S1 Week 16 Bonus Story: Stranded

Duke's DIA Dilemma

Welcome to Trainwrecks, a free-to-read fiction serial that follows a group of six Seattle-adjacent friends from the year 2004 to the year 2015. Join Luna Cruz, Sebastian Velasquez, Dimitri and Victoria Hale, Duke Kingston, and Jasmine Nolan as they stumble their way from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love, making mistakes, overcoming their pasts, and staying together through it all.

Friday posts are for paid subscribers. For $5 a month or a discounted rate of $50 a year, readers will get four bonus stories that delve deeper into each individual character’s history or the narrative’s current events. You do not need this content to understand the main story.

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April 10, 2005

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Duke muttered under his breath as he stared at Denver International Airport’s departures board. A column of red declared the fates of thousands of passengers: Sacramento, canceled. San Diego, canceled.

Seattle, canceled.

“Ooh la la,” his mother lamented in her blindingly gold ski coat. “Looks like we are stuck here.”

They’d spent the week up in the mountains, alternating between tearing up the slopes and relaxing in one of Crested Butte, Colorado’s premiere ski resorts. It was the most snow Duke had ever seen in his life, and it was the coldest he’d ever been in his life, but he had to admit the experience had been exhilarating. Never had he thought he would be surfing mountains instead of waves. Frustrated as he often was with his mother’s rich people whims, he was grateful to her for expanding his world.

But right now, he was feeling anything but grateful. They’d driven six hours through blinding snow and rounds of altitude sickness to make it to the airport in time. They’d almost wrecked twice. Hadn’t his parents checked the weather for Denver before they’d set out on their spring break adventure? He turned on his mother, who appeared to be only mildly concerned. “I can’t be stuck here! I have school tomorrow!” he cried, drawing the attention of other disgruntled passengers.

His father, flanked by their carry-on luggage, laughed out loud. “Gee, I thought you would have loved to miss a day of school.”

Okay, fair. He didn’t particularly feel like going to class, but it wasn’t class he was worried about. He looked around the terminal. They were surrounded by restaurants, all with lines of customers that stretched on forever. The gates spread outwards from the central hub, and there he saw more endless lines for customer service desks with frazzled-looking employees offering their sincerest apologies. Beyond the gate windows, snow blanketed the runways. Hopelessness lay in every direction.

He grabbed the beanie he’d removed on their way through security and jammed it back over his head. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

He pointed at a store called Greetings from Colorado. “To buy a fucking souvenir I guess.” And then he hurried away from them, making sure he was out of earshot before he pulled his flip phone out of his pocket. He scrolled down his contacts until he landed on Dipshit Hale and pressed the green call button.

“Dimitri Hale, Boy Genius.”

“I need Victoria’s phone number.”