Dear Miffy by John Marsden

dear, I seem to have lost it, how careless of me’ trick. So I sat there going red, then suddenly I thought of something and said, ‘My dad’s bringing it, he’ll be here soon.’
    But I’d left it too late, and I knew it sounded real weak, as soon as I said it.
    â€˜Well,’ said the guard, ‘you’re sitting in this lady’s reserved seat, you’re in a first-class carriage, and you don’t have a ticket. I think you’d better hop off.’
    I was still burning red, I hate it when I do that, but I couldn’t help myself, and I got up and walked out, feeling like a right fucking loser.
    It was like being at your place, Miff. I’d gone into the rich people’s world again, where I didn’t belong, and right away they’d recognised that I shouldn’t be there, and they’d kicked me out. I never belonged in your house, Miff, never fitted into your world. I was a trespasser. I really do think now that you used me as some kind of weapon against your mother. Like, I was the way you spat in her face. You weren’t game to do it yourself, so you hired me to do it. Somehow I’m sure of that now.
    Maybe I don’t love you at all, Miff. Maybe I hate your fucking guts.
    So anyway, there I was, standing on the platform, totally shitted off. I’d never even known there was such a thing as first class on trains until those turkeys busted me. Through the window of the carriage I could see them looking at me and one of them was talking on his mobile phone or walkie-talkie or whatever it was. I knew what was going on. I’ve been dealing with dickheads like them all my life. I started walking away quickly. They’d be talking to the transit pigs for sure, and now I was worried. The transit pigs are among the biggest examples of scum in this universe, but once they come after you they usually get you.
    My heart wasn’t in it, but. I felt sick. I was running away from them but where was I running to? It was a race with no finish line, no trophies. I think I started crying a bit even, just as I was walking along, but I wasn’t going to let anyone see that. I wiped the tears off, rubbed my eyes. I didn’t think about where I was for a little time then I realised I was in the part where the suburban trains come and go. I don’t know when I first thought of doing it. A few people here, shrinks and all them, asked me that. There’s no answer. It just sort of grew in my head like a bad flower. It was the feeling that nothing good was ever going to happen, nothing could ever get better, I’d fucked the whole lot up. Every last thing. I touched a rose and it died. I had no fucking family who cared, I couldn’t go back to school, I couldn’t get no job even if I wanted one and, by tomorrow, when they heard what I’d done, I’d have lost all my mates. Most of all, I’d lost you, Miff, the one thing, the one person I totally relied on. I couldn’t hack that, just couldn’t hack it. That’s the trouble with love. You got to lose it one day, everyone’s got to lose it sooner or later and, when you do, it hurts so bad you just can’t stand it, you can’t live any more. I was in this cold-hot state. Cold, because all my feelings had frozen, if I ever had any anyway. Hot, because I knew I was going to walk onto a railway platform and chuck myself under a train and that’d fix everything up. I didn’t think of it as killing myself exactly, putting an end to my life, just as stopping all these problems. Stopping this bad bad hurting feeling that I couldn’t stand no more. It was a cure. The cure. I was walking faster and faster. I just wanted to do it, get it over with. I knew if I stopped to think about it I’d get scared and chicken out, so I couldn’t stop to think about it. Come on, Tony, keep walking. Here’s a ramp. Lots of people, so there must be a train soon. This’ll