When We Were Good

Chapter 27

Macy and I were each headed home in a different direction, but we decided—almost without speaking—to walk to the subway together so we could talk about Marie.

"I'm really worried about her," Macy said. "I've seen her get really hung up on stuff like this before, she takes it pretty hard. Like with this university girl last spring? She got her heart broken and then moped around for months. It was awful. And now I'm worried that this Josie situation is going to be like the spring all over again."

"Seriously," I said. "Just watching her face sink while she and Josie were on the phone was, like, torture."

Marie was the sweetest person I'd ever met. What could she possibly have done to make Josie treat her like a pest?

"I know," said Macy. "We should do something for her. You know, to cheer her up."

"Yeah," I said, feeling better already at the thought, "that's a great, we totally should. Like, buy her a little present or whatever, like something for the band maybe."

"Totally." Macy nodded decisively. "We've got to get her focused on the good stuff that's happening. So what do you think she'd like?"

"I don't know," I said, trying to think of what their pretty, folky new sound could use.

I tried to remember the sounds of Dad's old records, the ones he used to bring up from the basement once every few years when he'd start waxing nostalgic about his hippie days in Yorkville. Which I was never quite able to figure out. How could my father, the most uptight, business-like man in the world have been some guitar-strumming, flower-child freak?

Though I guess it does mean I come by my own freakdom honestly, which was almost sort of comforting. It was also kind of weird that Yorkville used to be the dirt-cheapest neighbourhood in the city—at least that's what my parents say—and now it's the ritziest, not a dirty hippie in sight.

"We can't get her a guitar, that'd be too much money," Macy said. "Ha, maybe we should get her a tuner. It always takes her forever to tune by ear, you know?"

"That might be the wrong message for a cheer-up present," I said. "You guys need something to, like, help bring out this new sound. Like, I don't know, a banjo, or a fiddle or something. Something that'll be fun for Marie to mess around with while her heart's, uh, mending. A harmonica maybe? A ukulele?"

It was as if the clouds had parted and a rainbow came shining through.

"A ukulele?" Macy said. "That's totally perfect! She'd love that."

"Great," I said, as we arrived at Lansdowne station and I fumbled with my wallet, looking for change. "Uh, how much do you think a ukelele's gonna cost?"

Macy stared up at me. "We could probably get a cheap one for, I don't know... fifty bucks?" she said.

And then everything made sense. Everything, the whole wide, wild world. It was perfect.

I could do the good and get the girl all at once. It was exactly right.

Even better, it was good.

"That's-that's great," I said, struggling to put my feelings into words. "There's a music store near Ossington station, right? I'll stop in on my way home and, uh, see what they've got."

"Excellent," Macy said, coming in for a high-five, "I knew you'd think of something."

Our hands collided with a perfect slap.

Macy knew I'd think of something. Somehow I'd become the kind of person who other people—people who'd been relative strangers up until recently—thought could think of things. Important things. I smiled.

Macy put her token in the collector's booth, and I dropped in my handful of change: six quarters, three dimes and four nickles. She gave me a hug and we said goodbye. I took the stairs down the westbound subway, and she took the ones for the eastbound train.

Down on the platform, Macy and I could still see each other, separated by two sets of subway tracks. We were too far to talk, so we just smiled at each other and Macy waved at me while we waited. Her train arrived first. She got on, found a seat and then waved again as her train pulled out of the station.

I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my wallet. I tried not to go around waving my money in the air, but I was too excited to keep this to myself. The answer to everything, to honouring Grandma and maybe even believing in love and doing something good, really good, for a friend and maybe more. I could hardly believe this small red piece of paper was the answer to it all, but it was. It was. It was.

I stood just at the lip of the platform, my feet toeing the edge, so that the people behind me couldn't really see what I was doing. I took out the red bill, the fifty, the bully Mackenzie King, from my wallet. I held it up in my left hand and kissed it.

I noticed a man looking at me from a little ways down the platform, looking suspicious and predatory. He yelled at me in this fast, barking way and I turned around because I couldn't hear what he'd said and he totally startled me out of my perfect little dreamy bubble world and I watched outside of myself in super-slow motion as my fingers opened, just a little, tiny bit, and I dropped the fifty.

I saw my right arm stretch out in front of me to grab the money, but I was too late. The bill fluttered down below the platform and onto the subway tracks. And it lay there, crimson against the dark of the tracks. My last and only hope.

I panicked. My pulse started beating a million drum rolls. I felt sweat dripping down the back of my neck. My mouth tasted like dust and blood. Mac fucking King stared back up at me, his cold little eyes and smug expression dared me to do it.

Because, I mean, this was it, this was the only chance I had to make everything right. This was the only thing that was going to bring me and Marie together and make me feel okay about us, the two of us, together.

It was the only thing that was going to make me feel okay about Grandma too and maybe even Megan. And I didn't see the train coming, I swear I didn't. I thought I could jump down fast enough to get the money and then climb back up. I really thought I could.

So I jumped down onto the tracks.

And that's when I saw the headlights coming towards me. The train.