In Transit
My boobs hurt.
Every time that this train stops, I want to scream.
It's 8:04 p.m. I've been riding the subway from Kipling to Kennedy station
and back again for three hours now and I still don't know where I want to go.
That doesn't really matter though; the important thing is that no one on this
train has the slightest idea who I am. To these people, I am just a
copper-haired girl in an itchy, inappropriate sundress and chewed up flip-flops. With the notable exception of the hawk-nosed old man in the seat
across from me, who is staring at my bare knees with a frightening intensity,
no one here takes any special notice of me. Anonymity is nice when it's
expected.
I swing my legs over the empty seat beside me and begin to
pick at the newly formed scab on my right knee.
My parents and I hadn't heard from Derek in over a
week. His cell was turned off. He wasn't answering our
e-mails. None of this was out of the ordinary. I went on Facebook
and all his friends had changed their profile pictures to photos of him.
I thought that maybe he had an accident skiing or something. It was
August. I don't
know why I thought that. The phone rang and I didn't answer it.
This afternoon I went to the movies - a prequel to Planet of
the Apes. I laughed out loud when the apes, all pumped up on the viral
drug ALZ-113, released the chimpanzees at the San Francisco zoo. I don't
know why I thought that was funny. The lady sitting in front of me turned
around and gave me a dirty look. I wonder what she would have thought of
me if she had known that I had just come from my brother's funeral.
Kipling station again. I've been digging at my scab
and now it is bleeding. With my finger, I begin to smear a thick
brown-red line over my knee and up toward my thigh. I look up at the old
man to see if he is grossed out by what I am doing, but he is now looking at my
face and smiling, one eyebrow cocked like we are sharing some sort of
joke.
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