The Station Girl

Prologue

All my life, I've watched and listened to them go by.

The ground would quiver at their approach. The sky would tremble in anticipation of their whistle. People, sometimes few, sometimes many, would eagerly look on for them at a distance from their small and safe platform.

A little girl all alone would sit with breathless excitement on a nondescript and splintery bench. The people, some old and others young, would barely pass her a passing glance. It didn't matter to them that a small, raven-haired girl who hardly reached their knees was by herself. It didn't matter that all she wore, day after day, was a straggly and thread worn cotton dress whose color reminded them of dead grass during a hot summer.

Where were her parents? Why was she alone? Who was watching over her?

Did anyone stop and wonder these questions?

They all ignored me. Me, the train station girl. Me, the small girl who had no family. Me, the girl who lived in an old, worn out shed.

The only thing I had going for me was a kindly, old station master. I don't think he earned much. He never told me. But I knew, and I think he knew that I knew. Why else would he only lend an abandoned child a shed to live in, never to offer her in to his real home? Why else would the two of us only have a minuscule amount of food to share each passing day?

I didn't realize it until it was too late, but he was the pillar of my world when I lived with him. And yet, I never even asked for his name. I called him Sir, and he called me Little One.

"Little One, why are you out here in this rain? You know that the roof leaks."

"I know, Sir, but I haven't seen today's train yet."

He was kindly, but he wasn't the most talkative. When he wasn't teaching me, our talks would consist of the weather or of the trains that would stop at our small train station on a daily basis. In the beginning, there were times where he would ask me how I was, and in return, I would beam up at him and tell him I was okay.

Eventually, he stopped asking. Eventually, he would stop asking me why I sat out when it rained or snowed or shined. Eventually, he stopped talking about our beloved trains.

And, all too soon, he eventually stopped talking at all.

I was dumped into his train station exactly fifteen years ago the day he died.