“My hands. I think I hurt my hand.”

“Stand up. Let’s get up before—”

Someone else fell. The red-haired friend of fun-girl. People were pressing forward, trying to stop the attacker, trying to reach down but getting in the way. Fun girl was on her back on the platform. Her head stuck out and over.

“I hurt my hand, I can’t play violin.”

“It doesn’t matter,” her mother said. “We have to get you up. Stand up!”

May tried to stand. She was wary of the tracks—was there a third rail? She remembered something like that. Was—

She saw the violin case and grabbed it.

May’s mother, face streaked with blood, lifted May up, hands at her waist. May reached forward, where people were helping, where people were focused on helping one of the white girls, or the man that had fallen onto the track, the latter groups more obstacle than anything.

Her hand full, she passed the violin forward and over the wall of people, before her mother couldn’t hold her up anymore.

Why did I?

“Again,” her mother said, voice warbly with emotion. She wiped at her eye, where it had blood running into it.

The next attempt started and stopped in the span of a second. A waste of strength, when nobody was positioned to catch, lift up, and receive.

In the back, the black man who had been in the attacker’s company was pacing, hands at the sides of his head, where his hair was shaved. May reached, and he didn’t see. His eyes were on his friend, who was being clawed, beat, pummeled and pushed, but who wasn’t being moved.

May’s feet hit the tracks. Her mother let go of her to wipe at the blood in her eye again, and May stepped back, almost instinctively putting distance between herself and the hands, the attention.

There was an alcove. May retreated to it.

Everything matters. Every detail.

It mattered that her mother had hit her head, and had blood running down one side of her eye, that her mother reached for May and found someone else, the blonde girl. She lifted, noticed something was wrong, and by then, was locked into the course of action. She wasn’t a bad person, wouldn’t drop the girl to look for her own daughter.

But she did look, and with one eye squinting shut, she didn’t see May.

The train could be heard. The lights visible in the tunnel.

There was still time. Just enough.

She reached forward, but she didn’t—couldn’t—call out.

This accident bigger than chicken kiev. Bigger than tutors missing an appointment. She wanted it to be a happy one and in the instant her mother turned and met her eyes with the one eye that wasn’t squinting shut, May wasn’t sure it was.