S2 Episode 6

Campus Tour Gone Wrong

Welcome to Trainwrecks: Season 2 (2005-2006)! If you haven’t read Season 1, please start there! Trainwrecks is 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.

For series introduction, character profiles, relationship charts, and general orientation, check out the Table of Contents!

Previous Episode | Table of Contents | Next Episode

---

Sebastian scheduled his University of Washington campus tour for a Friday. Once a month, students were given a day off so teachers could… develop themselves? Catch up on grading? He wasn’t sure, but he appreciated the freedom, as did his peers. He got up early—which he didn’t appreciate—and took the dog for a morning run before the sun had even fully risen. Then he showered, threw on a hoodie and a pair of jeans, and drove to the Highlands to pick Jasmine up.

There was a lot of construction going on in the Highlands. Sparkly new subdivisions popped up between clusters of evergreens and overgrowth, their fresh paved roads covered in dust. Half-finished wooden frames promised luxury to those who could afford it. Jasmine and her parents lived in one of the older sections past the high school, filled with dead-end roads flanked by houses built with no real intention of matching the rest of the neighborhood. Their home was a cozy blue two-story bungalow with comparable square footage to Dimitri and his mother’s ranch-style house. Sebastian had only been inside once, but he’d been surprised at how small it was, how humble.

Jasmine waited for him outside when he arrived. She leaned against the mailbox, looking only mildly awake. “Please tell me we’re stopping for coffee,” she said as she climbed into the passenger seat of his beat-up old Toyota.

“We can, if you want to be late and miss the tour,” Sebastian replied.

She groaned and thumped her head against the headrest. “Wake me up when we get there, then.”

Sebastian thought she’d been joking, but she dozed off the moment they hit the highway. She’d dressed in business casual attire: pinstripe trousers, a turtleneck sweater, a long wool coat, fingernails painted dark green. In fact, she looked so put together that it was hard to believe she had no idea what she was doing with her life, and Sebastian tried not to resent her for playing the part so well. He felt like a slacker in his same old emo standard.

Thanks to countless spring trips to the UW campus for cherry blossom viewings, he knew exactly where to park. But the real challenge was waking Jasmine up: she slept like a corpse, and it took several minutes of walking for her to become completely lucid again. The campus was full of students rushing to their next class, reading books on the lawn, emerging from and disappearing into buildings, parking bicycles, walking dogs, passing coffee cups to friends and lovers. Even though they were only a couple years older than Sebastian, they felt so grown up to him that he was immediately intimidated. These people were preparing for their futures. They had jobs and schedules and plans and partners they were thinking about marrying. They had both feet firmly planted in the world of adulthood.

Sebastian had a C average, a part-time gig at the mall, and a car that was falling apart.

They signed in for their tour and joined a small herd of similarly dazed looking high school students and their parents. The guide was a perky blonde junior who was so awake and enthusiastic that Jasmine was getting annoyed with her. “Imagine loving school this much,” she whispered to Sebastian as they trailed behind the others.

“I can kind of see the appeal.” Dormitories, sporting events, clubs, being responsible for one’s own life. It was different from the way he lived now, where his mother still woke him up in the mornings and made food for him, where he had to fight his sister for bathroom time, do chores on someone else’s schedule, and go to class even if he didn’t feel like it.

The tour guide took them through the quad, chattering about the school’s academic programs and statistics. Sebastian gazed up at the sleeping cherry blossom trees and pictured walking to class under their pink springtime canopies, side-stepping tourists and families. He glanced over at Jasmine and found her staring ahead, seemingly unengaged. “Penny for your thoughts?” he asked.

She stopped walking, and he stopped too, keeping an eye on the tour group as they wandered further away. “Who am I kidding? I can’t get into this school,” Jasmine said. She motioned to their frustratingly awake blonde guide. “Did you hear what she said about GPAs? How this is one of the best universities in the country? I don’t even know what The Great Gatsby was about.”

Sebastian smiled. “Only because you didn’t read it.”

“And I’m supposed to take even more advanced literature classes?” Jasmine shook her head. “I don’t know if this is for me, Seb.”

He gave up on trying to be lighthearted. Jasmine may have dressed to impress and mastered the art of hiding her emotions behind a cool expression, but underneath her adult façade was a scared kid, a girl who’d become a woman long before she was ready and now had to face a future she hadn’t prepared for. “I don’t know if this is for me either,” he confessed. “But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to try.”

“Trying costs money.”

“Everything costs money,” he said with a shrug.

Jasmine started walking again. “I don’t want to throw my parents’ earnings away. They’ve already wasted so much on me.”

“I hardly think they consider it a waste.”

“And what if I don’t get into UW, but you do? Dimitri’s already talking about coming here next fall. Luna’s looking out of state. Victoria’s going to New York and Duke will probably chase her there. Where does that leave me?”

So she was afraid of being alone. Made sense. Sebastian thought of her sitting by herself at the cafeteria, pretending to be unbothered by her isolation, that she didn’t want other peoples’ company. After only a few weeks of being her friend, he’d seen how lonely she was under all that acting, how much she longed to be known and understood. But it was hard for her to reach out to others. If he hadn’t made the first move at school, and if Luna hadn’t made the first move at church, would she still be sitting alone every day, waiting for someone to see her?

Jasmine crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to be a killjoy.”

“You’re not being a killjoy.”

“Yes I am.”

“Okay, then I’d rather you be a killjoy and get this stuff off your chest than let it make you miserable.” Sebastian gave her a reassuring smile. “I like it when you speak your mind.”

“Yeah, well, if I said everything that’s in there, you wouldn’t like it as much,” she muttered.

“How do you know?”

“Because you’ve been annoyed with me ever since that night at the studio. And don’t you dare try and say you’re not. You’re a terrible liar.”

Sebastian kept his eyes glued to the back of the tour guide’s head, watching her blonde ponytail swing back and forth. The downside of being friends with observant people like Jasmine and Dimitri was that he couldn’t hide anything from them. “Why do you think I’m annoyed with you?”

“Because I ran my mouth off about your mom’s death.”

“Right. And when I thought about why such a nonconfrontational person would suddenly come for my jugular, I remembered the Bible says you’ll have my blood on my hands if you don’t.”

Jasmine grabbed his sleeve. “You think I’m trying to clear myself of guilt if you go to hell? What the fuck, Seb?”

“You wanted to have this conversation, so we’re having it.”

“I’m not trying to clear my conscience! I’m trying to be your friend. Like you’ve been mine. You brought me on this college tour because you’re worried about my future.” She pulled him so hard he was forced to stop walking. “Well, I’m worried about you, too. I’m worried that you’re unhappy and you’re not getting better and there’s no reason for it.”

Sebastian laughed. “You think I don’t have a reason to be unhappy?”

“I’m saying that all this anger and grief you’re carrying around isn’t romantic or productive.”

“You don’t get to tell me how to—”

“You’re right, I don’t! No one gets to tell you how to do anything! Poor orphan Seb, he’s so delicate! God forbid anyone step on his fragile little toes!” He noticed a few of the tour group members staring at them, but Jasmine went on. “You want to be angry at God forever for taking your mother away? Fine. Go ahead. But don’t act like He doesn’t care about you when He gave you a wonderful family and a great home and all the love and support you needed to get through the worst day of your life. He didn’t let you suffer alone, did He? He didn’t make you go into the foster care system when you were twelve years old and harder to adopt. He made sure you were taken care of before you even needed taking care of because that’s how much He loves you!”

Sebastian stood before her, so angry and bewildered that it actually left him speechless. He wanted to tell her off. He had all the words there, ready to go: Shut up about things you don’t understand. How dare you. Leave me alone. But when he opened his mouth to let those words out, they stuck in his throat and wouldn’t move.

Because Jasmine was scared. He saw in her shaking shoulders and trembling hands how much it terrified her to confront him, and even as pissed off as he was, his heart writhed with pity for her.

He looked behind him. The tour group had moved on without them, which was fine. He didn’t much feel like continuing the tour anyway. “I should take you home,” he said, and started for the parking lot without another word.

They walked back to the car in silence. They sat through traffic in silence until Jasmine began to sniffle and wipe her cheeks, her whole body turned away from him, which only made Sebastian angrier. But because he didn’t know who he was angry at anymore, he kept his mouth shut.

When they reached her house, she unbuckled her seatbelt and reached for the door handle.

“Jazz.”

“What?”

“We can fight and still be friends, you know.”

She sniffled again, climbed out of the car, and walked down the slope towards her house. Sebastian let out a long, irritated sigh and pulled away from the curb.

He needed to think.

---