The sensation that your next step will change your life forever should be called dreadticipation, because it’s simultaneously the best and worst feeling.

Beside the platform, the door to the six-car passenger train hisses open. This is the most important train ride of my life. Well, it’s the first train ride of my life, but it’s also the most important. Down these tracks lay my chance to rewrite everything.

I inhale a deep breath of damp November air and, heart prancing like a sixth-grader high on Pixy Stix, step out of the swirling fog and climb aboard. The rough carpet scuffs into my heart, and a dozen hands fly at my face.

“Rainbow!” Edie claps me with a high five. “You made it.”

The rest of my teammates sting my palm like they’re trying to set me on fire. Tomorrow morning, I’ll captain us in the 1997 Oregon Soccer State Championship. In twenty-four hours, we could be champions. In twenty-four hours, the name Rainbow Marie Moore might be permanently engraved on a trophy, instead of just a tragedy.

Hoping the dreadticipation doesn’t show in my face, I swing for the last high five hard.

Sissa ducks it and tackles me into a hug. “Got you! Like we got this.”

I can’t help matching her grin. Funny how one person believing in you can fill you with hope.

“And you’re scoring the winning goal!” I squeeze her tight. “Your shots at practice were almost tearing the net—”

“O.M.G., Rainbow. That’s what you’re wearing to Portland?”

The words crash over me like five icy gallons of non-celebratory Gatorade.

Carolyn, my nemesis and our second-string defensive midfielder, smirks like she caught me with spinach in my teeth. So long as I’m better at defensive mid, she’ll always be taking potshots, and her glamorous white crop top and parachute pants—which I’m pretty sure Sporty Spice wore at the MTV Video Music Awards this year—reinforce the mockery.

I glance around the train car at the rest of my team. I dressed for our trip in stonewashed jeans, a green ‘I ❤️ Astoria’ hoodie, and my trademark black suede Sambas. A sensible outfit for an Oregon November. However, only our coaches, holed up in the back seats counting hoagies like sandwiches are our game plan, dressed as casually. Everyone else on my team chose adorable dresses, designer cardigans, or cute skirts that show off their killer legs.

Maybe because tonight we arrive in Portland, an honest-to-gosh big city. We’ll probably disembark to a photographer snapping photos for an article on the state championship, and they’ll crop me out thinking I’m some rando from the train. Normally, I’d be delighted with the anonymity. Tomorrow though, my transcript is going to contain more than ‘coward’ with a capital ‘C.’

I pat my backpack and force a laugh. “I was going to change on the way.”

Holy Sandra Bullock’s bullocks. After almost seventeen years of life, I should be less terrible at lying.

My teammates overlook the miserable fib with smiles and nods, except for Carolyn.

She rolls her eyes and pops her bubblegum. “You’re such a pud-wack.”

Funny how one person doubting you can disintegrate your self-belief. “I’ll just…drop my stuff in a seat.”

Sissa squeezes my shoulder. “Saved you a spot near the back!”

I head that way, eyes on my shoes so my shoulder-length bob hides my cheeks. I’m seconds aboard the train ride to a new me, and the wheels are already slipping. I toss my purse on the seat next to Sissa’s boombox, which is blasting the most overplayed song ever. Third Eye Blind must bribe radio stations to air “Semi-Charmed Life.” If only hearing it a million times made it easier to ignore the breathless finish.

I am going to get back to the start where the sky is rose and gold. We win the state championship, and I’ll be invincible to haters like Carolyn.

A chime rings through the air. The train lurches into motion. My teammates cheer, hopping and dancing.

“We are the favorites! We are the favorites!”

We are. I jump into the party.

Out the windows, the morning fog swallows the tiny train station. Klamath Falls is so Podunk I don’t see another building. Beyond the mist could be another state. Another country. Another universe where I already fly on wings of self-belief.

Off in the mist, someone in a red hoodie takes off running.

My stomach tingles nonsensically.

I’ve got to change.

Restroom arrows point to the passageways between cars. Our team’s coaches and their cooler still have the door to the rear passageway blocked off, seemingly having lost count of the sandwiches and starting over. Guess this is why they don’t work at Stanford. I dance through the clashing shampoo fragrances of my teammates to the stale, oily smell of the forward passageway.

The door parts, and Edie snags my arm. “Avoid the next car up. Full-on enemy territory. Also, watch out for a guy in a tan suit. He was lurking at the station like a serious skeeze.”

Great. More ways to throw me off my game.

“You’re the best.”

I scurry down the narrow corridor, slip into its cramped bathroom, and nearly gag. There should be a law against perfuming restrooms to smell like candy, especially green apple Jolly Ranchers.

I cringe my backpack down and unzip the zipper. It’s stuffed to the brim with all the spare warmups, athletic tape, and shin guards I might need. The only nonsensible piece of clothing I crammed in was a blue sundress with little white polka dots.

I scrounge it out, turn to the mirror, and hold it up.

Maybe I would’ve packed more nice clothing if, every time I saw my reflection, I didn’t imagine reporters saying breathlessly, ‘We’re here at the Jackson County Fair, where Rainbow Moore is cowering in the Ferris Wheel line while people die—'

The train clatters over something, shaking the words away. Fighting to keep balance, I chuck off my comfy clothes and squirm into the dress.

The little mirror teeters with me. You look like a tryhard in J C Penny sale clothing.

Whatever. I can already taste the sunshine radiating off my championship trophy.

I kiss on strawberry Lip Smackers then fight on my mascara. No time to risk eyeliner. The sway of the train has the pencil looking menacing, and I’ve already taken long enough that Carolyn will probably accuse me of not eating enough fiber.

I grab my backpack, slip out the door, and nearly run into some dude.

“Sorry!” I try to sidle out of the way.

“Whoa there!” The man drops an arm to block me. “Where’re you headed, pretty thing?”

Tan suit. It’s the skeeze.

Goosebumps race over my exposed shoulders, and the train rattles around a bend, pressing me against the scratchy wall. Everything in the windowless passageway goes darker like the morning’s fog-muted sun is fighting to flicker through the branches of Southern Oregon’s innumerable fir trees.

The man leers in. “Lemme guess. You play on one of these soccer teams.”

Sweat mats his hair to his forehead. Combined with a thin mustache and his shirt unbuttoned halfway, he’s nailing Bill Paxton’s gag-me used car salesman from True Lies.

This is all Carolyn’s fault. I can’t believe I let her get to me.

“I’m going to freaking kill her,” I bite through my teeth.

Mr. Pedistache sways like he’s planning on falling chest-hair-first into me. “You’ll have to raise that adorable voice if you want me to hear what you’re saying.”

My chest races like I’m minutes into the championship game. I’ve got to get this creep away before he throws off everything. Say something devastatingly scary like, ‘You’re navel lint.’ Or, ‘Would you excuse me? I cut my foot before, and my shoe is filling up with blood,’ or…

“I turn seventeen in December.”

Wow. My mouth, never my sharpest attribute, did not make that sound like a warning.

“Your birthday’s next month?” He quirks an eyebrow. “We should slide into the dining car for an early celebration.”

My stomach swims. His breath is alcohol-sour, and it’s not even ten in the morning.

Where the heck are my teammates? This d-bag caught me coming out of the bathroom, and the door to our train car is closed, but if one of them glanced through its window, they could save me.

Pedistache glances over with me. “Oh, your friends will be really jealous. I’ll get you everything on the menu you deserve.”

I blink. I’ve spent the last four years pursuing a three-pronged strategy to Sharpie over the fact that I don’t deserve anything.

Before my lips can spill that, the door to the passageway slides open, and Carolyn strides in.

Her steps slow. Her bubblegum pops.

She’s going to scream and shin-kick him away from me.

Or not.

She steps around his back, mouths ‘Really?’ at me, and slips into the bathroom.

My lungs seize, but the joke is on her. Pedistache ogles after her crop top, leaving him wide open for my next-best bet for driving him away—going Jamie Lee Curtis levels of crazy.

I spear-hand him in the Adam’s apple. He chokes and grabs his neck. I knee him in the groin. He doubles over. I strike upward, and just like in Con Air, my palm drives nose cartilage into his brain.

In my head.

The second prong in my life-resurrecting strategy is the same thing that took me to the Jackson County Fair in the first place. Like almost-state-champ and almost-seventeen, I’m also almost a black belt. But I don’t know the laws about manslaughter. I don’t know if it’s self-defense if he doesn’t try to touch me.

Maybe he’ll get the message my mouth seems incapable of sending if I shove him away. I can’t get in trouble for that. Except he’s morning drinking. With my luck, he’ll crash through the passageway door, trip on the linoleum transition, smash out the nearest window, and tumble face-first into the tracks.

Splat goes the watermelon.

I accidentally kill someone, and it’ll be bye-bye, perfect day. Bye-bye, state championship. And black belt testing in February while incarcerated in Juvie?

Alicia Silverstone would observe, ‘As if!’

I fight back and the only thing besides ‘Coward’ on my transcript might be ‘Manslaughter.’ My throat tightens. Why can’t I just speak? My sole hope to save today could be playing nice until my teammates spot me or Pedistache realizes that my insides truly are empty.

A fist hits my shoulder.

I gasp, flinching, and Pedistache straightens before the boy who somehow entered the passageway without either of us noticing.

“Sis, what’re you goofing around here for?” My puncher motions. “C’mon. Pops is waiting.”

I try to keep my jaw from dropping. There’s a spark in the boy’s eyes like he knows me, and something is familiar about him. Or maybe the spark is that he knows no one would believe he’s my brother. He looks a little older than me, maybe he’s actually seventeen, but his skin is the most double-take-worthy shade of walnut heartwood. Meanwhile, I’m a half-Japanese and half-White patchwork of soccer tans.

Pedistache frowns between us, no doubt thinking the same thing. Before he can speak, my ‘brother’ heads out of the passageway.

This is so classic me. This was supposed to be my train ride to a future of dancing in wildflower meadows with my bee-costumed soccer team. Now it’s a ride to either following a vaguely cute boy who confuses strangers for family or risking this skeeze creep me out so badly I reflexively throw an eye gouge and gunk my fingernails with retina jelly.

If I have to be a hopeless mess, I’ll take hopeless mess with a view of a cutie.

I duck away from Pedistache and chase my new bro up the train. The wrong way. My team’s car is behind us. The car I burst into is full-on enemy territory.

Sometimes, a single step changes your life. Sometimes, it feels like every moment of dreadticipation leads to catastrophe.