Acid.
There was more. There was a whole, terrible sentence.
Acid Loves You.
It wasn’t my stop, but I pushed out of the car just as the doors were starting to close. My bag got stuck, and I yanked it free, nearly falling onto the platform. People were staring, but I didn’t care.
The train began to pull away and I looked around. Everyone who had gotten off went up the stairs to street level. With a shudder, the train left too. And I could see it now, the stupid graffiti, see it clearly: Acid Loves You. It was painted in bright green, the color of acid, almost florescent in the dark tunnel.
The subway platform where people waited was tiled in white, but in the tunnel through which the trains traveled, the walls were black. It was here that the message had been painted. Someone had climbed down from the platform, and into the tunnel to do it.
The platform ended at the mouth of the tunnel, at a sign that read CAUTION: DO NOT ENTER. But a little walkway continued into the tunnel beyond the sign, an access path for subway workers. I looked down this little walkway, peering into darkness. The only light came from the work bulbs strung across the ceiling every few feet, and the signal light: a kind of traffic light for trains.
The signal light was red, which meant no train was coming.
I glanced behind me. There were only a few people waiting for the downtown train. No one was looking. I stepped over the sign, crept onto the walkway—and went into the tunnel.
I wanted to see the graffiti up close. It had to be from my friend, it had to be. How many people in our neighborhood were called Acid? I balanced on the narrow walkway. There was a railing, but it was low and spindly. It wouldn’t hold me if I fell.
I just wouldn’t fall, I told myself.
The graffiti was only a few feet inside the tunnel, painted on the wall a little above my head. Whoever had written it hadn’t been much taller than me—and they were sloppy; a line of green paint trailed down the tunnel. I followed the paint splatter, crouching until I was kneeling, until the paint disappeared into the wall.
Into the wall?
I spread my palms, scanning the wall. It felt smooth. Then I felt a rough line. I worked my fingers into the crack and pulled until a door popped open. It was a small space, a crawl space, little more than a hole, and inside was darkness—and green polka dots.
Inside the door in the wall, green paint spotted the floor, so bright it glowed. I didn’t think; I crawled. I pushed in, my knees dragging on cement, trying to examine the paint.
With a groan, the door to the crawl space swung shut behind me. My chest swelled and I couldn’t breathe. I shot forward, knocking my forehead into a wall. Pain. Then everything was blackness.
When I woke, it took a moment for me to remember where I was. Panic returned. I was cold and stuck in the subway tunnel, in some sort of recess. I couldn’t turn around so I pushed back as hard as I could, shoving my backpack against the door. It swung open and I fell out onto the tunnel walkway.
A light was moving in the tunnel, jostling up and down. I stood. I wanted to run, but I was afraid I would fall. I saw a man beneath the moving light. The light was attached to him, a big headlamp, and he was running, coming right at me. I would have been scared, except he looked funny with the oversized headlamp, like a kid playing dress up. He wore a pair of overalls, and they were filthy, as was his shirt. Even his face was smeared with dirt.
“Child,” he said. He waved his arms. “Child, get out of here. A train is coming.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “The light is red.”
“The light?” he said, confused.
“The signal light.” I pointed behind me, then turned back to the man to show him, but he was gone. The tunnel was empty. And I felt something behind me. Arms wrapped around my waist and lifted, grabbing me, yanking me out of the tunnel.
It was another man, another subway worker who had grabbed me. He wore a bright orange and yellow safety vest, goggles, no headlamp—and there was a policewoman with him. The radio on the cop’s shoulder squawked.
“We got her,” the officer said into the radio.
Out on the platform, a crowd had gathered.
The subway worker was sweating. He set me down on the platform, and wiped his forehead with his hand. “Girl,” he said. “You are in so much trouble.”
And I was.
My sister dragged the old suitcases out of the closet, and swung them onto my bed. She clicked them open, one after the other.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Packing,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m packing for you.”
“Where am I going?”
She looked at me. “You know.”
The nightmares that night were different. No dancing. No mom. No tunnel even, despite the fact that I had just been pulled from one, despite the fact that the police had taken me to a corner of the station, and asked me: What was I doing? How could I have been so dumb? Didn’t I know I could have been killed? Didn’t I know people died that way? Just a few months ago, in this very tunnel.
I knew, I knew, I told them. I said I was sorry.
The first few times I told the story, I told about the man with the headlamp and the dirty clothes. But no one knew who the man was. So I stopped telling that part. When my sister showed up, the police let me go. No fine. This time. And no court appearance because the Firecracker was taking me out of state.
She promised.
The nightmares that night felt real. I dreamed I was in my bed in my room in the apartment—but something was wrong with my hand. It hurt. It tingled, the blood pricking my palm as if my hand had fallen asleep.
But then in the dream, when I turned over to look at it on the sheet, my hand wasn’t there. It just wasn’t there. My hand was gone. It hurt, but it was a phantom pain. In my dream, my body was missing.
I woke up with aches, my limbs stiff from sleeping wrong—and I woke up late. The Firecracker threw my suitcases down the stairs. I pulled on an oversized sweatshirt and jeans without looking in the mirror, half-asleep.
It was May, still cold in the morning. We didn’t talk in the cab. We didn’t hug at the station. I kept my hands stuffed in my pockets and my hood pulled down.
But then the Firecracker said, “It will be better this time.”
I sniffed. “What do you mean?”
“Grandma. She’ll be good for you. It’ll be good for you to be in the country right now, away from …” she gestured around at the station: the early morning commuters rushing by, the platform littered with trash, the garbage cans covered with graffiti like scabs. “All this.”
“I thought you loved all this.”
“Sometimes I do,” my sister said. “But it’s time for you to go.”
And then she gripped my shoulders and pulled me toward her in a hug. She smelled of fancy perfume and leather and the smell that never quite went away from her; it seemed attached to her hair, the smell of rosin for the toe shoes, though it had been ages since she had worn them.
“I’ll visit