Sweet Viewpoint

“You think you’ll make it to the top?” Lev asks. The moonlight dramatizes his hollow cheeks and protruding cheekbones while his eyes become two dark pits.

“Humph, yeah.” I roll my eyes and barely see his slight smile.

“Let’s go, then.” He adjusts the backpack straps on his shoulders and using momentum starts up the dark hill. A couple of quiet moments pass of us climbing and trying not to trip until I hear Lev’s hushed cursing,

“F**k, this is a lot harder in the dark.”

I don’t answer and try to concentrate on every step. The sandy narrow path, surrounded with dry shrub, full of sudden holes and bumps, scares me with its unpredictability in the pitch darkness; but I do my best not to gasp when I trip or whimper when a bush that seemed to come out of nowhere scratches my arm. I don’t want my big brother to think I’m afraid or weak.

“Almost there,” he huffs, “you ok?”

“Mhm.” I murmur and stub my toe on a rock. Finally, I feel Lev’s hand reach for mine and help me up to the top.

As soon as I straighten out my heart leaps up to my throat and I squeeze his arm. In front of us is all of San Diego in all of its night beauty. I could see the highway like a necklace with one strand of red and another of white beads, the glowing football field, downtown’s skyscrapers, which blink on top with red lights, warning the passing by planes.

“Sweet viewpoint, right?” Lev asks and starts to walk forward. I follow his silhouette that’s bold and dark against the glimmering city.

“Is this one of your special places? Like the Mushroom Caves?” I ask.

“Yeah, totally. Look, that dark thing is the ocean.” He points west to a spot between two hills.

“My eyesight isn’t good enough to depict the black ocean from the black sky,” I answer.

“Oh, never mind.” He hops onto a big boulder and shrugs off his heavy backpack. “I just wanted to write in my journal if that’s ok with you. Didn’t you bring yours, too?”

I nod and take out mine from my purse with the pen Lev gave me as a present that same day. We sit down next to each other and I feel the stone’s cold surface press against my already shivering body. If mom was here, she wouldn’t have let me sit down on a rock, even with a jacket underneath. But she was asleep in bed in our warm house and somehow the fact that I was freezing made me feel badass. I was still looking at the city when I heard Lev scribbling in his journal as if the thoughts in his head would fly away into the crystal clear air and to the ocean if he didn’t put them down on paper fast enough. Several times I pressed my pen down, but nothing came to me. I felt as empty and peaceful as the sky above the rushing city. Quietly I closed my journal and put it away into my purse with the pen. For the rest of the two hours we were there I either sat and looked out or lied down and got lost in the night. Sometimes the wind would get so hard I was surprised how it didn’t blow the stars away. Every ten minutes or so Lev would stop and flick his wrist to ease the cramping, then bend down again and continue his intense writing. The two hours seemed to stop being part of time, part of this world and flow by like eternity.

Reviews

[TheAimlessWanderer]

aww you and your brother sound so sweet if this is a true story great imagery and character commentary well fleshed out feels like i somehow just about finished reading a novel and i was on the last page with a happy ending after a lot of hardship those lulls in life where there is nothing more precious than that moment your just there experiencing fully taking everything in breathing in and appreciating that moment great job keep writing (: