"How eerie," thought Melbourne Train Girl aloud as she passed the lonely flashing sign telling her that there would be roadworks and long delays for the next week on the road she was walking down. The streets were silent and dark, and the air was perfectly still. The road was covered in a hazy film of fog. The only sounds to be heard were the footsteps of Melbourne Train Girl's favourite red shoes, the occasional odd growls of possums from the trees above, and the thumping of dough as bakers kneaded bread inside the nearby bakery.
Melbourne Train Girl was walking home.
And in her phone was a brand new number. She seemed to be accruing quite a few of those lately, but this one made her smile. She had met him that night at a party, where they danced a little, talked a little and kissed a little. They also walked a little and ate a little too.
"I have to have your number!" he had declared dramatically from the dance floor; for the second time that evening.
"You've already asked that, and I've already given it to you," Melbourne Train Girl had replied, with the left side of her mouth curled in her little half smile. The smile she always tried to avoid doing because she thought it looked silly. She never succeeded at that though.
"I did? You did? But I don't have it!" he had looked at her with mock despair.
"Well, that's too bad. I don't give out my number more than once." Melbourne Train Girl had echoed him with mock regret.
(Of course, Melbourne Train Girl had given him her number for a second time. But she had told him there wasn't going to be a third. She had known, though, that she would have gone back on that word as well, if she discovered he had lost it again.)
Melbourne Train Girl crossed the road to walk on the other footpath. She preferred to walk home alone at 5am on the side with houses, and not the side with the big open park. Somehow it made her feel safer from attack.
"You know you are very scary, don't you?" he had said to her at one point of the evening.
"What? I'm not scary!" red wine had made Melbourne Train Girl flourish her arms with a little more vivacity than normal during that statement.
"Intimidating. Intimidating is a better way to put it."
Melbourne Train Girl was far from intimidating. She was shy and harmless. And she was akward and a little bit boring. Or at least, that's what she thought.
"I'm not intimidating. You have it all wrong."
She had smiled her half smile again, and he had kissed her.
Melbourne Train Girl passed a single shoe, lying wet and muddy on the nature strip. It was the fourth she had seen so far on her walk. She would see three more before she made it home. While walking she remembered the date she was supposed to have on Tuesday with the foreign boy who told her she was charming. She was still unsure about him. She was much more sure about this new boy.
She had kissed him, biting on his lower lip the way she always did when she kissed boys. She was surprised when he did the same.
"No one ever likes to bite back," she had said with a smile.
As Melbourne Train Girl stopped to find her keys inside her handbag, the thrumming of wings passed over her head. She looked up to see a single bat disappearing over the roof of her next door neighbour's house. She hadn't seen a bat at her house since she was little. She smiled, unlocked her front door, and was home.
