HUNGRY TRAM’S KARMA
“We need to be on the train platform by 10:30”, I whispered.
Was it a whisper? During our stay at Amsterdam’s famous(ly unheard of by any local, Trip Advisor) hostel, The Flying Pig, we stayed up late listing 80s serial killers and dream careers, smooshed in a bottom bunk lined by rows of hazelnut wood paneling. My Turkish bestie and I muffled chuckles, breathed in hostel musk, and probably didn’t whisper. We’d paid to live with strangers, not quiet strangers, okay? Maybe that was where we first went wrong.
“Trains are my ‘stress-thing’”, I said.
Selin groggily dismissed me.
“Just go”, she said and curled her legs in.
After packing, I drank grainy coffee and avoided a platter of weird bread. It was unpleasant, especially because every time I closed my eyes for a sip, the train whooshed by me in my mind. After a phone call that would’ve flourished better in Dutch, our Uber to the station canceled on us. It had begun.
At least we could take the tram. We’d been sneaking on it those past days, refusing to buy one-dollar tickets and riding to apple pie shops. It was a sweet deal until the tram implemented a new form of compensation. One-dollar vitamin deficient, the tram malfunctioned. Selin hopped out at our stop but the tram ate me up. Her hair blew into peaking flames as it whisked me away on a temper tantrum joy ride. A couple stops later it spit me out onto Amsterdam’s burgundy avenues with a drained cellphone at midnight. It was unkind. When I met up with Selin again, we laughed about the karma the tram dealt us for not paying to ride it. But that wasn’t it’s karma.
“How are you completely unaffected?”, I asked Selin, now riding the tram to the train station, biting for time. Now when I shut my eyes, I was seeing the price of our train ticket, a tornado of two hundred dollar bills, swept up in the woosh. Selin shrugged in response. I glued my eyes to the window so I wouldn’t kill other passengers with my death stare.
We arrived to the station with five minutes to spare. Phew. I yanked my eyes from the train clock and they landed on Selin’s backpack. A Tumi. The most extortionate travel backpack in the market. Was my gummy black Athleta, shaped like a turtle’s shell and ripping at the seams, up to par? I noticed the sudden light quality of my torso. I wound my arms back, pushing pockets of cool air into my t-shirt. It was gone.
The tram had fed again. Cruising through the city, my backpack patiently awaited a stop that would never come. With it, my passports, laptop, and most precious belongings. That was it. That was the tram’s karma.