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This chapter is in Mark's perspective.
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Jack forced me to work my way through the subway station, being sure to take long, mile-wide strides before me, causing me to run after him. He always tended to look as if he were in a hurry of some sort, and I guess that I was in quite a hurry, too - a hurry for this to be over, for me to be rid of whatever burden was to come for abandoning detention.
I couldn't bare the thought of what Mrs. Jefferson would make us do next. Maybe she would make us organize the papers in order, only to kick them over with her obnoxious heels and force us to do it again. Perhaps she would make us scrape the gum off of her desks (for Lord knows she can't bend over to do it herself), or maybe - just maybe - she'd force Jack and I to become therapists for her complaints over her husband, as if we hadn't heard enough already.
"Stop worrying," Jack mumbled, seeing my expression from over the two backpacks on his shoulders. "Nothin' is going to happen. Look, we're already at the subway - what could go wrong?"
A lot of things could go wrong - he'd been reading my thoughts, hadn't he? Or my expression, at least, which hopefully summed up what I meant to say in response - I didn't feel like repeating my thoughts aloud, for it was exhausting discussing the number of worries I lugged along.
I tried not to think up the scenarios as Jack and I approached a booth, a young woman behind it, her name tag reading "Dodger." Jack, acting as if he'd done this his entire life, stepped up to the window separating her from him, shoving five euro through it. "Two tickets," he muttered.
"Two tickets is seven euro," the girl said quickly, not accepting the money presented before her.
"What?" Jack nearly bellowed. "Last time I checked, two tickets was an easy five euro."
The girl clicked her teeth. "What can I say? The government likes their money." She looked from the pile of bills to him, his expression just as distasteful as I'd expected. "Are you gonna buy the ticket or not?"
Jack felt in his back pocket, allowing me to catch the slightest glimpse of another ten euro peeking out from within it. He, however, forced it down with his hand, sliding the five euro from before to the girl, saying he'd prefer just the one. I felt my jaw shatter against the concrete floor as Jack accepted his ticket and change, now wandering off and towards the entrance to the subway station. I followed along like a little puppy, catching flies in my open mouth, expecting him to say something.
"You have ten euro!" I cried. "And you bought one ticket!?"
"We don't need both o' them," he said gravely, pocketing the change. "And stop flippin' out - as if I would just leave you behind."
"So what, then? You're just going to smuggle my way through?"
Jack shot me a nerve-wracking look over his shoulder. "That's exactly what I'm going to do."
Before I knew it, we were at the turnstiles, meaning that Jack would have to have formed a plan by now - otherwise, I was screwed. Fortunately for me, he stopped dead in his tracks, pivoting so that he could face me. Placing his hands on my shoulders, he whispered to me, his voice deeper than it'd ever been.
"I'm going to put my ticket in the machine," he explained, "and you're going to squeeze into the turnstile with me. Do it quickly - if you screw this up, I'm not coming to help you." Noticing my terrified look, he quickly added, "Just kiddin'."
I took a short sigh of relief, knowing that it would be one of the many for the evening. As we approached the turnstiles, I continued to allow my worries to consume me - what if I didn't make it through? What if Jack really did abandon me? What if I got mobbed by the crowd, the tourists running wild? What if I was trampled to death?
Eventually, I'd ended up carrying my own backpack again (in order for it to be easier to move around) - we'd reached the turnstiles, meaning that there was no time to waste overthinking. Jack casually put his ticket in, allowing his body to slowly step into the turnstile - as promised, I immediately stepped in with him, thankfully making the jump between two cliffs. I felt a surge of relief blow over me, followed by a quick sense of something in between uncomfortableness and embarrassment. My crotch (thankfully shielded by a pair of khakis) was less than a centimetre away from Jack's lower back, the space between us more heated than it'd been when we were on the bed, my eyes pleading for him to kiss me. I hoped that it wasn't obvious that I was blushing, thankful that Jack didn't have the ability to see what was behind him.
"See, that wasn't so hard, now was it?" Jack asked, as if it were easy being a dirty criminal. Somehow, he'd come up with another ticket, one that was red rather than the other yellow one - I swallowed, hoping that it wouldn't cost me another step down into the depths of hell (where I, a criminal, now belonged). "You can stop giving me that look."
I settled my expression, not realizing that it'd been so frustrated. I couldn't help but become more and more nervous with each step we took - within a few minutes, we were in the subway car, deciding on the last one on the train, which Jack explained would "be less crowded" and "give us more time". I didn't even bother asking what we would need more time for as we stepped inside, revealing a small group of three transporters, two of them being confused tourists. "Everyone chooses the ones in the middle," Jack explained, sitting the two of us in a booth furthest away from the others. "I'm sure the tourists found that out when planning for their trip."
He then asked if I had a pen and paper, causing me to nod, wondering what he would need them for. I discarded them from my backpack, watching him write on the back of my science test in black Sharpie (which I didn't care much for, seeing as I got a huge, red "F" on the other side), the words making no sense in my mind. "OUT OF ORDER." What would he need that for?
"You don't have a ticket," he explained, "meaning that we'll need a plan to sneak you in." Great - just what I wanted. "There's a reason I chose the booth closest to the bathroom - you're gonna sit in there for the ride, okay? It'll only be about five to fifteen minutes, so I'm sure it'll -"
"Can you do it?"
"... What?" He shot me a flustered look. "Why?"
I knew why - all too well, if I do say so myself.
"I'm... I'm kinda... scared of the dark."
"What?" he chuckled as he spoke, causing a wave of self-consciousness and embarrassment ride up on my shoulders.
"It's a long story," I said, wishing it didn't need to be explained, "but I'm scared that Chuck-E-Cheese characters are going to attack me whenever I'm in the dark..."
Jack's smile grew wider with every word that freed itself from my lips.
"You're scared of a fuckin' rat and his rodent friends?"
"Yes - they're really scary!" I exclaimed, allowing him to chuckle into his palm (which he'd used to attempt at hiding his laughter). It clearly wasn't working. "It's not funny - they're terrifying."
Jack, his cheeks now flushed a deep shade of pink, eventually stopped chuckling, only to examine the paper before him, the Sharpie sprawled messily on the sheet. He looked around, reassuring himself that the tourists and businessman weren't looking as he stood, taping the sign to the bathroom door - the tape roll that he kept in his back pocket showed that he'd done this quite a few times.
"I would suggest that you lie to the ticket guy," Jack whispered, continually glancing over at the other inhabitants of the train car as he grabbed at our backpacks, "but you can't even tell your worries to shut the fuck up, so how can I expect you to do that?" He sighed, tossing the backpacks into the washroom, much smaller than I'd expected it to be. He turned to me as he stepped in, reaching out a hand in my direction. "You comin'?"
Finding that there was no other solution, I allowed him to cup my hand in his, drowning me in darkness as he clicked the lock shut.
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I got this idea from a book I read before - I'm not very original, to be honest! Also, I don't really know how subways work (I had to look up "how subways work" [thanks, WikiHow] and "what're those things that you walk through to get on the subway?") - sorry if a lot of this information is off!
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Ever After
Fanfiction"His eyes - oh, God, his eyes - were an entirely different story. Staring into his eyes was like staring into the summer sky just before the sunset came, before the yellow, pink, and purple clouds came to fog up your vision. They were the definition...
