She takes her hand back to walk down the stairs in front of me. We’re on the platform before she speaks again. “I wasn’t always like this, you know. Scared of all the noise, and crowds, and being underground.” She’s staring across the tracks at an advertisement but her voice seems more intimate than I’ve ever heard it.

“What happened?” I ask softly.

“I was ten. In Indonesia with my parents. It was post Peace Corps, but before the travel blog. I think somewhere in their foodie period. This particular afternoon, they were trying to find the best oxtail soup in Sumatra, and I was tired and sunburned and just wanted to stay behind and finish reading one of the Baby-Sitters Club books I’d brought with me. I had just settled in under a cozy blanket fort when there was an earthquake.” She takes in a shaky breath.

“No,” I whisper.

“I just remember my book almost jumping out of my hand and I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I went to grab it and then . . . part of the ceiling collapsed, and I was trapped between some fallen plaster and the bed. It felt like I was there for hours, screaming for nobody because I knew my mom and dad were too far away to hear me. It was probably twenty minutes, half an hour at most before the hotel staff found me and got me out. But it just . . . stayed with me. The dark, the rumbling, the feeling of everything closing in on me, pressing in on my skin, and, worst of all, that dread that no one was ever, ever going to find me. . . .” She goes quiet as we hear the rumble of the F train in the distance. And for the first time, I hear it a little differently. The screech, the vibrations, an unseen something hurtling through space toward us. It is terrifying.

The train stops in front of us and the doors open. I don’t move. I let her decide whether she wants to get on. She hesitates only a second before she steps in and gratefully sighs at the smattering of empty orange and yellow seats surrounding us. Compared to the madness we just left outside, it’s practically meditative down here. Except now I know that’s not true for her.