The Journey Ch. 02

Hello, Friend, and welcome to Chapter Two of my series, The Journey.

If you haven't read Chapter One, this chapter will be much less enjoyable for you. Like turning on WandaVision in Episode eight, you'll have missed all the ground-building, context-clues and cool sit-com tropes, so don't do that to yourself. Do the whole series, as it was intended! (Spoiler, there aren't actually many sit-com tropes in this series. But still, read the whole thing!)

Content warning: this chapter contains discussions of race and racism. If that's not your thing, or may be upsetting to you, please feel free to move on to something else. I won't be offended if this isn't for you. Also, this particular chapter contains no sex scenes. Sorry 'bout that. Again, feel free to move on if that's what you need to do.

THE JOURNEY, PART TWO

I used to think that I was made out of stone.

I used to spend so many nights on my own.

I never knew I had it in me to dance anymore.

~~ Springfield, VA, July ~~

"What a fuckin' day," I sighed, walking into the apartment. It was almost ten o'clock. "I hate working game nights."

"Green line tonight?" Manny asked.

"You know it."

He nodded at the television. "Nats are hangin' on two-one in the eighth and the stadium's rockin'. Be proud of your part bringing all those people to help out the home team."

"I'm an unsung fuckin' hero. The Nats should give me a bonus if they win tonight."

"Just be grateful you aren't working closing shift, takin' all those drunks home," Manny chortled.

"Fuckin' A."

I dropped my backpack inside the door of my bedroom. Stripping off my work clothes, I pulled on a ratty Nationals t-shirt and some gym shorts, then grabbed a beer out of the fridge and joined Manny on the other end of the couch.

"I hate game day crowds," I said, "All the assholes shoving their way on, blocking the doors. Took me almost five minutes to get out of Gallery Place during one trip tonight. Probably had to make ten announcements to get the doors cleared."

"And that's why I don't drive evening rush hours."

"Yeah, well you can pick your shifts, Mister Senior Driver. I'm lucky I get Sundays off for bowling and lunch with my family."

"Quit your gripin'. You didn't miss a game last season."

"Good thing too. You guys couldn't have won first place without me."

Manny snorted. "Don't get too big for your britches, girl."

I twisted the cap off my beer and took a long swig, then smacked my lips. "A-h-h-h-h, that's what's up."

Zimmerman smacked a long fly, lacking the oomph to get out of the stadium. The Phillies shagged it on the warning track, sending the game to the ninth.

"Hope the bullpen can hold it, they've been struggling the last few weeks," I said, while we watched the closer trotting in from the bullpen as the broadcast went to commercial.

"Want to go to Smitty's after?"

I considered the idea, while checking my phone to see if anyone had matched me on Tinder during the day. Nothing. It'd been a couple of weeks since anyone had shown any interest. And it had been a couple months since I'd gotten any action.

"Think I'm gonna pass tonight. I'm pretty tired, and I'm going over to help Abuela with her tamale order again tomorrow, like always."

"You're a good kid, Viv."

"Don't tell anyone."

"Secret's safe with me."

The Nats closed out the ninth, one-two-three. Manny stood, stretched, then reached for his wallet.

"Don't have too much fun," I said, "Call me if you need a ride home."

"Smitty's is eight blocks away and I'm walking. How drunk would I have to be to need a ride?"

I chuckled. "You've been drunker. Catch you tomorrow."

"Oh, I forgot, this came for you." Manny picked up a manila envelope off the table by the door and tossed it at me.

I looked up in surprise. "I never get mail."

"First time for everything. Night, Viv." With that, Manny slipped out and shut the door behind him.

I looked at the return address on the thick envelope.

"NOVA? What the fuck?" I muttered. I tore it open and dumped out the contents. There was a course catalog for the fall semester and some forms. There was also a letter.

Dear Ms. Esparza,

Congratulations on being admitted to Northern Virginia Community College's Associate Degree in Engineering program. Class enrollment for the fall semester begins July 31st, with the final deadline for class selection on September 3rd. You should make an appointment with a scholastic advisor to discuss degree requirements at your earliest convenience.

All financial aid forms must be returned to the Registrar's Office no later than August 7th.

We look forward to your attending classes with us beginning September 10th.

"Is this a joke?" I asked the empty apartment. I'd never submitted my application online. As far as I knew they didn't even have my address. I flipped through the catalog. There were hundreds of classes listed.

Where the fuck would you even start?

I sat bewildered for a moment, then turned off the TV, scooped up all the forms and stuffed them back into the envelope and carried it into my bedroom. As I tossed it onto my dresser I caught myself in the mirror hanging on the wall above it. The crack across it split my face into two uneven halves.

"Your dumb ass ain't ready for college."

The next morning, I took the bus to Lorton, getting off at the Hispanic grocery to get a load for Abuela's fridge, then lugged the bags the four blocks to her apartment. For once I beat Diego there.

"Ola, Abuela."

"Buenos días, cariño. Tengo el desayuno listo."

"Huele bien. Chilaquiles?"

"Si, el café estará listo pronto."

"Sounds yummy. I'll get to work until it's ready."

I sat down at the table behind a stack of dried corn husks and got to work after she brought over the giant bowls of masa and carnitas. I'd rolled four dozen when Diego showed up. He walked in with a yawn.

"Hey sleepyhead, I never beat you here. Big Saturday?"

"I took Virginia to the Nats game last night, then we hung out at The Big Stick for a while. Got home late."

"O-o-o-h, fancy! Look who's a high-roller."

He grinned. "She wanted to do something special for our five-month anniversary."

"And you took her to a baseball game?"

"Hey, it was her idea!" he said defensively.

"Really? She sounds like a keeper then. You should ask her to marry you."

"That's not beyond the realm of possibility," he said with a grin.

"Wow! Since you're getting that serious, I have a question. Are you sure her parents actually like her? Who lives in Virginia and names their kid Virginia?"

"It was her grandmother's name, don't hate. What were you up to last night?"

"Drove my train until nine, then came home in time to watch the last five outs of the game you were at on television. That's about it."

"Did you... get any interesting mail this week?" he asked with a sly grin.

I fumbled a half-wrapped tamale all over the table.

"Fuck!"

"¡Lenguaje, querido!" Abuela said from the stove.

"Sorry Abuela! Dude, was that you? How did... what..."

"I was tired of waiting for you to get off your ass to get your associate's degree so I did some of the work for you."

"But how... I mean how did you even—"

"Wasn't hard. Abuela had your high school transcripts and social security number."

I glared at Abuela, who was focused on the stove, pretending she wasn't listening to us.

"You never took the SAT, but I reached out to Mr. Aguilar at South County. He's still teaching there, by the way, he must be like a hundred. Anyway, he wrote a nice letter of recommendation for you. He said you were one of the most naturally gifted math students he's had, even though you never would apply yourself. He said that part to me, not in the letter."

I huffed a breath of frustration. "But how did you even know that I got it?"

"I used my email address when I was signing you up and I got a notification that your enrollment packet was delivered this week. You should probably change the email address in your contact info when you enroll.

"Jesus Christ, dude!"

"¡Vivian! ¡No tomarás el nombre del señor en vano en mi casa!" Abuela said, crossing herself.

"Lo siento," I said again. "Diego, you had no right to do that without asking me."

"I'm tired of listening to you gripe every week about your job, and how you're never going to get promoted, and you wish they'd let you in the apprentice program without a degree." He almost sounded angry. "You have a chance to change things. So, do it."

"But—"

"But nothing. If you don't want to do it, then don't enroll, no one's making you. But if you don't do it, then I don't want to hear you complaining about your job anymore. You make decent money. It's a steady paycheck with good insurance. If you want to make a change, then make it happen. Or don't."

I stared at Diego while he continued to wrap tamales.

Dammit.

Decisions were so much easier when you didn't actually have one.

~~ Judiciary Square, Washington DC, WMATA Headquarters, August ~~

"...and you've got an almost perfect on-time record, you we're only late once last year. You do well at maintaining pace through the stations. No safety violations in the last calendar year. Your training is up-to-date, except you're three hours short of elective safety CEUs. You have until the end of the year to get those in."

My manager, Gail, was tapping at her keyboard as she looked over the notes for my annual performance review.

"I'll probably get those next month. There's that seminar with the Department of Transportation."

"Basically, you're a meets-plus, same as last year. You're in the top twenty percent of my drivers. You'll get the standard C.O.L. bump the Union negotiated plus a two percent merit increase, starting January first."

"Am I getting bumped up to senior driver?"

"Sorry, with attrition rates the way they are currently, it'll probably be at least a few more years before you get that."

"Okay." My voice sounded small to me.

"I really am sorry. I know you want to move up, but seniority takes time."

"Okay... What about..."

"What about what?"

"Sorry, but what about... Is there any chance of applying to the engineering apprentice program? I heard there were a few spots open they haven't filled."

"Viv... We've talked about this. You need at least an associate's degree. They don't make exceptions, and even if they wanted to, that's not my department. Not my call to make."

"Okay, fair I guess."

"Alright, so unless you have any other questions, you can sign your eval and we're done."

"Sure." I picked up the form and scanned it to make sure that everything we'd talked about was what was printed on the page. I scrawled my signature on the bottom.

"You're a good driver, Viv. You had a good year."

"Thanks." I scratched my head. Dammit. I'd fucked around ignoring this decision for a month now. Guess I should bite the bullet. "So, uh, Gail, I wondered... If I wanted to put in some new schedule requests would you be okay with that?"

"I'll see what I can do. What did you have in mind."

"I, uh... I got accepted into Northern Virginia Community College's engineering program. I've been on the fence about it, but maybe it's time I gave it a shot."

"Viv, that's great! Of course, we can work that out! How many classes do you want to take?"

"I'm not sure. I think maybe just a couple at first to see if it's for me. Maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays? I'd start the second week of September."

Gail pulled up my schedule and looked it over. "We can make that work. Hmm, looks like you have Sundays blocked off. Can you give that up?"

"That's my bowling night, and I help my grandmother in the mornings with her business."

"Well, I can probably get you on the early shift or the late shift on Sundays. But something's gotta budge to get you the two days off during the week. Unless you want to cut your hours back to part time."

I chewed my thumbnail, thinking while Gail waited patiently.

"I guess... I guess I'll take the Sunday late shift." There goes my bowling night.

"Okay, I'll put that in and make sure you get off those days starting next month. Let me know if your class schedule is different from what you expect. And don't forget to talk to H.R. about your tuition reimbursement. The union contract is pretty generous for that. It'll probably cover your entire cost, especially for just two classes."

"Thanks. I for sure wouldn't be able to try this if Metro wasn't paying for it."

~~ NOVA Community College, Alexandria Campus, September ~~

"Shit," I muttered, shaking coffee off my hand. While juggling a printed map of the campus, my phone with my class schedule and room number on it, and a Starbucks cup, I'd spilled my latte, staining my map. I stuffed it in a garbage can at the building entrance. I didn't really need it now anyways.

When I made the decision to enroll after my annual review, it was less than ten days before the semester started. I was able to get into the two required freshman orientation classes for my major, College Success Skills and Orientation to Engineering, and grabbed the final open spot in Calculus I. Since the freshman classes were one hour each, in addition to the four-hour calc class, I decided to try and knock out one of my electives as well, for a total of nine hours.

The freshmen req classes had been difficult to stay awake through but had at least filled my morning. My advisor had told me they were basically show up and you pass situations, and I could see he wasn't kidding. After lunch (one of Manny's sandwiches which he'd packed for my first day of school like a proud parent) I made my way from the Bisdorf Building across the parking lot to the Engineering Building for calculus. The book for the calc class was intimidating, twice as thick as the book I used for calc in high school ten years ago. And it cost two hundred freakin' dollars. I went in feeling scared as hell. To my surprise, though, the math came right back to me, and by the end of the class I felt like this might be doable after all.

I had to kill a couple hours until my last class of the day, which was an evening section. I'd ordered a latte from the bookshop and wandered around looking at books and fancy t-shirts, hats and pullovers for those who wanted to show their school spirit. Not really my thing, but different strokes. Finally bored of window shopping in a bookstore, of all places, I'd ordered a second latte to keep me awake through class and headed back to Bisdorf to my assigned room for my elective and arrived twenty minutes before the class started.

Race Relations in Modern American History wasn't really something I wanted to take. Hearing about the history of racism for a semester sounded like a recipe for chronic depression to me. Unfortunately, it was the only class that met the requirements for a humanities/fine arts elective that was: at the Alexandria campus, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, didn't conflict with my other classes, and was still open when I enrolled three days before the deadline.

The classroom was the same room I'd had College Success Skills in earlier in the day, a mini-amphitheater, with each of the five rows of seats tiered down a foot lower than the one behind it, offering everyone a clear view of the small podium and combination whiteboard and projector screen. I headed straight for the back row. My strategy was to try and avoid all my professors' attention by sitting as far from the front as possible. There were only three other students in the room when I got there, and only one sitting in the back row in the aisle seat.

"Hey," I greeted her with a nod as I eased past her and sat down a couple seats down the row from her.

"Hello." She looked up, acknowledging me, then went back to scribbling on the legal pad on her lap. I checked her out from the corner of my eye. I'd sort of decided that I wasn't going to troll for dates at school, but she was really pretty. She gave me the vibe of someone with a fancy desk job. Unlike most girls I normally dated. Or slept with.

The second group had gotten a lot bigger than the first group in recent years.

She was African-American, about the same age as me, with fairly light skin, a heart shaped face and round cheeks, and her dark hazel eyes (or light brown, kinda depended on how the light caught them) were full of humor behind her black-framed, square glasses. Like a sexy librarian. She wore her bush of thick, curly hair up over her head, gathered in a colorful head-wrap, and her smart blazer and dress shirt gave the impression of a professional woman. I wondered what she was doing in a freshman class. On reflection, she probably wasn't someone I could pick up anyway. She didn't look like a one-night stand girl. Besides, if I managed to get lucky then I'd be stuck in class with her all semester. And I knew how dating went when it came to, well, me. A woman like this was out of my weight class anyway. Dating Addison had shown me that.

When I showed up at campus this morning I'd been assuming that everyone in freshman classes would be eighteen or nineteen years old. Surprisingly, it had turned out that there were students of all ages, some a lot older than me, even. I guess that the difference between a community college versus some fancy school. Still, there were kids in every class. They all seemed to sit in the front row, like little puppies, anxious to please the teachers.

"So, you hiding in the back from the little eager-beavers who sit up front to suck up to the teacher too?" I asked her.

"Not exactly," she said with a wry smile, "It's a good place to scope out the class before it starts. I like to see who's here. Take a guess at who's going to participate and who's going to stay in their shell."

"Huh. Well, I'll save you a guess, I hope I don't get called on the entire semester."

"First time in college?"

"Shit, is it that obvious? I feel like a fish out of water here."

"Well, it's the same as anything else. If something makes you uncomfortable, the only way to get over it is dive in and do it until it becomes comfortable."

"I guess." I looked around the room as it slowly filled up with students.

"What's your goal for the class? I find that's always the best thing to focus on."

"I need an associate's degree to be able to apply for an apprenticeship in the engineering department at work. This was the only elective open for me this semester. I applied late."

"Where's work?" She stopped writing and turned her attention completely to me now.

"I'm a Metro driver."

"Like the buses, or—?"

"No, the subway trains. Not the most glamorous thing, but—"

"So, you're responsible for moving thousands of people to and from work every day, many of whom do the work of keeping our country running. Do you think that your work is any less intrinsically valuable than the work they do? Or than the people who serve food, or clean the bathrooms or guard the doors in the Capitol complex? Without you, they don't get to work to do their jobs either. And it's a job that requires a lot of responsibility and trust, right?"

I blinked. Certainly not the reaction I'd come to expect when sharing my job with someone.

"I suppose it's, uh... important I guess. When you put it that way?"

"And I imagine it took a lot of training, learning technical and safety things."

"That's for sure," I said, thinking of the stacks of manuals I'd had to learn. "I'm Vivian, by the way. Call me Viv."