The Fall

 

 

            I used to know her, once.

            That’s how the conversation always starts.  It’s inevitable.  When you’re standing in the lunch line waiting for your hamburger, or looking at your reflection in the mirror above the busted sink in the bathroom, or just sitting in class, minding your own business.  People get this concept embedded in their brains that you want to talk about it.  They want to lick your wounds with the motion of their waggling tongues, to rub it all out with their sandpaper sympathy.  Like the simple fact of it by itself is just too bare, too raw.  She would have liked that, the smoothness of it.  A clean cut, waiting to fester.  The chance to mess with people.  Smearing paint on the fake white canvases inside their heads.  Pretending to make something beautiful, when all you’re really doing is making a mess.

            I used to know her, once.

            I walk down the hall to the principal’s office.  My teachers can’t understand my lack of focus in class.  It’s irony at its finest.  When people say, let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, what they mean is, let me know what I can handle.  Not tell me to go away.  Not scream all your anger and frustration and guilt right into my face.  And what I want to say to them is, if you’re not going to help me, at least let me forget about it all.  But for some reason, that’s the one thing they seem least willing to do. 

            “I can’t put up with this, Derek,” Mrs. Forester, my World History teacher, said when she caught me staring blankly out the window for the third time today.  “Do you want me to send you to the office?”  I looked up at her blearily and kind of shook my head, like I was confused.  She sighed.  “I have no idea why you’re having such a hard time focusing today.  I swear, it’s like you’re half-dead or something.”

            This generic remark was met with pressurized silence. Everyone waiting for the moment when the teacher realized what she’d said, when she stumbled over the apologies.   They wanted the release, the moment when they could leave everything behind them as easily as I’d never been able to. 

            I wasn’t angry at Mrs. Forester, who had put one hand up to her mouth like she could reel the words back in.  No, I was angry at my fellow students, who were staring at their teacher with malice, frowns decorating their faces like half-wreathes left over from Christmas.  They’d avoided her desk since it happened, even more than before, until a couple moving men came and took it out so we could all move a little easier.  But they’d all shrunk away from it for the first few days it was still in here, acting like it wasn’t safe, like suicide was catching. 

            And that’s why I said it.  I stood up from my desk and stared straight at Mrs. Forester.  My lips moved fluidly, calmly, as I told her I would be more than half-dead if I ever got the chance. 

            The collective gasp from behind me was less than surprising.  This is gossip, the kind that circulates madly for a day or two and is confined to furtive glances in the hallway and whispers of, “I knew they were planning something.  It’s only a matter of time before he does it, just like his crazy girlfriend.” 

            Honestly, I haven’t given it much thought.  If I did it, I would want it to be something poetic.  Not like the usual things you read about in the newspaper, where some kid shoots himself in his attic while his parents are out at their weekly gardening club.  At least when it happened, she was…

            I don’t let myself get farther than that. 

            So that’s why I’m here, pushing open the door of the school principal’s office and stepping inside.  Other, bigger schools might have more than one room for the counselors, principal, and advisors, divided into segments like cubicles, all squashed together.  The fake walls are so thin you can sit in the sports medicine director’s office and listen to the woes of the unfortunate teenager who’s been sent to the counselor for “substance abuse”.  The buckle-down atmosphere the cubicles provide is largely negated by the countless posters slathered on the walls by some well-meaning PTA mom who believes that we students are still in second grade.  I sit down in a wire chair below a picture of a frazzled-looking cat dangling from a branch, with a caption that reads Hang in there!!! 

            This is doing nothing to improve my morbid state of mind.

            The secretary, a wide woman with frizzy blonde hair and huge glasses that she probably thinks look “nerdy-chic” glances up at me.  “What do you want?” she asks.   I cough and look at her nameplate, which identifies her as Cindy.

            “I’m here to see the principal.”  She sighs in an, “of course you are” kind of way and types a few things in on her keyboard.  I wait for her to turn back to me, but she continues to stare at her monitor, undeterred.  It takes me a few minutes to realize I’m being ignored.  I decide to try again.  “Can I go in now?”

            Her glare is like a laser beam.  “If you’re going to be a smart-aleck, you can get out of here and take your skinny butt right to detention,” she says without missing a beat.  Guess she’s had to deal with a lot of idiots.  “Sit down and shut up until I say so.”

            I decide that I like Cindy.

            After about ten minutes of waiting, when I’m starting to think about taking her up on her offer, someone comes out of the cubicle to my right and calls my name.  I stand up and follow them, into the cramped office of the principal.

            Walking into Mr. Atkins’ office after the waiting room is like going from the safe haven of kindergarten to a Jesuit school from the eighteen hundreds.  The man himself looks less than stern, with a round, flabby face and a bald spot, so he’s decorated his office in an effort to look more imposing.  A stack of referrals balances precariously on the corner of his desk, and the walls are deliberately hung with posters that detail the risks of drunk driving, doing drugs, and getting tattoos, complete with pictures in vivid Technicolor.  He always sits with his hands clasped on the desk in front of him, like no matter what you say to him, it’s going to be of the uttermost importance.

            When I walk in, he sighs and says, “Again?”

            I hand him the note Mrs. Forester gave me.  He takes a minute to read it over before he looks at me and says, “Sit,” gesturing at the chair in front of him.  I sit, and he gives me a once-over before he starts in on me, like I knew he would.

            “Why do you do this to yourself, Derek?”  He rummages through some papers under his desk and comes up with one, which he slaps against the desk like he wishes it were my head.  “Your teachers tell me you haven’t been doing any of your work.  You’re failing all your classes.  At this rate, you won’t be able to graduate in the spring.”  He looks at me with a look that should be patented as “piercing”.  “You’re smart, Derek.  You got a 4.0 last year.  You were on track to become a valedictorian. Why do you insist on doing this?”

            I stay silent, letting him get it out of his system.  Maybe if I’m good, he’ll let me go after five minutes or so.  He’s not one for long-winded discussions. 

            He leans in close, and I can see the top of his bald spot like the third eye teachers always tell you they have.  “I know it’s been hard for you these past few months.  I understand.  But you have to let it go.  You have to let her go.  She can’t rule your life from beyond the grave.”  His swampy eyes are sad and futile.  “It’s time to move on.”

            I stare down at my hands and don’t reply.  He looks frustrated, but he only says, “You have to start focusing on your future.  Not something that happened months ago.”

            I hate this.  I hate to hear them talk about her like she’s some kind of trash that I can just throw away whenever I want.  I stare harder, feeling the anger start to build.  Fortunately for him, the principal has decided that he’s had enough of my unresponsive butt taking up space in his office.  He stands up and looks at me.

            “Think about what I said.  You need to start focusing on your schoolwork or you’re not going to graduate.  It’s your choice.”  He nods to me and walks out, and after a moment I follow him. 

            I leave the office and start back down the hall.  Then it occurs to me: I don’t have to go back to class.  I don’t have to go anywhere at all.  No one will miss me.  So I turn and walk, past the cafeteria and the science wing and the gym, out the double doors and into the sunlight.  I stand there and blink for a minute, pretending to consider where I should go, even though I already know where I’ll end up.

            Our school is on the outskirts of a fairly large city, and I head to the heart of it, dodging workers on their way to lunch and families back from a morning in the park.  When I get to the building, I don’t hesitate, heading up and up the innumerable flights of stairs until my breath puffs and my legs burn.  But I don’t stop until I’m at the top, on the roof, looking out over the city I can’t seem to rise above, no matter how far I climb.  I go to the edge and sit down, legs under the railings.  Like I always do, I wonder what she felt like when she stood up here, before she climbed over the railing and whispered the last words I’ll never know.  Before she spread out her arms and leaned forward, a bird finally ready to take flight.

            Someone told me, not too long after it happened, that she would have died before she hit the ground.  This was meant to comfort me, I guess.  Instead, though, it made me think about what her last sight must have been.  Before the overwhelming terror set in, before the fear suffocated her, she would have looked down and seen the city, separated with little flashes and beads of light, blurred by the speed of falling.  I envy her this sometimes, because there is nothing that beautiful in the living world.  But I don’t envy her enough to follow her.

            I used to come up here and contemplate doing it.  I told myself that it was my fault, that I was obligated to complement her flight into death with one of my own.  But I never did.  I still don’t know why.  Maybe I’m a coward.  All I know is that I don’t blame her for what she did.  But I would never be able to stop blaming myself.

            I rest my head on the cool metal railing, taking it all in.   Then I stand up to go, because no matter where I am, part of me is always here with her, watching while she takes the final leap into the unknown.  I will be here forever, while the life of the world goes on below and above and around me, while people live and love and die and the world refuses to stop spinning and take notice. 

                While I turn and head down the stairs, back to the living, leaving myself behind.

 

 

Reviews

[Marie]

This is very good. Derek has a lot to get over; he's handling it the best way he can.

[Textbook Enigmatic]

I enjoyed reading this. My favorite line was probably, " I hate to hear them talk about her like she’s some kind of trash that I can just throw away whenever I want." Really touching. I think you captured Derek's feelings and reactions perfectly. Thanks for a good read.