voice sounded like. The male students were more interested in protesting or drinking than in going to class, and the female students were busy preening or being dramatically depressed. It was the kind of place where, in the middle of an ordinary conversation, you could burst into Hamlet’s or Ophelia’s lines and nobody thought anything of it. There, it was considered a performance and a mark of individuality to sing incessantly or to sit in one spot and stare at someone without blinking. Even if you weren’t trying to spot someone doing something unusual, someone would catch your eye nonetheless. With my ordinary looks, I felt as if I was always alone. Everything they said sounded to me like a foreign language from some far-off land. But that was not the only reason I decided to take a leave of absence. Back then, I would have been the odd one out no matter where I was.
    O ne day, one of my male classmates disappeared. He was a friendly guy whom everyone called Pedal, because he had this powerful walk that made him look like he was pedaling his legs. The day he stopped coming to school, he came running up to me where I was seated on a bench. He told me his younger brother was in town and that he had to send money home with him right away. He talked me into giving him all of the cash I had on me. He even took a book of poems from me—a collection by Emily Dickinson that Dahn,my childhood friend, had given me when I left home. Later, I found out that Pedal had borrowed money, as well as a fountain pen, books, and notebooks, from more than ten other girls that same day and then disappeared without a trace. Too late, it was discovered that he was not even a registered student. But while my classmates were exploding with rage, saying it was unbelievable that he had been taking classes with them for several months and that they needed to do something about it, I left to apply for a leave of absence.
    The night Dahn had given me that book of poems, he showed up at our front gate and called out my name. Dahn and I snuck through the darkened alleys of our hometown, where hundreds of thousands of our footprints were stamped in the dirt, and walked to an open field on the edge of town. We sat next to each other beside the railroad tracks. A night train chugged