Burnout Read Free Page B

Seemy in months because I’m not supposed to anymore and I don’t hang out with
anyone
. I’m like a self-declared leper. I’m getting Bs this semester, did you know that? So . . . I think I’m just going to go.”
    The MTA guy stopped paying attention, but now he looks at me. “No, I think you should stay.”
    “Nah.” I stand up, cringing at the pain in my body, and try to smile at the guy. “I’m just going to bail. You’ve been awesome. Seriously, they should, like, promote you or name a train after you or something.”
    “The cops are on their way,” the guy says, and even though he says it like it’s supposed to be reassuring, it sounds like a threat.
    “Come on, man,” I say, “I’m fine. Really. I’ve got to get to school. It’s Halloween, you know.”
    “Halloween was last night,” he says, shaking his head a little.
    “It was?”
    He nods.
    “Well,” I say, “I guess that explains the dress.”
    A businesswoman steps onto the train, looks at us. The train conductor shakes his head slightly at her, and she steps back off, says something to the other people that were going to board behind her. I watch them in the reflection of the far window, looking in at me as they walk to the next car.
    “I’m really just going to . . .” I trail off, catching my reflection in the window behind him. “What happened to me?” I ask, leaning forward to stare at my reflection. My hair is gone, or most of it, anyway. What’s left is chopped into short, uneven chunks. And my face is painted like a skeleton. White, with messy black circles around my eyes and mouth. And my eyes. There is something wrong with my eyes. “Ah, hell,” I groan. “I’m going to scream now.”

CHAPTER 3
TODAY
     
    I scream so loud the MTA guy shoots out his hands like he wants to keep me from screaming myself to pieces. But I jerk sideways, out of his reach, and even though I’m screaming and I’m scared, I think,
You can run now,
and I do.
    I go for the open door at the end of the train, but I overshoot it and smash into the end of the car. I grab on to the doorjamb and launch myself out of the subway car and onto the platform, though I don’t make it far. I land on the strip of little nubby yellow things that line the edge of the platform, meant to keep people from slipping and falling into the pit and getting creamed by a train.
    The nubs dig into the soles of my bare feet, painfully separating all the little bones, until I get to the smooth tiles in the middle of the platform. I slip immediately, crash to my knees, and when I look behind me, I see the MTA guy running out of the train, talking on his radio. There are a bunch of other people on the platform, and some spread out away from me, some step forward like they want to help. I scramble back up and go for the stairs.
    My mom says bodies like ours are made for football and slaying dragons.
    Dollface, don’t you know the big-boned girls are the ones who’ll save the world?
I don’t need my body to save the world, I just need it to save myself, and right now it’s doing a piss-poor job. Mom says I shouldn’t curse my body, I shouldn’t wage a war I can’t win, but right now, trying to heave my big-boned glory up these stairs, all I can do is hiss, “Come on!” I am a bear lumbering up a mountain. I am the mountain, too.
    I want to shoot like fireworks from the subway station; I want to explode in the air above Manhattan before all of my color sizzles away and I dissolve into nothing. But by the time I see the light of day above me, I am gasping for breath, using the railing to pull myself up one step at a time, my body heavy like wet sand. It is rush hour, so people pushing their way to the surface surround me, anda few of them look back at me after they pass. I want to say,
I’m fine
. I want to say,
Help me
. But I can’t breathe, so I don’t say anything at all.
    I worry the MTA guy is behind me, so when I finally make it out of the subway onto the