Caleb Hara

Created October 4, 2022 for Practicum: Writing Fiction

“Arriving at, Donlands.” The subway car jostles back and forth as it screeches to a halt. Mckayla reaches out and grabs a stanchion as she’s launched to the side, and narrowly avoids being forcefully ejected from the vehicle. She looks left and right to see if anyone else had seen her stumble, and her cheeks burn when she realizes that it had gone completely unnoticed.

“Please stand clear of the doors, the doors are now closing.”

She plants her feet more firmly as the train lurches forward. The phrase, “there was nothing more you could do” echoes through her head, coupled with a recent memory. Less than two hours ago, she was offered a Christmas cookie by a boy as she walked into her fourth period class. Unsure of what the gesture meant, she pretended that she didn’t hear him, and walked to her desk at the other side of the room with her head down. While her classmates talked in groups about what they were going to do for the upcoming holidays, she spent the class fighting to make her fingers feel as though they still had their strength.

“Arriving at, Sherbourne.” The jaws of the subway swing open. Nobody gets on or off.

What she wished she had done, is crunch the cookie in her hand, and sprinkle the crumbs onto his lap. Even more ideal would have been to drag her finger through the icing, and use it to paint streaks across her face like a football player’s eye black. Anything that might have set the class ablaze, for no reason other than the fact that she could. She should have been able to do something lucrative, and it should have been nothing.

“Arriving at, Bloor-Yonge.” A well-kept boy probably two or three years older than her steps into the car, and is, by body language a subway rookie. He burrows his vision down into his phone despite almost certainly having no service, and in his other hand he holds a bag from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Mckayla tenses and relaxes her grip against the stanchion as the train begins to move again. The strength of her wrist feels like it could bend the metal of the pole around her fingers.

“Arriving at, Dufferin.” Two more stations before her stop at Keele. She narrows in on some of the smaller details of the well-kept boy. He habitually thumbs the screen of an iPhone, and through the reflection of his glasses she can see that he’s meandering through his settings app. Witnessing something so anemic sends a strange surge through her synapses. She realizes that someone has to save this boy, and that someone should be her. As her stop grows near, the nervousness that zapped the strength from her hands earlier in the day encroaches again. She exorcizes it by focusing on her own conduct. She stands as still as possible, trying not to telegraph that she is about to get off the train.

“Arriving at, Keele.” The jaws fly open again. She holds firm until the cue to stand clear of the doors rings through the air. When she hears it, she lunges forward, and slams her open palm into the boy’s cheek with every ounce of strength she has. Before anyone can react, she slips out onto the platform as the doors snap shut behind her. She sprints through the turnstile, up the platform steps, and grins into the crisp air as the train pulls away from the station.