Summer Highs

On a whim, Lori decided to climb an eighty foot smokestack in order to meet the silver haired girl who coolly sat at the top. However, as she soon learns, what goes up doesn't necessarily come down...

 The singing of the cicadas heralded the arrival of summer. Awakening along with the cicadas, the residents of Wishbone City were also filled with energy. Named in honor of the wishbone shaped river which ran through the city, it couldn’t be described as anything but an ordinary city with ordinary citizens.

In one remote area of the city there stood a last remnant of the time when the city was being a developed. It was an eighty foot smokestack which, neglected by the city, had fallen into an early state of disrepair. Holes could be found here and there in its stone structure. It stood alone in an area that once belonged to a rather well off factory, but with the ebbing of business the factory like so many others had closed. All that was left was an empty lot. As to why the smokestack had been left untouched, it was unknown, but it was not a question that many people were interested in asking. The red paint had long since lost its color and the single red ladder which led to the top of the chimney was rusted yet it stood strong.

Once a hangout for a various youths looking to get away with things they otherwise wouldn’t around taxpaying citizens, even they had abandoned it leaving behind only remnants of their past presence such as the trash and the graffiti painted at the very top of the smokestack which vertically read, nonsensically, “Juse.” Now, only one individual remained to keep the smokestack company.

            At the early adolescent age of 14 years old, it was a girl who sat at the top of the chimney facing the city and with a forest less than a mile to her back. From here, she could see the horizon of the sky an infinite number of miles away. Her brown hair had been dyed the silver of moonlight and her eyes were the blue of sapphires. Her name was Marie.

            She had always had an interest in high places. From climbing trees to the roof of buildings, she had an unusual affinity for the high ground. It wasn’t that she liked to look down on the world, rather the opposite; she wanted to be as close to the sky as possible and her deepest desire one day was to be able to fly with the birds. She had been coming to this place for a few weeks now and she had fallen in love with the aesthetic view of the city’s skyline and she could see how far the forest behind her seemed to expand into forever.

            On this day, however, her quiet afternoon was interrupted by the rattling of the rusted ladder not too long after she had taken her seat. Someone was coming up. It was another girl, blonde like the sun and seemed to be around her age as well. She had two thunderbolt shaped hair clips.

“Oh, it’s her…” Marie mumbled. Personally, she had never met this particular girl before, but from her lofty view, she noticed this girl occasionally heading somewhere which caused her path to intersect with the empty lot. Once or twice they had definitely made eye contact, but they had never waved to each other or randomly ran into each other elsewhere so there was no reason Marie could think of that would cause that girl to climb all the way up an eighty foot ladder.

“A-Ahh o-oh my god! T-T-This has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life…!”

By the time she reached the top of the chimney, the girl’s oceanic blue eyes had were leaking rivers of clear liquid. Marie then realized the shaking of the ladder was actually just the girl. Still, she somehow managed to somehow pull herself up onto the narrow ledge where Marie sat.

Even though her face didn’t show it, Marie was concerned. What possibly could have inspired the girl to climb into her airspace was a true divine mystery, but it was obvious that she was terrified.

Saying “Hi” or “What is up” at this point seemed rather ridiculous and both complimenting and criticizing her courage equally did not feel right for a proper greeting. After thirty seconds, Marie finally decided on what she thought was the most important thing to say.

“So…how are you planning to get down…?”

Marie was genuinely curious, but the girl’s response was as strange as it was unexpected. She laughed at first, then, almost immediately afterward, broke down in tears.

 “I’m gonna diiieeee!!” she cried. “I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!!”

“…That is what I am asking. If you knew you would die, why did you climb…?”

“Sh-shut up!” snapped the girl. “I’m blonde, okay!? That’s why I did it! I was fine at first…but then I got too scared to back down so I kept going up!”

Disregarding common sense even further, the girl clung onto Marie, wrapping her arms around her waist.

“…You made it up without falling. Just do not let go with both hands…” Panic had already gripped the blonde haired girl, but Marie kept her cool. If she pried the girl away, it was very likely that they would both end up being tipped over.

“L-Like I don’t know that!” said the girl. “It’s so windy up here! Hey, why aren’t you afraid?”

Marie gazed at the girl. “Afraid of what?” she asked.

“…What do you mean ‘of what’!?” The girl tightened her hold as she gazed down at the ground. “Are you some kind of dare devil? I mean falling, obviously!”

Feeling the pressure in her waist, Marie maintained her composure. She responded by wrapping her arm around the girl to give her some sort of physical comfort. The girl’s squeezing of her waist lessened, but not by much. If she were afraid, she wouldn’t have climbed up there to begin with, but she dismissed the option of saying that.

 “Hmm…if you are afraid of falling, then you will not fall.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense! Gravity doesn’t stop working just because you don’t want it to!”

“…A deep sea diver enters the water with a scuba suit, a bee keeper wears a protective suit and a sky diver wears a parachute. Why?” Conceding that argument Marie went for another.

The girl was puzzled by the obvious questions. “Um…to be safe…?”

“True.” Marie nodded. “However, a jellyfish or shark can easily kill a diver and even the bee keeper will get stung eventually. Also, a parachute might malfunction and fail to work properly. Even for the most well prepared, accidents can and often do happen.”

“I don’t have any of those!” said the girl hysterically. “Are you telling me you have a parachute or hang glider stuffed around here somewhere!? I didn’t come up here to bungee jump!”

“Listen. To. Me.” Marie reached out and grabbed the cheeks of the girl, pulling them like a grandmother to an unruly small child. “A sufficient amount of fear can be all the protection you need. Your fear grew as you climbed higher did it not? Therefore, your brain sent out signals to your arms, hands, legs and feet to not screw up and let you fall, right? Obviously, you will not let yourself fall…”

The fair haired girl, however, simply shook her head as if her message had failed to even register remotely in the girl’s brain. Exhaling rather exhaustedly through her nostrils, Marie released the girl’s face and resumed what she had been doing previously: nothing.

“…My name’s Lori…” said the girl a few silent minutes later.

“…And I am formally known as Marie.” Marie responded.

 

Several hours later, the cawing of a distant crow signaled the end of Marie’s time on the smokestack. The sky had become a brilliant orange as the sun began to dip down below the horizon a million miles away.

Lori, the girl too courageous for her own good, had not budged an inch even though she calmed down quite some time ago. Forced to hold the girl for the last few hours, Marie’s arm had long since gone numb. Finally, stretching her arm, she declared “It is time…”

Lori immediately began whining. “Don’t leave me up here alone…”

 “I am not.” said Marie as she stood up on the narrow ledge. This caused panic to register in Lori’s face. She had tried talking down Lori already and had failed at that so after some long internal deliberation about what to do when this time eventually came, she had come up with a revolutionary new idea.

“I will carry you down.” Marie declared.

“……..Huh?” Lori stared blankly at her.

“I will carry you down.” Marie repeated.

“H-Hey, I thought fear was supposed to be a survival thing!?”

“It is…”

“Then what are you talking about!? Carry me!? We’ll both die!”

“…No we won’t.”

“Wha…!? Yes we will! How do you know?”

“Trust me.”

“Why? You…you’re crazy, insane, mad, a lunatic! Why should I trust you? F-Fine I would rather be left up here. Just go get the fire department when you get down, and let them come rescue me!”

“…It is dusk. In a few minutes, this entire lot will be pitch-black dark. The time it would take for me to run to the fire station or the police station and then for them to come here will be twenty minutes at least. By then, you won’t even be able to see your hand in front of you. Do you really want to wait that long?”

Marie had intentionally lowered her voice to play on the fear that was rampaging in the girl’s heart. She knew that Lori would never actually stay up here in the darkness. Meekly, resigned and like someone deciding to walk towards a cliff that either had a ledge just below it or a steep fall to certain death, she rose with her knees shaking, to stand up.

Marie turned around slowly making sure that Lori never removed her hands from her shirt. They were about the same height and weight so neither had to do any risking bending as Lori climbed onto Marie’s back. Locking her hands tightly beneath Lori’s legs, Marie began to slowly circle around the smokestack. Turning around wasn’t an option with Lori’s weak knees ready to give out at any moment. The rapidly cooling wind caused the sweat gathering on her body to make it feel as though ice cubes were being dropped down her body, yet at the same time, Marie insides were on fire. With every step she took, she could hear her heart pounding in her ear and could almost see certain death falling off.

After what seemed like forever, she finally made it to the ladder and the tricky part came. How was she going to lower herself with Lori on her back? Lori herself hadn’t spoken a word at all and Marie was sure she hadn’t heard the girl breathe at all.

“Hold on as tight as possible…” she cautioned as she pulled her arms from underneath Lori. In response, Lori locked her legs around Marie’ waist and tightened her grips. Marie hoped the heat from their collective bodies wouldn’t cause her hands to sweat profusely.

She lowered herself down as slowly as she could and Marie finally understood the greatness of the baboons that could scale near vertical cliffs with their offspring clinging to their backs. It was truly the most exciting and mortifying thing she had ever attempted to do which, up to that point, had been walking across a beam that connected a staircase and a second floor in a mall. With an unparalleled resolve, she began descending the eighty foot ladder.

By the time her legs finally reached ground, her legs were trembling as much as Lori’s were. Just shortly after their descent, Lori had begun to silently weep again, apparently apologizing about whatever wrong thing she had done. Marie thought then was a mighty strange time to suddenly get religious, but then again, Lori just could have been a religious person.

“…See? All you had to do was trust me…” Marie said as she sat on the ground. Her arms and legs were burning. “I told…you!?”

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!! My savior!” Crying with an immeasurably large smile on her face, Lori tackled her over onto the ground, hugging her as if she really had just saved her life. She delivered a few kisses to Marie’s cheeks, so she was so happy! “THANK YOU!!!”

“Y-You’re welcome…” said Marie awkwardly. She wasn’t used to that kind of a response. She sort of patted the girl on the back. With the only light remaining now at the horizon, her crimson cheeks were fortunately obscured from vision.

“Let’s never do that again, though!”

            “…For the first time, I think we agree on something.”

Reviews

[Vian]

I liked your work. It was a good story and I could even imagine it as a part of a series involving the two girls. Their interaction was cute and they had good dynamic as characters. I liked Solinious' coldness with the more bubbly personality that Lori exhibited. Though, I didn't especially like that you said her hair was dyed. I think I would have liked it if you just said it was silver because the connotation to dyed hair is that she is trying to present a certain look. But she seems so different and separate from other people that I felt it was a little out of character from the rest of her personality to purposefully change what is there in her physical appearance. I think you can safely say that she had silver hair without it seeming too supernatural or fantasy like, but that's my opinion.

Just a minor point is that thirteen to fourteen is a very specific age group for someone to look like. When writing from an omnipotent narrator's point of view you could just give the exact age or be really general and just leave it ambiguous. An omnipotent would either know the exact age or not use numbers, it is a human thing to guess the age group. However, the narrator knows too much to actually be human either.

I really like your description of movement. I often cannot write human movement; it just becomes confusing. I liked that when they were hugging it was clear whose arms were where and what it would look like, without it being an overbearing description. Also, later when they were climbing down the ladder, I could imagine their position easily. So well done there.

You can just ignore what I said if you don't like it. Maybe you didn't want this kind of feed back so I'm sorry if I've offended you. I did like your story and thank you very much for writing.

[D.T. Tucker]

Thank you for the feed back. Yes, it was very helpful. I was a little worried about having a fantasy-esque character in a story without fantasy elements. You're also right with the narrative. The narrator should be more certain of the age in this instance. I'm glad you enjoyed it; it makes writing it all worth it.