One

On the last day before I did the most gloriously insane thing of my young life, I really wanted a sub sandwich.

Normally, this would have been no large issue. However, --horror of horrors!-- that night my favorite shop, a little local job, was closed. Which meant I had to go get a freaking chain-made sub, which was never, ever as good. And this was especially unfortunate because Chris Mathis was working in Subway and I may have been crying a little.

But Jesus Christ did I ever have a craving for a sub. So I just ducked my head, buried my face in my scarf and went in. The rush of warm air made my ears and fingers tingle in not a wholly pleasant way.

And whatever. It wasn't like I really knew Chris, or anything. He was just this kid in my math class. I had sort of known him in middle school, or maybe elementary school, but even then not that well. I'd only known him because everyone knew everyone in middle and elementary schools.



"Welcome to Subway, how can I--hey, Lena." Because Chris was A Thing of the Past, he called me Lena. My friends from high school had picked up my first initial right and left, making me Elena--which was sort of nice, because that meant teachers stopped thinking my name was spelled Layna. "What's up?"

I chose to ignore the friendly banter, the cheerful catching-up; it wasn't, after all, like he hadn't seen me on Friday morning, third period. I mean, seriously. And it wasn't like he wasn't planning on seeing me tomorrow morning, third period. I simply wasn't in the mood. "Can I have a half-sub, turkey and salami, oil and vinegar, salt and pepper, lettuce and onions?"

Chris seemed a little surprised that I'd ignored his greeting, but like any good Subway employee, he took it in stride. Or maybe he'd just noticed that I was sort of crying. The latter made a little more sense, since he asked, "Hey, are you okay?"

Partially because I wasn't in the mood for any sort of nonsense but partially because I really wasn't feeling okay, I just wanted a stupid sub, I snapped, "Do I look like I'm okay?"

I did not look okay. Now, I know there are some people that are beautiful when they cry, looking all lost and delicate and forlorn, like some mythological, pitiable damsel in distress. I was, unfortunately, not one of those girls. I knew perfectly well that when I cried my eyes got all red and my face got pale and red in a strange sort of streaky pattern and I generally looked like I was having an attack.

With Chris I used this to my advantage, just because I wanted that stupid sub so I could leave. I still wasn't quite adjusted to the warmth of the sub shop, a sharp contrast against the December air outside; it was warm enough in here that Chris seemed perfectly comfortable in just a t-shirt. But then again, Chris was one of those guys who never seemed to wear anything but t-shirts, who wore shorts well into November. I couldn't see, behind the counter, whether or not he was wearing shorts now.

Deftly, and with a speed I hadn't anticipated, Chris began throwing together my sub. Ordinarily the open and visible vats of sub-making accoutrement made me a little nauseous (at my favorite sub shop, they kept all the sub making in the back, where it belonged--but that made my best friend a little nauseous, 'cause she claimed that you could never really know what they were doing to your sub); right now, however, I wasn't really concerned. I just wanted to get out of there. I had places to go, plans to make, worlds to see, ideas to hatch, maps to draw, books to read--I had math homework to do.

"Yeah," Chris mumbled, not looking at me, "I guess you don't really look like you're okay. I'm, uh, sorry about that." He looked up at me and I glared back down at his hands; he started rolling up my sub in that classic Subway sub-wrapping paper. They really had the whole sub thing down to a science here, didn't they?

He rubbed his hands together once, stuck some Subway regulation sticker on top of my Subway regulation sub-wrapping paper, shoved the whole mess in a Subway paper bag, topped it with some Subway napkins and handed it to me. I handed him back my five dollars and change. I'd done the math in my head while he was making the sub.

"Thanks," he mumbled. He looked like he wanted to say something else. And why wouldn't he have? After all, classmate comes in, obviously distraught, reams you out when you ask her what's wrong--it's natural to be curious. But evidently they had some sort of "don't ask, don't tell" lesson in Subway worker training because he bit his questions back.

"Yeah, thanks," I mumbled back. And then for a moment I almost thought about sitting and eating the sub there, just to needle him, because Chris Mathis had always seemed like one of those kids with an unbearably perfectly life--even though I knew this couldn't possibly be true, it sometimes felt that way--and I wanted to annoy him just a little. But overwhelming my desire to annoy him was my desire to get going, and so I just took my sub, hiked my scarf a little higher around my face and turned around to leave.

Chris was nothing if not polite; he'd always been nothing if not polite. "See you in math tomorrow," he called out towards my back. The rush of wind from outside almost pushed his words back fast enough that I didn't catch them.

But as it was, I inadvertently let out a humorless little laugh, muffled though it was by the scarf over my mouth. "Uh huh," I mumbled without turning around.