Chapter 2: Rooftops and Solitude

Some background on Kirstie...

 

                 Christopher Faye was of a child of the rooftops. That is, she had grown up gathering her knowledge of life and its doings from the vantage point of her small, apartment building rooftop. They—well, she: her family was gone so much that they didn’t really count—lived in a rather ghetto area of the small but seedy town of Rooks. They lived in such a condition so that her parents could afford to spend their time halfway around the world on exotic vacations of which Kirstie was never a part. Not that she minded. Ever since her secret discovery of the trap door leading from her top floor apartment room to the roof, Christopher had spent her idle days sprawled out there in the sun, enjoying the freedom and the thrill of the height, usually with either a book or a pair of binoculars.

                With the latter, she had observed a myriad of things which had taught her more about the way the world worked than her parents, even if they had been present, could never have hoped to make her understand. She had witnessed robberies, muggings, drug deals, and even once (to her horror) a gang shooting. But she had also seen much more beautiful things, things that filled her with hope and a passion for life. A mom buying her little girl icecream, holding her hand as she watches her daughter eats it—the enjoyment of the mother is as great as the daughter’s, though she has no treat, herself. A young woman stopping to help an elderly man with his groceries. An older man bringing his wife a rose and walking her to work everyday, clearly as smitten with her as he ever was when they first met. A little boy and girl sitting on the curb giggling together…and there was much more, of course. Kirstie wouldn’t have traded her ghetto apartment rooftop for the nicest mansion in the world. It was too much a part of who she was.

                Thick, wavy, black hair framed Kirstie’s pale face and large, almost clear gray eyes. She was an average height, a little taller than average, maybe; leggy and very slender. Some—a jealous few—would go so far as to say anorexic, even. But she was far from unattractively thin. She possessed a beauty she was far too self-deprecating to ever recognize. When looking at her, people often got the disconcerting impression that she was partially transparent and might fade away into mist altogether if you stared long enough—she looked perhaps a bit like a ghost who had stepped out from a black and white movie.

                “Perhaps that’s why no guy can hold onto you.” A male friend of hers had wistfully half-joked. “You’re too insubstantial; you always slip right through our fingers.”

                She had been half amused, half hurt at the time, but looking back on it all that was left was amusement. Poor fella, she mused. Maybe I shoulda given him a chance. But for the most part, she didn’t take relationships too seriously; actually, she rarely got past the dating stage before breaking it off. Mostly it was sheer laziness—who wants to be held down by some guy insisting you call them every five minutes and come by for a goodnight kiss? But sometimes she wondered if it was more than that, a fear of committal, maybe? Most often, like now, she brushed these thoughts aside with a scornful laugh. Me, afraid of anything? Ha! But still, sometimes…

                At the moment, Kirstie was tidying up her small but well (if cheaply) furnished room. It was something she was rather OCD about—second to her rooftop, her room was the only other place she felt truly at home. It was a little strange, considering she had the run of the entirety (well, entire three rooms) of the apartment. She guessed it was because those two places were the only ones with an abundance of natural light. She was drawn to light and colors like a hummingbird to nectar. She had taken a glassblowing class at school (and excelled in it, as she did in all art) and for one project she had made a large, six by six foot window pane which she had brought home the next day. The next time her paycheck came around, she had bought a medley of carpenter’s tools and hacked away at her wall until there was a roughly window-sized hole, into which she had haphazardly inserted the window and built a frame around it. Standing back she had thought that it wasn’t the neatest job ever, but hell, it was damn good for a rookie. Her parents had come home, glanced at it with that we-disaprove-but-really-can’t-be-bothered-to-step-in-with-this-sort-of-thing, then went to the travel agency and booked their next trip to Florida. Kirstie didn’t mind their indifference; she was thrilled with her work.

                And so she now sat in her well lit room, giving it a final once-over to see if everything looked all right. It did. Her eyes rested upon her cell phone, a state-of-the-art whatchamacallit (it had some fancy title she didn’t care enough about to remember) with a thousand and one functions, not one of which she had ever used, barring the call function, which she used minimally. It was the glance with which a particularly squeamish girl might favor a fat black spider sitting in the corner of her room—revulsion and disgust were clearly present, but more often than not the girl would be too afraid—or just plain lazy—to go over there and dispose of the damn thing. The spider would sit there for a few days, making the girl cringe every time she walked past it, sometimes conjuring grotesque images (those spidly legs, creeping up her neck, crawling into her mouth, down her throat) even as she swiftly adverted her gaze. But after a few days, the spider almost always died or moved on.

                The phone never died. It sat there (glaring at me, she thought, it knows I hate it, oh, it knows) threatening to break her peaceful silent solitude with its piercing, ear-shattering, ring. Getting the phone had seemed like an open invitation for people she barely knew—let alone liked—to invade her privacy:

                Hey y’all, wanna b***h to me about your problems? Need advice? A favor? Money? Booty call? Are you mad at me and really just want to give me a good screamin’? Or are you mad at the world and want to scream at me just so you’ll feel better? Either way, just call me up! It’s not like I have an excuse not to answer because, hey, I’ve got a mobile phone and I can stay in tough wherever I go! Ain’t that f****n’ great! So call away, no problem, it’s just my goddamn peace I’m giving up, no biggie….not to mention my freedom.

                And Christopher would get all kinds of calls. She shuddered. For a month or two now, she had been going through one of those periods of hers which she called her Off-Radar-Phases. This meant that she would go into a sort of self-imposed exile: no cell phone, no email, not even regular postal mail. Her friends were almost never sober enough to give a damn if she wasn’t around, and her parent’s didn’t notice, of course. She thought with a kind of dark amusement that her parents would’ve complained about this if they’d ever tried calling to check in—“Why don’t you ever use that nice phone of yours, sweetie, we bought it so you could have people to talk to while we were away, not so you could throw a good sum of money down the drain every month, you know.”

                It wasn’t that Kirstie disliked her parents—no, how could you dislike someone you barely knew? To her, they were simply two near-strangers who happened to stop by her house once and awhile to make messes, eat all the food, and b***h about her lifestyle habits. The latter actually didn’t happen all that much—usually they were too lazy (Can’t you see we’re tired from working to care for you, honey? All we’d like is a little alone-time.) to even talk to her. When they visited, which was about for five days out of the month, Kirstie usually stayed in her room or on the rooftop, writing, painting, reading, or playing the guitar (very quietly of course, so as not to disturb their ‘rest’).                         

                It was a fair trade, Kirstie thought. At least they never complained about her low grades (she averaged a C in everything but art and English) or told her when to go to bed. Besides, she had grown to love the tranquility of solitude—people often irked her with their raucous manners and loud voices and incessant need to talk. Not that she was shy by nature—she could get along with people well enough when she needed to, she just preferred not to.

                And that was way she lived seventeen blissfully ignorant years.

Reviews

[Rainbow Rider]

a nice continuation, a little indepth background, yet still exciting to read. There are a couple of missing words. A 'the' in the last line between 'was' and 'way' and earlier on: "once and awhile" should be 'once in awhile' not 'and'. Just techno stuff.
Another great read, thanks. ,,,,,Mhk melvin

[Lady]

Alright, I'm going to be entirely honest with you in my review. Please take nothing personal, I only want your novel to flourish.

Like the chapter before, I loved how your writing developed the story - I mean that in more ways than just one. Your writing style itself is very nice to the eye. You describe things in both a creative and beautiful manner, making the read exciting (especially for a reader who loves detail. Thanks :)
Not to mention your story already feels original - you should be proud.

There are a few flow issues, grammatical smudges, and conflicting thoughts that need attention.

For example the main character describes the rooftop as being her favorite place, but later on you tell the reader that her room is the only place she truly feels at home because of the abundant amount of light. Wouldn't there be the most amount of light from an outdoor rooftop? And I thought the roof was her favorite place?

My advice would be this - have another read for yourself and give editing another go, then have someone else read it and edit for you even more. It's nothing major - just a bit of tweaking and polishing up.

I really hope that you will continue with this, because I'm very interested!
If you ever need help, feel free to message me.

Good luck

Lady