I’ve never been on a New York subway. But I spend a lot of time on the Toronto subway lines, and they can’t be much different.

For my sockbuddy-and-more, AngelKairi.

- - - - -

Val’s first subway ride was at the age of five.

Her mother would take regular day-trips into the city for the sake of shopping, for as long as Val could recall. She’d leave with her usual perfected layers of makeup. She’d return with bag after bag of clothing and jewellery, and little bits of miscellaneous finery, oftentimes discarded with the tags still present.

For the duration of these little expeditions, the young girl would be forced to stay at the residence of some neighbor, playing with Lego blocks and Treasure Trolls and absorbing the dramatic lines of soap operas from the next room over. Which is, without a doubt, a horrible way to spend full days when your attention span’s hardly long enough to register.

And that’s why, one day, Val begged to come along.

“You’ll feel bored, wandering the city all day,” she heard.

“It’s all crowded and smelly, you wouldn’t like it,” she heard.

“It’s full of kidnappers and theives and giant rats,” she heard with desperation.

“Ms Beckett next door just adores your company!” she heard in vain.

She heard, she heard, she heard.

She didn’t hear a thing.

And that’s why, one day, Val came along in the end.

It didn’t occur to her then that plans had to be changed to accomodate her — didn’t occur to her that her mother’s semi-monthly day away from being just that wouldn’t be quite the same with a five year old tagging along. Nothing like that ever occurs when you’re a five year old. There are always more important things to think about.

“Mommy, why are the bars so high? I can’t reach!”

“Why’s the floor all dusty? Why doesn’t someone clean it?”

“Why can’t I see outside from the windows?”

“Mommy, why—?”

”Shh, Val, sweetie,” her mother said, not looking up from the paperback held reverently in her hands. A curly, metallic script marked the title and suggested the genre. “Just a few more minutes and we’re there.”

And Val, contained in a box with too-high bars and a not-clean floor and windows that didn’t show a thing, merely sighed and sat with unbelievable patience for a five year old.

Every now and then, through the dark windows, a flash of sprayed-on colour would dart by — too fast to make sense of, too fast to even tell if the graffiti was even there at all. But the brightness — fluorescence in the dark of a subway tunnel — caught Val’s eye more than once, caught her mind altogether.

And then they’d reach the heart of the city.

- - - - -

“Hey, Val?”

The crooks of her elbows are sore, her back even sorer as she’s sprawled down the length of several subway seats, all worn down to about the same comfort level as concrete. Which is funny, really, because — you know.

Val blinks past the greyness gathering from the edges of her vision, rendering her fuzzy in the aftermath of a Never run. It’s a moment before her lips move, respond.

“Yeah?”

It’s Lolli, and she’s grinning in an infuriatingly knowing way, but she’s too high to care, and Val’s too low to move, too low to see. Her friend’s a blur of blue and porcelain, statue-still on the midnight train.

“You look preeeeoccupied,” Lolli says in singsong. “My pocket change against yours, it’s a flashback.”

Val’s lips twitch with mirth. “Either way, I don’t have any.”

“Yeah, well. Neither do I.”

They both laugh — Lolli soaring off the last ebbing drops of Never coursing through her, Val already flown dry. And there they are: bars within reach, dusty floors beyond care, windows displaying blurs in a shade of subway-tunnel brown, a shade that now means more than it ever did.

They are the heart of the city.