Alison Stine - Supervision

I followed her into the kitchen. “What does that mean, they won’t let me out ?”

“That means, you’ll lose your scholarship and be kicked out of school. You can’t coast by anymore, Esmé.”

“I’m not coasting,” I said.

But I knew I was.

It was like I was tired all the time. It was like I was angry and upset—but if I talked to someone about it, if I stayed after school to meet a teacher or go to tutoring, I would have to think about it. I would have to bring it up. And I didn’t want to bring it up. I wanted it not to be happening at all.

Miss Wrong.

I did well in school when I was a kid, well enough that they made me take tests, and the tests got me into a new school, a private school. Acid and I were scholarship kids, brought in by the tests. In middle school, I had raised my hand and answered questions, and I had usually got them right. But in high school, this year, something had changed in me. I got the questions wrong sometimes, often enough that I got a new nickname.

The teachers at my new school all called us by our last names, like we were in the military or gym class. So Wong became Wrong for my classmates. Miss Wrong. It wasn’t a stretch. It wasn’t very creative.

But I still stopped raising my hand.

The Firecracker was banging pots in the kitchen. “They’ve given you multiple chances at that school,” she said.

I dropped my bag on the floor. “No, they haven’t.”

“Those were their words. Not mine. Your scholarship is a big deal, and if you don’t deserve it, if you don’t work for it, they’re going to find someone who does.”

“So?” I said. I slumped against the doorframe. My sister was kneeling, her head and shoulders in a cabinet. “Are you actually going to try and cook something?” I asked.

“I’m home early,” she said. “I thought I might as well.”

Her frame was twisted to reach into the back of the cabinet, her arm extended, almost artfully. I thought of her dancing—and then I thought of how I was never going to see that again.

She backed out of the cabinet, holding a frying pan at a distance, as if it were something distasteful. “I can’t afford that school. If you lose that scholarship, you’re out.”

I shrugged. “Public school.”

“No. You don’t understand. If you lose your scholarship, you’re out of here. You’re out of New York. I’m sending you away.”

Acid never answered his phone. When it got too late to call, I fell asleep.

I had nightmares since my parents died. Not nightmares: dreams. I dreamed about a dark space. At the end of the space was a light, a bright white light growing brighter and bigger and whiter—and in the light, my mother danced.

I knew it was my mother, not my sister, although I had never actually seen my mother perform on stage. But the face on the dancer in my dreams matched the face I saw in pictures—like the Firecracker’s only thinner, a slimmer face than mine, with the high cheekbones I would never have, and the wrinkles on the forehead I didn’t have yet. It was the smile most of all that made me certain it was my mother. In photographs, she always smiled when she performed, and I knew—I remembered from seeing her on stage—my sister never did.

My sister grimaced. She grunted and frowned and stomped across the stage, a ball of energy, a lightning bolt. She danced like she was always angry. She tore through toe shoes. Her tutus ripped. Her feet bled. “The Firecracker,” The Times called her, and the name stuck. They also wrote that she was a tribute to her mother.

My sister quit dancing, right after that.

I didn’t really remember my mother, and I remembered my father only as a voice, a deep belly laugh. They died when I was a kid, in a car crash.

But I never dreamed about that.

In English, I tried to text, and the teacher saw. “Miss Wong,” she said. “Your phone, please.”

I slid out of my seat and dragged myself to the front. No one laughed until the third row, when a girl coughed and said it: “Miss Wrong.” Then everyone laughed, an explosion that radiated through the room. The teacher glared at the class, but didn’t say anything. I was getting a D, why would she?

After school, I had to double back to the classroom to pick up my phone, and I barely made the train. It was less crowded than yesterday, but slow, and the car I had picked had bad air-conditioning, the windows steaming over in the afternoon heat. Someone had cracked one open, a slit through which I could see the black tunnel. When we stopped at 168 thStreet, I could see something on one of the tunnel walls: graffiti. A tag. A name in bright green. I read it.

Acid.

There was more. There was a whole, terrible sentence.

Acid Loves You .

It wasn’t my stop, but I pushed out of the car just as the doors were starting to close. My bag got stuck, and I yanked it free, nearly falling onto the platform. People were staring, but I didn’t care.

The train began to pull away and I looked around. Everyone who had gotten off went up the stairs to street level. With a shudder, the train left too. And I could see it now, the stupid graffiti, see it clearly: Acid Loves You . It was painted in bright green, the color of acid, almost florescent in the dark tunnel.

The subway platform where people waited was tiled in white, but in the tunnel through which the trains traveled, the walls were black. It was here that the message had been painted. Someone had climbed down from the platform, and into the tunnel to do it.

The platform ended at the mouth of the tunnel, at a sign that read CAUTION: DO NOT ENTER. But a little walkway continued into the tunnel beyond the sign, an access path for subway workers. I looked down this little walkway, peering into darkness. The only light came from the work bulbs strung across the ceiling every few feet, and the signal light: a kind of traffic light for trains.

The signal light was red, which meant no train was coming.

I glanced behind me. There were only a few people waiting for the downtown train. No one was looking. I stepped over the sign, crept onto the walkway—and went into the tunnel.

I wanted to see the graffiti up close. It had to be from my friend, it had to be. How many people in our neighborhood were called Acid? I balanced on the narrow walkway. There was a railing, but it was low and spindly. It wouldn’t hold me if I fell.

I just wouldn’t fall, I told myself.

The graffiti was only a few feet inside the tunnel, painted on the wall a little above my head. Whoever had written it hadn’t been much taller than me—and they were sloppy; a line of green paint trailed down the tunnel. I followed the paint splatter, crouching until I was kneeling, until the paint disappeared into the wall.

Into the wall?

I spread my palms, scanning the wall. It felt smooth. Then I felt a rough line. I worked my fingers into the crack and pulled until a door popped open. It was a small space, a crawl space, little more than a hole, and inside was darkness—and green polka dots.

Inside the door in the wall, green paint spotted the floor, so bright it glowed. I didn’t think; I crawled. I pushed in, my knees dragging on cement, trying to examine the paint.

With a groan, the door to the crawl space swung shut behind me. My chest swelled and I couldn’t breathe. I shot forward, knocking my forehead into a wall. Pain. Then everything was blackness.

When I woke, it took a moment for me to remember where I was. Panic returned. I was cold and stuck in the subway tunnel, in some sort of recess. I couldn’t turn around so I pushed back as hard as I could, shoving my backpack against the door. It swung open and I fell out onto the tunnel walkway.