I mean, what the fuck? I turn into a tiny white girl - which is fucked up enough on its own - and Ravi decides to fucking kidnap me because he's afraid we'll lose jobs in some family deli that is not actually owned by his actual family?
Oh, he didn't see it that way, saying he didn't know what else to do after I fainted, and not to worry because he wasn't the one who dressed me (what the fuck?). The actual wedding wasn't planned until next year (WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?), so we wouldn't have to fake too much in public. He told me that there should be a letter in my luggage for me to read, and then chivalrously helped me get it down from the rack because I was so tiny now.
There was, along with a wallet and a phone, but I only sort of pretended to read it. I'd woken up at some point between Exeter and Haverhill, and I got right off the train at that station. Ravi ran to the door and told me I couldn't just do that, but I gave him the finger and the conductor gave him this stern look asking if "we" had a problem. I said no and walked over to the other side of the platform not even knowing that it was only ten minutes until the next train north. I guess Ravi took his seat without much complaint, and I headed back to Maine.
Not that there was a lot of help to be had - in the three hours since Ravi had loaded me on a train, everyone who knew everything seemed to have gotten on a train or taken a cab to the Portland airport to start their new lives or get back to their old ones, and the few people that were left were just crying about not knowing how to be these people or be a man or a woman or black or whatever. But they seemed to be asking the wrong question, really.
Ravi had left the door locked, and while I might have been able to knock it down a day earlier, that wasn't happening, so I went to the other hotel where we checked in and told the guy at the desk that I was locked out of my room. There was as much confusion as you might imagine - I have no idea how they keep records for who checks in and who checks out, and when he finally allowed that a Jordan Chang might still be checked in, he looked at me weird, but I guess that "Jordan" being a girl's name too is the one bit of luck I've had with that place. Anyway, I was able to get my suitcase, rip up the letter Ravi had written for the next person in the room, and write another one. Then I grabbed my stuff, checked out for real, and waited for the 3:05pm train. I had to buy that ticket with Deirdre's card, because they do check IDs on the train, and that sucker was running low enough that a plane ticket wasn't the best idea. But I eventually got to Boston, took the orange line to Back Bay, and from there got into Penn Station at just past 11pm.
By the time I got back to my apartment and lugged the luggage up all these stupid stairs with this scrawny body, it was midnight, and I was ready to drop. Obviously, I hoped to wake up this morning and find out that yesterday was all some strange nightmare, but that's equally obviously not the case. But that doesn't mean I have to stop being Jordan Chang or start being Deirdre O'Connell - I do a shit-ton online, to the extent where most of my work is done via IM rather than voice calls, and I am not going to be a waitress when there's other, much better-paying work that I've already agreed to do. I may look completely different, and I may have to buy a whole lot of new clothes today because I didn't take Deirdre's bag with me when I got off the train, but I'm still myself, no matter how Ravi or anyone else wants to play it!
-Jordo
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