Trains and Thoughts

Creative Writing  |  Enya Mirena Jaime Alba

“How are things?”

Milo was awoken from his sleepwalking state by Mr. Sandusky’s high-pitched voice.

“Things are good,” he said in his most artificially cheerful tone, as he walked through the door and into the classroom.

Things were not good. In fact, Milo thought that things were especially not good in Mr. Sandusky’s calculus class, where he had received the very underwhelming grade of fifty-four percent for his last exam.

The truth is he tried hard to study and get good grades, but his first semester of Health Science at Champlain Regional College had turned out to be, up until that point, a complete disappointment. He was failing his calculus class, and what once used to be scores worthy of the Governor’s Medal were slowly turning into a seventy percent average.

When he first noticed that his grades were skiing on what appeared to be a very slippery slope, he tried everything he could think of to save his R-score. He bought a new planner, hired two tutors, changed his sleeping schedule, and even started learning the material ahead of time, but nothing seemed to help. If CEGEP was a metaphor, it was that of a train. And the train had left the station. And Milo had been left behind. 

The ticking sound from the large clock at the front of the room resonated in Milo’s ears, an irritating reminder that there were still forty-five minutes left to the lecture.  That meant four times ten minutes, plus one time five minutes. Or nine times five minutes. That seemed shorter. Either way, he could live through that or, at least, he could sleep through that.

Just as he was about to close his eyes, he noticed on the corner of his desk a poorly executed drawing of a shrimp holding a cane. It seemed odd to him, but he did not give it much thought. He fell asleep, his head filled with images of the delicious shrimp he had eaten on the previous night at the Asian buffet.

“Mr. Senall!”

Milo jumped in his seat. Once again, Mr. Sandusky’s voice had woken him up.

“Mr. Senall, I’m afraid class is over. I’m sure you had a delightful sleep though, with your current grade, I would rather have you actually listen in class.”

“Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

He left the classroom feeling rather sick, as one does after eating too much. He had dreamed of fried shrimp and soy sauce, a mix he enjoyed since he was just a kid.

Upon opening his locker, he felt the smell of gym clothes invading him and thought that maybe – just maybe – it was time for him to wash those. He kneeled to gather his books and saw a piece of red paper folded into a plane sitting right inside his running shoe. On the left wing, the words “Great minds think alike” were scribbled in blue ink.

He had not given much of his attention to the shrimp drawing earlier, but this odd piece of paper just seemed so out of place that Milo could not help thinking that something was up. He was now under the impression that he was being targeted, but he did not know why or by whom.

Milo considered looking into the matter, but he had class in seven minutes. He had already fallen asleep in calculus, and being late for Vision of Art was not a very good idea. 

As he walked into the room where his second class of the day would take place, he saw the green board had been entirely covered with white chalk. He got closer, and he could tell that someone had wiped out parts of the board, leaving visible but hardly legible words.

“Intrigued? A-214 – Noon.”

Like her students, Mrs. Truman had been surprised to find the green chalkboard in such state, but after five minutes, everyone had been too absorbed by her speech on Artemisia Gentileschi to remember the incident. However, Milo was unable to forget. The words echoed in his head as he tried to concentrate on Mrs. Truman’s lecture.

After twenty-three times five minutes, Milo found himself knocking on the door of room A-214.

“Come in!”

The thick Quebec accent resonated from the other side of the door. As he walked inside, Milo saw a teenager with a grey shirt and ripped jeans sitting at a desk, absorbed in a black notebook in which he appeared to be drawing.

“Ah! Milo Senall, we finally meet!” said the shabby-looking boy, looking up at him.

“Hi. I was told to come here. Well, I – I think you wanted me here, actually.”

He had never sounded so insecure, not even during his English oral presentations back in high school, and he dreaded those. They always turned him into a sweaty, stuttering mess. Standing there, in front of this stranger who Milo could swear he had seen before, he was exactly that.

“Yeah! I’m Sid by the way. So, you got all the clues? Are you ready for the mission?”

Milo had no idea what the mission was, and the clues he had gotten still made little to no sense to him, but he relaxed when it hit him that the stranger was in his French class. The whole situation was all too weird, but he had two hours to spare, and he did not feel like doing his calculus homework.

The two talked for a good while, and Sid explained to Milo that he needed help with an illegal plan. He wanted to paint a distorted version of the periodic table, making the elements that were currently endangered due to human usage smaller, and those that were being released by men’s polluting habits bigger.

Sid needed a science nerd who could be discreet, and thought that Milo was the perfect candidate, for he did not stand out, and was studying science. Milo tried to explain that he was barely in Health Science, but Sid did not care. “A scientist is a scientist,” he retorted.

In all honesty, Milo thought the whole thing was unnecessary. In Sid’s words, it was “a grand plan to protest the careless usage of natural resources.” In Milo’s words, it was stupid. He only agreed to do it because he had no better plans for the weekend, and getting caught and thrown in jail, at this point, seemed more appealing than CEGEP. He knew the police would only give him a fine, but the idea of spending a year in a calculus-free building pleased the angry student in him. Of course, he cared a little about the environment, but calculus was his main motivation.

The next weekend, the pair painted the giant graffiti over the wall of a train station in Montreal. Milo did not know where exactly it was, nor did he care. He hated trains, they were loud, and he never understood the need to have rails all over a country when planes had been invented ages ago. He saw the act of vandalism as a personal revenge against trains, and that soothed his somewhat guilty conscience. 

To his surprise, the graffiti soon became a national sensation. In just a week, it was all everyone talked about at the dinner table. Sid was proud of his idea, but Milo started to be afraid. He did not want his parents to know it was him and his new friend who had been named “The Chem Vandals” by the local newspaper. He did not want anyone to know he was quietly rebelling.

“Hey, look! The pres is talking about us!”

As he said that, Sid pointed to the television in the corner of the cafeteria. Indeed, Milo saw that a live transmission of Justin Trudeau giving a tear-filled speech was being filmed right in front of their graffiti. He knew that Canada did not have a president, but hearing Sid refer to the suspiciously prince-charming looking man that was in power as “the pres” was too funny, so he did not correct his friend.

“This is blowing out of proportion. It’s completely absurd. People put their crap drawings all over Montreal and no one cares. Why are we suddenly so important?”

Milo’s annoyance did not bother Sid, who was ecstatic ever since the night of their escapade.

“We’re like, the Banksy of Quebec! We’ve started a revolution. The company that runs the train station is one of the biggest polluters in Quebec, and people are not having it. Who knew the pres would love it, though?”

Sid’s voice was filled with excitement as he spoke, but Milo was confused by all the attention their work was getting.

That night, he looked up the story behind the train station. He was infuriated to find out that the company was the epitome of corruption, and that it was indeed the most polluting company in the province, with affairs in a number of suspicious businesses. For Milo, what had started as a plan to distract him from his hatred towards calculus had become something he really cared about. He wanted their work to mean something, and the publicity it was getting was only superficial.  People were talking, but no one was seeing the real problem.

He picked up the phone and dialled Sid’s number.

“Let’s go back,” said Milo in his most serious tone. “We’re not finished.”

Milo had brought red paint, and he used it to write a statement he hoped would reach the people of Montreal. Sid, who thought the plan was absolute genius, agreed to hold a flashlight while Milo worked.

“STOP TALKING. DO SOMETHING.”

The red letters were marked in Milo’s mind and on the wall, as the two teenagers sat on the sidewalk, looking up at the dirty bricks they had just vandalized for the second time in less than two weeks.

Milo had no idea what Banksy felt like, back in London, when he started his career as a protest artist, but he hoped it was similar to what he was feeling at that moment. It was a mixture of thrill and tension. He had not felt this way on his first night at the station, but this time was different. This time, he actually cared.

Lost in his thoughts, he remembered that he hated trains. He found it ironic, for he could see now that he had been trying to catch a train that kept running full speed since the beginning of the schoolyear. Naturally, he knew he would return to Champlain Regional College the next morning, but he also knew that something had changed within him.

Milo hated trains, but maybe he didn’t have to catch one. Maybe he could ride on a plane. Or maybe he could just walk instead.