S2 Week 9 Bonus Story: The Future is Now

Duke and Victoria Look Ahead

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.

Friday posts are for paid subscribers. For $5 a month or a discounted rate of $50 a year, readers will get bonus content each month that delves further into character backgrounds or expands the current narrative. This bonus content is not needed to understand the main story. Money made from paid subscriptions gets reinvested into the series in the form of art and advertising!

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

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December 2, 2005

It seemed as if half the city of Renton had turned up at Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park to participate in the opening night of the annual holiday lights. Duke couldn’t go two steps without bumping into someone, and his irritation grew, not because he was claustrophobic, but because Victoria—whose hand he clasped tightly as he searched for a break in the crowd—did not fare well in large groups of people.

Thankfully, the main concentration of humanity was near the shore. Festively decorated yachts paraded down Lake Washington, adding their radiance to the lit-up trees and arches reflected in the black water. Luna and Jasmine had agreed to play dumb about where Duke and Victoria had gone in case the parents noticed their absence, for which he owed them seriously nice Christmas presents.

“Finally,” he grumbled as they stumbled out into the parking lot.

“Duke, I’m fine,” Victoria said.

“Like hell you are. A five-year-old tripped over you and you damn near threw her into the lake.” In addition to her usual intolerance of crowds, she’d been even crankier lately thanks to her Juilliard audition’s rapidly approaching deadline. The last thing any of them wanted was for her to explode—and in public no less. Duke and Victoria walked past families headed in the direction they’d come, towards the action and noise of the parade. When they arrived at Duke’s parents’ truck, he stepped up onto the back bumper, climbed into the bed, then helped Victoria in. “Sorry, it’s kind of dirty.”

“Eek!”

“And wet.”