Dear Miffy by John Marsden Page A

do, it’ll do, it doesn’t matter. Come on. Up the ramp. People everywhere, looking that tired and grey, like they’d lost interest in life. Like their lives were so dead. They looked sad. Crowds of them and not one of them saw me, never even looked at me. I didn’t see one pair of eyes that were alive or laughing or taking any notice of anything. I felt like I was in a crowd of dead people already. I got to the top of the ramp, looked around, saw where the end of the platform was, went round the back of the crowd to the end, then moved through them to the edge. No-one touched me. I was kind of floating. I felt like I’d entered another world, where no-one could touch me any more. Don’t ask me to explain it, Miff. I think I’d sort of died before I even got there. This blast of air started coming along the platform and there was this vibration starting, like ‘the train is coming, the train is coming’. You could feel people stirring, getting ready, coming forward. No-one was more ready than me though, no-one. I was ready. I don’t think any doubt entered my mind.
    I was right up the end so the train’d still be going fast, it had to be going fast enough. I saw it coming, but I didn’t really think of it as a train, just as something that I had to get in front of. Something I had to throw myself in front of, and then whatever was going to happen would happen. Simple really, no problems. I was waiting for it, ready to go, all tensed up, all ready, waiting for it.
    And I fucked it up. Funny how you do some little thing slightly wrong and that’s it then, it’s a major fuck-up. I’m still not sure what happened. I think I thought that the train was slowing up too much, that it might end up going too slow to do the job. And also, I don’t know, at the same time I didn’t want to leave it too late. To miss the train. It was like both these things were happening in my head at the same time. So anyway, to cut a long story short I did it a bit early.
    I took the step forward, just one step. It was the weirdest feeling, stepping into space, into nothing. I knew it was going to hurt, but I wasn’t scared. I was still just thinking, ‘This’ll fix it all up, take care of things. No more pain after this.’ But maybe as I landed I wimped out a bit, without meaning to. I heard this chick scream behind me as I went down, and I think that put me off a bit, made me think maybe I shouldn’t have done it, maybe I’d done the wrong thing. She sort of scared me. And so I think I must have fallen backwards, sort of made myself fall backwards, made myself fall away from the train, because I was scared of the impact. Fucking lot of weight in a train. So my top half—well, a bit more than half—was under the platform before the train hit. It was all because I was a second too early, see. If I hadn’t gone early the train would have hit me before that happened, see. Would have hit me on the way down. But that’s what did happen, that’s what I figure anyway. And that’s why I didn’t get killed, and that’s why I just lost my fucking legs, all the way up to my dick, just about, plus fucked up my spine. And that’s why I’m in this fucking wheelchair.
    Funny thing, Miff, after it happened and they got me out I was still conscious, you know, and there were a million people on the platform by then, because I’d fucked up their evenings good and proper, and they were all going to be late home. Stupid, I was trying to say sorry to them, but no-one would have heard or had a clue what I was on about. But you know something, Miff? Something strange? All them people, their eyes were alive now, and they all saw me. The cops had put up a barrier and they were all behind it, but they were looking at me and they saw me and their eyes were alive. And don’t ask me what the fuck that means, Miff, because I just don’t