Burnout Read Free

manage to lift my head a few inches. The skin on my facesticks 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