The subway is crowded for a Tuesday morning. There are four rows of seats that line the walls, which is equivalent to twenty-eight seats. With those twenty-eight seats are four standing poles, which hold four people each. The whole train holds forty-four people, and she was seat number forty-three. Her pewter-colored suitcase is wedged between her knees, and her palms between her thighs. She's anxious, and avoids touching anyone or anything. She's never been much for public transportation.


She left her 49-year-old, gray and thin haired mother three weeks ago. Three weeks is equal to twenty-one days, which is equal to five hundred four hours, which is thirty-thousand two hundred and forty minutes. Her brain wasn't awake enough to find the seconds, but something inside of her told her it would just make her much more anxious. She sat next to the old mahogany dining room table in her house, she palmed the edges, not wanting to forget the smooth surface of the curve she had grown up with. She laid her cheek to the orange shag carpet, filed the figments of thread between her fingertips, and smelled the cedar wood of the wall paneling. She ran her fingers along the chocolate-colored baseboards, and realized that she was almost going to miss this place.

At two A.M, on a gray, Tuesday morning, she tiptoed out. She made a very visible imprint into the ice crystals, but she didn't care. In her suitcase she had packed her medicines--bottles of Prozac along with other unpronounceables, wedged in between two pairs of jeans and two hoodies, both black.

She grabs the earliest train east to Manhattan, picking the seat farthest from the crowd of people. Her ticket was six dollars and fifty cents more than she had, and she can't help but notice that eleven of them are men, all eleven in black suits with black ties and black hair.

She steps off the subway into a black corridor full of men in black suits and women with black dresses carrying black bags and black umbrellas. They all had glazed over eyes and were walking with strong purpose. She had a feeling she was going to fit in well.

When she left her mother behind, she left a piece of herself too. She left a closet full of clothes she'll never wear, two shelves full of books she'll never read, a dog she'll never play with, a TV she'll never watch, a set of keys she'll never use that go to the car she'll never drive to go places she's never even wanted to go... and a big piece of herself that will never get to live.

With her mother she left her sanity. At home with that woman was thirteen-point-four ounces of Celexa, along with twenty-seven-point-six grams of the other medications she neglected to bring along.

She left her past behind too. Three thick journals of entries about the life she wanted to leave behind. She left folder after folder full of every math test she ever took, two point six pounds of numbers from first grade to eleventh. She left calculations she'd pondered for years-- the dimensions of galaxies and calculations of densities she'd spent hour after hour researching. She had learned to count to one hundred at the age of three, and every night she would count the ridged bumps in the popcorn ceilings, dancing between numbers like they were stars in the sky.


It's raining outside. She feels thirteen raindrops hit the crest of her ears as she walks into the subway station. Thirteen more raindrops than the weather man had promised that morning, and thirteen more than she had planned for. She notices that the row of hairs along her neck are wet, matted down with crisp, misty dew. She walks in and hears thirteen thousand raindrops hit the tin of the roof...she tries her best to keep count.

She steps of the subway and is surrounded by black. She runs into a girl she recognizes with a small hint of hesitation. She had watched her swing on the swingset four hundred and eleven times. Of those four-hundred eleven, two hundred twelve of those had been alone, and seventy-nine of those had been followed by thirteen thousand nine hundred and seventy five footsteps on the walk home. Three times she had hesitated at her doorstep.

Three times eleven is thirty-three, thirty-three cubed is thirty-five thousand, nine hundred thirty seven, and that was only thirteen point three more times than she had guessed. Because for thirty-five thousand, nine hundred thirty seven hours, that girl has been waiting for me.