Sleeper Car With Her Stepsister

The overnight train rattled out of the station just after nine, carrying Yara and her stepsister Yvonne toward their parents’ anniversary party three hundred miles up the coast. Yara had fought the booking every way she could. She’d offered to take a later train, a coach seat, even a bus. Nothing worked. The sleeper cars were sold out except for one remaining cabin, and their mother had insisted the girls travel together “like a real family.” So here they were: twenty-two and twenty-four, college senior and recent grad, forced into a space barely wider than a closet.

Yvonne shoved her suitcase onto the upper rack and turned, her long dark hair still damp from the station bathroom. The cabin smelled of recycled air and the faint lemon cleaner they used on the vinyl benches. Two narrow bunks stacked one above the other, a fold-down sink, a sliding door that locked with a cheap metal latch. Their parents were two cars forward in a larger suite. Close enough to knock if something went wrong. Far enough that no one would hear a careful conversation.

“Upper or lower?” Yvonne asked. She wore a thin gray tank top and soft black shorts that rode high on her thighs. The overhead light threw shadows into the hollow of her collarbones. Yara had always noticed those details and always pretended she didn’t.

“Lower,” Yara said. “I get motion sick if I’m up high.” It was only half a lie. The real reason sat lower in her stomach—something restless and guilty that had lived between them since the summer Yvonne came home from her first year of college and suddenly looked like a woman instead of a rival.

Yvonne climbed the little ladder with easy grace, the shorts riding higher. Yara looked away, heat climbing her neck, and sat on the edge of the lower bunk to unlace her sneakers. The train lurched; the cabin lights dimmed to a warm amber night setting. Somewhere down the corridor a couple laughed. The wheels clacked in a steady, intimate rhythm.