Page 7 of Antihero

Despite all the instructions on the laminated card, my true asks are really prayers: Please guard over me. Please show me charity. Please have mercy on me.

The voices from the car behind grow louder. Amused howls mixed with chanting. The mood, were I to guess, is lubricated with alcohol.

Despite Option Three right across from me, I cannot risk being stuck with the Last Option if the young men decide to switch cars. I’m just readying to rise and move on when I taste it.

Copper.

Rich and hot, melted pennies.

An initial flurry of panic claws its way up my throat but I’m practiced enough to soothe it back down. I’m safe in this moment and I have my laminated index card and my pillow in my backpack and an Option Three.

I do, however, need to act fast.

As I gesture to catch the young woman’s attention, I’m already tasting colors, but they’re still light yellows and golds, so I have a few moments.

“Are you staying on the train?” I try to keep the note of desperation out of my voice.

She sweeps aside blond tresses of blown-out hair to unscrew an AirPod. “Huh?” Her eyes move to the laminated card, which I’m holding up dumbly like a jail placard. “Wait—seizures? Like, seizure-seizures? Okay, okay. Are you having one now?”

“No.” I pull my pillow out of my backpack. “Any second.”

Option Three swings herself across the aisle of the moving train and plops down next to me, giving her micromini a practiced tuck beneath her thighs. She plucks the laminated index card from my hand, scanning it. Her eyebrows are high. She hums with anxiety.

“It’s okay.” I rest a calming hand on her forearm. “I’ll be okay.”

I set my backpack on the floor at my feet. Folding the soft pillow, I rest it on the seat to my right and lie down, nestling my head in its cushion. The dome of the security camera looms sightless overhead, blotted out with spray paint.

The greens come on now but they still taste light—celery and chartreuse.

“Can you…” My mind-mouth connection blinks out but then comes back online. “… stay with me?”

“How long?” Nervous chattering. “I have to get off to catch the Metro-North. I’m sorry—it’s a— There’s a helicopter waiting for me in Westchester I can’t miss. I have to— Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Umm, hang on.” I breathe heavily, my head going slurry. “If it gets really bad”—now kelly and sage burst across my palate—“can you roll me onto the floor?” It all seems so ridiculous, the gleaming poles and marigold seats and the terrible lighting that makes my teeth ache. “And if you have to go, would you mind finding someone else”—the taste grows ominously darker, emerald and fern—“who seems kind?”

Somewhere deep inside I’m registering danger but it’s just a fact like every other fact. I sort through the sludge of sensation until I zero in on the threat: the chanting from the car behind us. Louder now, accompanied with thumping. The young men are stomping their feet. My thoughts veer zoological—images of baying and hooves, predatory displays and bone-crushing jaws.

All at once the subway brakes screech hellishly. The cabin lights dim and flicker and we are coasting through subterranean semidarkness and I am trying to say, Please can you stay with me one more stop, but my words aren’t working anymore and now I’m tasting forest and olive.

Option Three crouches before me. “I’m sorry, sweetie. If it was literally any other time I’d wait with you but the helicopter’ll leave without me and—and I can’t afford to—”

She’s clutching my seizure plan and her eyes are wide and I can see beneath the fake lashes and the crust of her mascara how pretty she is even without all that glamming up. But her eyes are party-drug glazed in a way I hadn’t noticed before and I can see she isn’t thinking clearly and that makes two of us and the brakes are screaming and the boots stomping in the trailing car grow louder.

Her face contorts with regret and for an instant I see straight into her. She is racked with guilt and uncertainty. She is fighting within herself and I pray the right side will win but now the greens are bleeding into blues which means I’m nearly out of time.

Please don’t leave me, I don’t—can’t—say.

She rubs my forehead gently, not knowing that makes the needles in my brain prickle all the more. “I have to go. You’ll be okay, sweetie. I promise. Someone’ll come. Someone else’ll take care of you.”

And I feel her shove my laminated index card between my back and the seat so it sticks up. The subway brakes grind away and the pale yellow light of the station ahead beams ever stronger. Lying down, I cannot see the platform but I pray that more people will get on, that even at this late hour the seats around me will fill with families or Good Samaritans.

We shudder into the glaring light and the doors jolt open.

I look at Option Three and form the thought again through the brilliant skewers inside my mind: Please help me.

She gets up, hesitates. She is having second thoughts. The doors are still holding open and she hasn’t left and my heart readies itself to leap with relief.

She leans forward and kisses me on the temple, feather-soft. Her breath is pot and bubble gum: “I’m sorry. You’re good. You’ll be okay. Someone else’ll watch over you.”