Burnout (2 page)

I look at her.
Are you kidding? Seemy, how am I going to get on the train? My wallet’s inside. My phone. I can’t. I need my stuff.

But she keeps pushing me.
He’ll send it to you,
she says.

Yes, yes
, he assures me,
I’ll send it to the address on the license.

I’m not from the suburbs,
I snap.
I’m a New Yorker. I don’t have a license.
I’m embarrassing Seemy, adding an unfortunate postscript to her hookup. Patrick goes really pale, and I see him looking over my shoulder, to the driveway, where a car is slowing.

He yells,
Go!
And Seemy gets pissed because he won’t kiss her good-bye, and then she and I are climbing over the white picket fence. These suburban assholes can’t built a fence for shit because as soon as I start climbing, the thing starts creaking and leaning, and by the time we’re to the top it’s almost flat on the ground. Before I run after Seemy, I jump on the fence a couple times to make sure it’s good and busted and Seemy is calling back to me,
Jesus, chill out, Nan, I’ll buy your stupid train ticket!
And then we’re running down this random street flanked by the sort of houses you see in real estate commercials, and my boots are chafing my skin and I think I might get sick again.

At first, when Seemy sees that I’m turning around and jogging toward Patrick’s driveway, she chases me, tries to grab my hair to stop me.
He’ll get in trouble! Nan! Seriously!
But then she stops chasing me and hides behind one of the neighbors’ trash cans and waits for me while I ring Patrick’s doorbell and tell his mom, who has the stupid face he does, that I left my stuff inside.

I go back to get Seemy a couple minutes later. She’s still crouching behind the trash can, and she looks up at me like she could kill me.
What the hell, Nan?
she says.
You probably got him in so much trouble!

What do you care?
I ask.
You’re never going to see him again.

She shrugs and stands up, crossing her arms.
Whatever.

I start walking.

Where are you going?
she calls after me.

I turn around, keep walking backward.
Train station. Where do you think?

That’s, like, a mile away,
she whines.
It’s freezing!

What were you planning on doing?

She shrugs again.
I could call Toad, see if he can borrow a car and come get us.

I stop walking.
Seemy, that’s just cruel.

She tries to hide her smile.
What?

The guy’s obviously in lust with you, and you’re going to make him find a car, drive to Connecticut, and pick you up from your one-night stand?

Seemy laughs.
Maybe? He’d do it.
She looks at me, and I know what she’s thinking. She’s thinking I’d do it too. She’s thinking if she called me and asked me to find a way to Connecticut, I’d get my dad to drive out here in his truck and pick her up.

Just because he would do it doesn’t make you any less of an asshole,
I tell her.

Fine,
she snaps.
We’ll walk.

And we do.

I buy a travel toothbrush set from a vending machine at the train station and use the whole mini tube of toothpaste trying to brush the vileness out of my mouth in the
bathroom. There’s a cafe at the train station but it’s closed because it’s Sunday, so we’re left shivering on the platform with vending machine Cokes and Doritos for breakfast. Seemy ignores me. I pretend not to care. I pretend that I’m ignoring her too, even though I’m really waiting for her to stop looking right through me as she looks down the track for the train. I hate it when Seemy’s mad at me. It makes me wish I could fly away from myself, away from this body that is an open sore for her salted anger, this body that changes without her love. But I can’t fly away. I stand next to her and grow larger and uglier and stupider every minute she ignores me. It is good she’s not looking at me. I don’t want her to see what I really am when I’m not disguised by her friendship. At moments like this it seems inconceivable that she is the same person who presented me with a little homemade book with a hand-sewn binding called
My Friend Nan
on my birthday, or who wiped away my tears and hugged me when I cried about not knowing who my real dad is, or who told me I wasn’t really all that big.

I’m not even sure if she’s going to sit next to me, but she does, and she puts on her headphones right away so I put on mine. I peel off my boots and wet socks and slip my gloves on my feet to keep them warm. I sit cross-legged, my feet finally warming under the heat of my thighs, and I don’t care that my knee is practically in Seemy’s lap. We don’t talk the whole
way back to the city. We’re just pulling into the dark underground tunnels that lead to Grand Central station when I feel her tapping on my knee. I look away from my reflection in the now-dark window and see her smiling at me, her fingers working out the rhythm of whatever song she’s listening to. I pull off my headphones, thinking she wants to talk. She leaves her headphones on but says too loudly,
I’m sorry I dragged you to Connecticut, Nanja. I was thinking with my quivering loins, not my brain.
I say,
It’s okay
, but now she’s got her eyes closed, and she’s doing this dance in her seat to the music. She takes her fingers away from my knee.

What I want to say to her is,
I love you
, but I know she’d just laugh and say,
I know, I love you too, Nanja
. In the beginning we’d crack each other up, dramatically confessing our love for each other. Yelling out from across the street,
You complete me, Samantha “Seemy” Turbin!
Or from the window of a taxi as it pulled away from my apartment,
Wait for me, Nanja! Wait for me forever.

But then it wasn’t funny anymore to yell it; it kind of made me sick to my stomach because I got scared I meant it in a way she didn’t.

In this dream, in this memory, I miss Seemy the way I did when we first stopped hanging out, in that way that hurts the place where your heart and throat touch. My fingers twitch as I count the months since I’ve seen her. One,
two, three, four, five, six. Almost six months. It hurts too much. So I make myself fall back asleep.

I wake up watching. There is a coffee cup on its side under a subway seat. The cup is from Dunkin’ Donuts, and most of the coffee has spilled out into a puddle the shape of a flattened frog.
Oh man
, I think,
all that coffee. And it looks nice and creamy, too. Probably lots of sugar. Someone’s good morning, just dumped out. That sucks.

I close my eyes; wait to leave the dream, to fall back into inky blackness, to come out the other side. I open my eyes. The coffee cup is still there. So’s the spilled coffee. I close my eyes again. Open. Same thing.

Wait.

I am not asleep. I am not dreaming. I am awake.

Fear flickers electric and hot from the top of my head to the soft soles of my feet. I can almost smell myself burning.

I am not where I’m supposed to be.

My heart is rick-tick-ticking inside my chest, rattling a bone-thunk alarm against my ribs,
Danger, danger, danger.

And then there is a feeling that tastes bitter on the back of my tongue and makes my blood freeze in my veins, a feeling that makes me want to scream because it fills me with such familiar doubt.

What have I done?

T
here must have been an accident on the subway. I think we must have crashed. Terrible things like that happen here. And then we all forget that they do, until something terrible happens again. A subway crash. That’s why I’m lying on my stomach. That’s why I hurt so much.

I just wish I knew why nobody is screaming. Don’t people usually scream when something terrible happens? Maybe they
are
screaming. Maybe I’ve hit my head and gone deaf. But then I realize I can hear the hum of the ventilation system.

My face is turned to the side. My right arm hangs off
the seat, palm-up on the floor. I stare at it. I close my eyes again and listen to myself breathing for a while. It calms me down. I open my eyes, look around the car, and see it’s empty.

No bloodied bodies.

No twisted wreckage.

No memory.

I’m not supposed to wake up in places like this anymore, not knowing where I’ve been or what I’ve done. Blacked out.

No. I
don’t
wake up in places like this anymore. I’m different now. I’ve changed.

When the recorded voice comes over the intercom, it’s like my body tries to jump, but it’s frozen in place, stuck inside itself, so it feels like every muscle is wrenched, twisted, torn.

“This is the last stop on this train. Please leave the train.”

I recognize that announcement. I know where I am. I’m on the L train, and this is the last stop in Manhattan. Everyone’s gotten off, and soon a whole other bunch of people will get on.
Just wait
, I tell myself,
somebody’s going to come. Somebody’s going to help.
I’ll tell them . . . what will I tell them? I will say,
Please help me, I’m having an emergency.

I manage to lift my head a few inches. The skin on my face
sticks to the plastic seat, peels away slowly. I look at the seat. There’s a white splotch on the plastic where my cheek was.

I don’t understand.

I want to sit all the way up, but my brain starts spinning one way, and my skull starts spinning another, so I lay my head down and close my eyes and fall back asleep.

I wake up because my right arm has that prickly pins-and-needles feeling. I stare at my hand on the floor, wiggle my fingers, pull up my arm so it’s next to me on the seat. It feels heavy and dark and thick. I keep it next to me, letting the blood work its way through.

I hear a noise at the far end of the subway car, and I move my eyes to see the door between the cars open and the train conductor walk through. There’s a pause in his step when he sees me, and he watches me as he walks closer.

I’m embarrassed to be lying down, so I push myself up, until I’m posed like a beached mermaid, still on my stomach, my legs stretched out on the bench. And then things go dark, like someone has switched off a light to the world. Just for a moment, just long enough for me to feel like I’m falling backward.

“You all right?” the MTA guy asks. He is in front of me now. He has a graying mustache, and it twitches when he speaks.

“Something happened to me, but I don’t remember . . .”
I try to finish, but it comes out a dry croak. I swallow. My throat hurts so much that tears spring to my eyes, but my face is numb, I can’t feel them slide down my cheeks.

He nods, like my tears have answered his question. “It’s okay, let me go call for help. Why don’t you lie back down?”

I shake my head, clear my throat, ignore the pain, and say, “I want to sit up.”

I roll over, sit up, and keep my legs on the bench because they’re too heavy to move. My arms are limp beside me, and for a moment I can’t lift my head from where it lolls on my chest and I can’t breathe and I’m going to suffocate and die right here and it’s just such bullshit, to die like this, without being able to fight and without anyone knowing how much I love them and how sorry I am for the things I’ve done. But then my neck muscles work, and I can lift my head from my chest and breathe again.

The guy unzips his blue MTA jacket and takes it off, holds it out. I start to wave him away. Four deep cuts curve their way from the inside of my left elbow to my wrist. They are dark with new scabs, and as soon as I look at them, I’m suddenly aware how much they sting.

“What happened to my arm?” I whisper, holding it out for him to see. My voice is raspy; my tongue feels thick, too big for my mouth.

“I’m not sure, miss.” He stares at my arm, his nostrils flare a little. His mustache twitches. He lays the jacket on my lap and walks quickly toward the operating cubby. I let my arm fall to the side, banging my hand on the seat.

“I’m having an emergency,” I call after him, but he doesn’t turn.

I look down.

No wonder he gave me his jacket.

I’m wearing a dress. It’s pink, strapless, and it’s cut too low in the boobs and too high in the thighs. There is a tear on the right side where it couldn’t hold me in. I think it’s made out of plastic. I’m not supposed to describe my body as “burly” because Mom says that’s hate speech, but that’s what I am. I am a burly girl testing the seams of a too-small plastic dress. I would never wear something like this on purpose. I can feel the train seat on the bare backs of my upper thighs, and my skin crawls. I pull the jacket over me, covering my chest.

The train conductor comes back, hands me a bottle of water.

“This isn’t my dress,” I croak. I try to open the water, but my hands are shaking. He gently takes it from me, opens it, and hands it back.

“Transit cops will be here in a minute.”

The darkness comes again. Three heartbeats long.

When the light comes the MTA guy is waving his hand in front of my eyes and saying, “Oh man.” I drink the water. First a sip, and then a gulp, and then I’ve drained the whole thing. “I feel really weird right now.”

He swallows, and nods, takes the empty water bottle from me and sets it on the seat behind him.

I sigh and pull my feet off the bench. They fall to the floor with a
thunk-thunk
. My feet are filthy, all the way up to my calves. Caked with dried mud, tight on my skin, itchy.