Jane leans her chin on her hand. “Yeah, you would think.”

Niko crosses his legs and chimes in, “You two have really always been on the same train until now?”

“The same car, even,” Jane says. “It’s nuts.”

“Yeah,” he says. “The odds of that … wow.”

“I’m just lucky, I guess,” Jane says with a grin. And August is too busy trying to figure out everything else to figure out what that means. “I’m Jane, by the way.”

She leans forward and extends her hand to Niko, and excited curiosity sparks in his eyes like Myla presented him with an antique alarm clock. He takes it gingerly, folding his other hand on top, which would be weird or creepy if it was anyone but Niko. Jane’s smile softens, and August watches the faintest expression flitter across Niko’s face before he lets go.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” he asks her.

“Are you?” she says.

“I’m from Long Island,” Niko tells her. “But I spent a lot of time in the city before I moved here.”

“You came for college too?” Jane asks, gesturing between Niko and August.

“Nah. My girlfriend. College wasn’t really for me.” He runs a thumb along the edge of his seat, contemplative. “These trains always have the most interesting smells.”

“What, like piss?”

“No, like … you ever smell, like, petrichor? Or sulfur?”

Jane eyes him, tongue in the corner of her mouth. “I don’t think so? Piss, mostly. Sometimes someone spills their takeout and it’s piss and pork lo mein.”

“Uh-huh,” Niko says. “Interesting.”

“Your friend is weird,” Jane says to August, not unkindly. She doesn’t look annoyed, only mildly entertained, like she’s enjoying the turn her night has taken.

“He’s, uh,” August attempts, “really into smells?”

“Super into smells,” Niko says vaguely. “Love an aroma. You live in Brooklyn? Or Manhattan?”

She pauses before answering.

“Brooklyn.”

“Us too,” he says. “We live in Flatbush. What neighborhood are you in?”

“Um, I’m in Flatbush too,” she says.

That one surprises August. Jane’s never mentioned living in Flatbush. She’s also never looked quite this shifty. Niko adjusts his shoulders. They both know Jane is lying, but that doesn’t mean anything—maybe she doesn’t want this guy she just met to know where she lives.

“That’s interesting,” he says. “Maybe we’ll see you around sometime.”

“Yeah, maybe so,” she says with a small chuckle.

August doesn’t know how long Niko needs, or what exactly he’s reading off of Jane, but he watches her return to her book with his hands palm-up on his knees, fingers relaxed, holding up the weight of the air.

August keeps waiting for him to bust out another question. Hey, ever walked through a wall? Or, Do you have any unfinished business in the realm of the living, like maybe a tragic unsolved murder, or a loved one who needs to give all the workers at the factory Christmas off? Or, Do you happen to see horned creatures when you close your eyes? But he sits there, and Jane sits there, both of them incomprehensible.

Finally, as they’re pulling into the first Manhattan station, Niko announces, “This is our stop.”

August looks at him. “It is?”

He nods decisively. “Yep. You ready?”

She glances over at Jane, like she might have disappeared in the last few seconds.

“If you are.”

They have to pass by Jane to exit, and August feels a gentle hand close around her elbow.

“Hey,” Jane says.

When August turns, that muscle’s twitching in her jaw.

“Don’t be a stranger.”

Niko pauses on the platform to look back at them.

“Okay,” August says. “Maybe I’ll—I’ll see you on Monday.”

She turns to Niko as soon as the train pulls away, but he’s eyeing the ceiling thoughtfully. She waits like she’s one of the nuns at her Catholic middle school waiting to hear if they picked a new pope.

“Yep,” he says finally. “Okay.” He uncrosses his arms and turns, striding off down the platform. August has to jog to catch up.

“Okay, what?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s the verdict?”

“Oh, tacos,” he says. “I decided tacos. There’s a stand that’s open late a few blocks from here; we can pick some up and take the 5 home.”

“I meant about whether or not Jane is dead!”

“Oh!” he says, sounding genuinely surprised. Sometimes August wishes she could know for even a second what goes on in Niko’s head. “Yeah, no, I don’t think so.”

Her heart does an uncomfortable sort of parkour maneuver. “You—you don’t? You’re sure?”

“Mostly,” he says. “She’s really, like, present. Solid. She’s not a ghost. She’s corporeal. Do you think I should try the seitan this time?”

August blows straight past his question. “So, she’s an alive person?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he says. The crystals around his neck bounce against his chest as he walks. “Yeah, I’m gonna do the seitan.”

“Then what is she?”

“She’s alive,” he says. “But … also not? I don’t think she’s dead. She’s sort of … in between. Not here, not on the other side. She feels really … distant, like not totally rooted here and now. Except when she touched you, then she felt super here. Which is interesting.”

“Is—is there any other way to test this?”

“Not that I know of,” Niko says. “Sorry, babe, it’s not really an exact science. Ooh. Maybe I should do the shrimp instead.”

Right. Not an exact science. This is why August has never consulted a psychic before. Her mom always said, you can’t start with guesses. The first thing she learned from her: start with what you absolutely know.

She knows … Jane was in 1976, and Jane is here. Always here, on the Q, so maybe …

The first time August met Jane, she fell in love with her for a few minutes, and then stepped off the train. That’s the way it happens on the subway—you lock eyes with someone, you imagine a life from one stop to the next, and you go back to your day as if the person you loved in between doesn’t exist anywhere but on that train. As if they never could be anywhere else.

Maybe, with Jane on the Q, it’s actually true.

Maybe the Q is the answer.

Maybe the Q is where August should start.

She glances over to the opposite platform, and she can just make out the arrival board. Brooklyn-bound Q, incoming in two minutes.

“Oh,” August says. It’s punched out of her, involuntary. “Oh, fuck, why didn’t I think of it before?”

“I know,” Niko says, “shrimp, right?”

“No, I—” She spins around, lunging for the stairs, shouting over her shoulder. “Go get your taco, I’ll meet you at home, I—I have an idea!”