Lost in Flame

I don't usually write fanfiction, but in this case, it was a school assignment--a script. Well, it turns out the script was never used once in the final product, but in any case here the story is. This is a mashup of Fahrenheit 451 and Of Mice and Men. Although it doesn't have to be--substitute any old name for Lennie, and it would work just fine.

            Montag sighs, looks at the sky. It is unseasonably blue; incredibly, impossibly blue. All is clear except for the tall plume of gray to the left, trailing east with the wind. Another fire. Someone, somewhere, is screaming, no doubt—screaming through the silver tape pasted on his mouth, screaming as he or she is dragged away by the policemen, packaged into a gray beetle and sped away, to a distant jail. Somewhere, books are burning.

            The smoke feels wrong. It mars the clear sky, a black cinder, an ashy mark. It feels like it should be only him and the sky and the grass beneath him, on this perfect day, under this sun. Feels as if…as if…

            “Montag!”

            Montag grimaces, shaken out of his reverie. Lennie comes running up the corner, sees him lying in the grass. Frowns. “Montag, what are you doing, just lying there? I swear, you get odder every day. We’ve got work to do. Some guy in West District with an attic fulla books--Beatty wants us to handle it.”

            Montag returns his gaze to the sky. “I dunno, Lennie. Somehow I just don’t feel like it today.”

            Lennie stares at him. “What’re you saying? We can’t just miss out on it. Besides, it’ll be fun!”

            Montag lets out a sharp bark of a laugh. “Fun! That’s right. Lennie, somewhere along the line this all just got…monotonous. For me, that is. I can’t get my heart into it no more. Sometimes I just sit down and wonder about things…about the books, about the words. Think, Lennie! Thousands of words…then we come along, and they’re gone in an instant! Dunno, Lennie…sometimes I just don’t like this job.”

            Lennie just stares at him, his face a mixture of anger and incredulousness. “I swear, Montag! What the hell’s gotten into your mind? Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you at all anymore…like you’re not the same guy I grew up with. You say these crazy things all of a sudden, that almost border on…” His words come out edgy.

             “Blasphemy?”

            “Huh?”

            “Never mind. I’m not going, so just go by yourself, okay? Tell Beatty I’m sick.”

            Lennie groans. “Just this once.”

            “Fine.”

            Lennie walks away, grumbling under his breath. But before he leaves, Montag stops him. “Oh, and Lennie?”

            “Yeah?” He says, faintly resentful.

            “Do you ever look at the sky?”

            “Why would I? With my bad eyes, it’s just a haze. Fire is prettier, anytime.” He throws back, and leaves without a glance.

           

            Montag is walking the short distance from the fire station to his empty home, hands in his pockets, hat perched slightly down over his face. Suddenly, he stops, looks up. A girl is standing in the middle of the sidewalk. She seems to be about fourteen and fifteen, yet something in the quality of her demeanor makes her seem older than that, wiser. She looks at Montag and smiles.

            Montag smiles back. “Good afternoon, Clarisse.”

            “Good afternoon!” She skips to his side, and they walk home together, talking.

            Montag asks her a question. “Clarisse, why is it that I feel I know you so well? It’s as if you’ve always been here—as if we’ve walked down this stretch of pavement for years, not weeks.”

            She smiles. “That’s because we’re kindred spirits, Montag.”

            “Kindred spirits?”

            “This world is full of noise, noise and destruction. Everyone in this city is night-blind. They’ve spent so much time playing with flame that they can’t see the stars. We’re the only ones who look at the moon every now and then—we’re sky-gazers, you and I.”

            He is silent for a moment. “That’s right…no one ever looks at the sky, anymore.” He says softly.

            Then: “Clarisse, what if we escaped?”

            “That would be wonderful…if I could go with my family. We’d just travel and travel, with no one to tell us what we couldn’t do, and what we had to. At night, the sky would be clear…we could lie on our backs and watch the stars.”

            Montag smiles. “A wonderful dream.”

            When they reach his doorstop, Montag tells her to wait. He hurries inside, and retrieves something from inside his ventilator grille. He hands it to her. It is an old edition of the bible—leather bound, its pages fragile as moth wings. “I couldn’t bring myself to burn it.”

            Clarisse hugs it to her chest, smiles happily. “Thank you, Montag. I’ll treasure it.”

            The same meadow, the same sky. Montag lies down on the grass, stretches and casually hooks his arms behind his head. He closes his eyes, lets himself feel the warmth of the sun on his face, melting into his skin. The sun beats down, beats down, traces all of him with warm fingers, and he sinks into a blissful sleep.

            Lennie tromps down beside him, sits down heavily. Montag’s eyes flick open. He turns his head to the side. “Hello.”

            “Hello.” Lennie says cheerily. Then, “You shoulda been there last night!”

            “Oh. Really?”

            “Yeah. Two fires that night. First one was some crazy old bat, with an attic full of books. Neighbor called her in. God, that house went up like a tin can fulla petrol.”

            “And the second?”

            “Well. That was a strange one. Some teenage girl—weird, how they’re going cuckoo younger now. Whole family was cuckoo. Something called a bible…”

            “What?” Montag sits up. His eyes are fixed on Lennie, piercingly, and Lennie shifts nervously.

            “Well, like I said, some teenage girl. She sure was attached to that book—even went back for it…”

            “What?” Montag says again, but it’s softer, almost despairing.

            “She went back for it, when we weren’t watching. Just when I lit the kerosene…”

            “You burned her? A teenage girl!”

            “Well, there was nothing we could do! By the time we saw her, it was too late!”

            Montag buries his head in his hands.

            “Geez. What’s with you? She shouldn’t have been reading in the first place…God knows it’s against the law…”

            Montag only shakes his head, slowly.

            “Dunno where she even got that book…” Lennie mutters, defensively. He gets up and paces, mutters some more. “Whole family was crazy…what was going through their heads…” and even, something suspiciously like, “got what was coming to them…”

            Montag still doesn’t move, and at last Lennie leaves. He takes one look back, a little guilty, a little angry, a little confused.

            Montag does not make a sound.

            The dawn streams in through the parlor windows, into the hall, illumining the faint blue form of Montag. He is feverishly stuffing items into a bag. Toothbrush, clothes, a book, another book… he stands up, violently zips up the bag. He swings it over a shoulder, and heads out the door. Just before he’s swallowed up by the light, he turns and takes a last look at his house. Bare white walls, rooms almost devoid of furniture. There never was anything here for him.

            He hikes through the streets with the bag thrown over his shoulder, a solitary figure. The sun is barely up, but loud music and chatter is already leaking from beneath the parlor doors. He passes the meadow, takes a last look around. The grass sparkles with drops of dew, like faintly winking stars. Then he turns, and continues on.

            Past the Car-Wrecker park, past the Window-Smasher place, past the fire station. He is almost to the city limits when there is the sound of pattering feet behind him. He turns, warily, and there is Lennie. He is still in his pajamas, hair tousled and plastered to his forehead. “Lennie!”

            “Montag! What do you think you’re doing? I was just out of bed when I saw you—Montag, where the heck are you going?”

            “Me? I don’t know where I’m going…I guess, towards a dream. Or is it that I’m waking up?”

            “You’re talking nonsense. Montag, wake up! Stop this crazy quest, journey, whatever it is. Go back to bed and maybe you’ll get up with some sense in your head.”

            “I couldn’t. Lennie, I can’t stay here. It doesn’t seem like I’m…living, anymore.”

            Lennie doesn’t hear him. His eyes have fallen on his bag. The corner seam has burst, and out of the gap pokes the corner of a book.

            “Montag, is that… a book?” Lennie’s voice is hushed.

            “Lennie…”

            “What the hell, Montag? You’ve been weird for months, but this…I don’t know you anymore. You’re someone else. Someone insane.”

            “Lennie, don’t you see? I was insane, and it’s only now that I’ve..”

            But Lennie isn’t listening. He looks at Montag, and his eyes are hard. “Montag, I can’t let you leave. You’re under arrest.”

            Montag is speechless. He looks at Lennie, really looks at him, and realizes something. Or knows something, that perhaps he had already known. He stills. And he reaches behind his back, and pulls something from his belt. A gun. He had thought, when he brought it, that in case they came after him…

            He points it at Lennie. “Lennie, let me go. Don’t make me use this.” His voice is steady and calm, dangerously so.

            “You wouldn’t.”

            Montag just holds it there. But then, behind Lennie, there’s the sound of a kicked stone. Montag looks up. A pedestrian, that rare creature, crossing the street. He looks up at the two, and his eyes widen.

            In that moment, Lennie grabs the gun. “Just put your hands up, Montag.”

            But Montag’s eyes are firm on his, and he goes for the gun. A single shot ricochets off the wall behind them, loud as a firecracker in the still streets, and then Montag is on him. He grabs for the gun, finds it. But then Lennie pulls his arm, and his finger tightens on the trigger…

            And another shot sounds. Suddenly, Lennie is bleeding. He touches his arm, feels the wetness there. Looks up at Montag, amazed. “You…”

            Montag steps back. The gun clatters to the ground. His face is completely open, completely in shock. Then he is running, running, and Lennie makes no move to stop him. He just stands there, silently, the gun cold at his feet.

            A lone man strides through the wilderness. His bag is hiked up over his shoulder, and his cap is yanked low down over his face, shadowing it. He walks like a man in thought. Flowers nod at his feet, and cirrus scurry overhead, but he takes no notice.

            In slow motion:

            A boom. Montag looks back, startled. The horizon is overwhelmingly bright for a moment, and then the blast throws him back, carries him. The roar goes on and on and on, and the city is ash and dust and then just gone.

            He lies on his back, bag thrown to the side, looking at the sky. The clouds are gone now, the world silent, and the sky is utterly and impossibly blue.

            After a while, he starts to laugh. “I wonder…if you ever even saw it coming.”

           

           

           

Going Nowhere Fast

            The road unfolds before me. All sunlight is this summer day, and the breeze is cool on my face, cool on the tears that are struck from my face by the wind. I look ahead and do not speak. The windshield has disappeared—somehow, the road has disappeared. I see nothing, and vaguely in me is the feeling that this is dangerous. I can’t bring myself to care. My face is flame and ice and beside me is my husband, sitting still and stolid as stone, arms folded, eyes glaring resolutely forward. I want, suddenly desperate, to be alone.

            The car forges steadily on, ninety miles per hour, straight and arrow-like down the smooth black road. The wind on my face, the sun in my hair, the world rushing blind and silent past me. I want the car to weave, the tires to skid and squeal. I wish the car to flip, to crash suddenly fast and violent off the bridge and into the glimmering sea. For this dead silent world to come to life. Anything so he will turn and look at me. Anything so I can say something, something to break this tension that lies on us still and terrible as molten metal.

            I want to be away from here.

            And so I wish myself into Anne, into a woman of rain hovering in the clouds. I wish myself flying through mist and shadow, into the glaring sun. I wish sweet rain that falls gently down, bathing myself and this man who sees nothing, hears nothing, knows nothing of himself or me or anyone. I wish this quietly mocking puppet show to end at last. I wish…

            The car slides softly into the driveway. All of a sudden, we are home. The car idles to a stop—my hand pulls the key from the ignition, a trembling white stranger. My husband punches off his seatbelt, pulls abruptly out of his seat, slams the door. I sit gently quivering in my seat, grasping for the dreams that slide ever faster from my reach.

            At last, the music groans to a stop. Salt is dry and crackling on my face as I smile, pull the corners of my face into an obscene grin for no reason, no reason at all. Slowly, almost gracefully, I take my purse and step out of the car. I leave it there, door open, still lowly rumbling in the callous August sun. I want to run away.

            My feet lead me to the door, but I stop. Half irrationally and half very reasonably, I don’t want to go in. I can hear the sounds of my husband inside, opening and slamming a door, throwing clothes into a suitcase and swearing as he does. What will this house be like when he is gone? Will I wander lonely through these halls, a silent ghost, no freer with a ring missing and the door unlocked?

            Every time I walk through this door, I’ll remember this moment, this belated and ungraceful leaving. Every time I sip a glass of water, I’ll think of his lips on the rim.

            I just want to be away from here. Take a ticket and a plane to Moscow, Houston, anywhere but here. Drive until the sun falls from the sky and the gas sputters empty, drive miles and miles away from this life. Go, go go…walk the world round. Take a rocket and shoot for Mars. Take a pill and thirty more, leave to that nebulous place called Death where he would never condescend to go. Just leave. Take a one-way ticket away from this mind, this life, these eyes that only want to close.

            I walk softly in the door, up the stairs, sneak up behind him like I used to do when we were young. Just kids, naïve, far away from life and death and lack of love. On the way, I take his keys from his jacket on the wall, muffle them in my hand and slip them in my purse. His wallet too.

            I light a hand on his shoulder. He turns around, eyes fierce, mouth wide and about to speak. I twist off my ring and place it in his open mouth. It closes, and I catch a hint of his confusion before I turn, flick off the light, walk softly out the door.

            This house is dim. These walls, eyeless. The world is deaf and blind and night before my hand on the door, my life cracking open. The almost-autumn light sets the world on fire, throws sparks on my dress and my open face, draws tears from my eyes. I am a child again, and this world is far and wide. There is anywhere to go. Anywhere, anywhere, anywhere…

            I get in the car. Twist ignition and whiz fast down the road, wind in my hair, sun on my face. Break speed limits all the way.

            I have a plane to catch.

           

            

Nostalgia

Nostalgia

            The desk was of fine, pale wood, worn and burnished by the hands of a hundred schoolchildren. It had been painted blue long ago, but the paint had chipped off from the years and the touch of childish hands. Now only a few traces of faded blue remained, edging the corners of the bottom of the desk, preserved beneath black medallions of petrified gum. The desk bore the badges of time and use. Children had come and children had gone: the desk had seen them all.

            It is summer now, and the desk sits with its brethren in the empty classroom. Sunlight streams in through the grimy window, lighting the layers of dust on desks and floor, turning drifting motes to sparks or stars. In a way, the old classroom is its own universe. The air here is full of age and memories--ghostly traces of laughter, faces of children long past and buried. Sunlight paints a mottled fresco on the wall, lights gently on the dust of ages past. Nothing moves, nothing stirs, but the room is full of the swelling tide of time.

Imagine Blue

I wrote it based on a dream I had...

‘There is always hope where you can see the sky.’ 

            Imagine a bunk bed that rises as high as a multilevel parking lot—a dimly lit tower of white, enclosed by walls of darkness. Layers upon layers of king-size mattresses and cloudlike linens, layers of children lying clustered in the dark and the warmth. It is in such a cloth cave as this that my family and I live.

            The bodily comfort does not extend to the spirit—our bodies are warm, but our spirits are shivering. The priests rule over all, and their reign is one of terror and oppression. Our little society has strict boundaries. Live, eat, sleep, fall over the edge into the drawer-bed, and be reborn. Again. And again. Speak out against the cycle, and you are punished severely.

            Monotony breeds madness. My sister, the closest thing we had to a mother, broke one day. She just couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t raise hell. No, she rose the calm hope of heaven in the midst of a living death—one quiet prayer—and for it, she was extinguished. Now, she lies above us, undergoing exorcism by the High Priests. Her muffled screams reverberated through the mattress as we huddled terrified below. The occasional tips of instruments, thin and sharp, poke through the mattress every now and then. They are dimly gleaming reminders of the punishment for speaking out loud.

            As I sit there and listen, an ember grows within me, hot and corrosive. It is not the haughty, indignant anger of a person wronged. Rather, it is the flickering, bestial rage of one who is already low to the ground, but feels the burn of injustice nevertheless. Thoughts come to me, defiant, mutinous. Dark plots of rebellion form themselves.

            An acolyte is descending by us on the ladder—newly chosen, eager for blood. Beside me, her hair downy soft under my palm, my smallest sister murmurs incomprehensibly in a dream. The acolyte turns his head. “What was that?” He demands, sharply. He steps off the ladder, our mattress creaking under his tread, and crouches by my sister. He seizes her hair and lifts her head off of the mattress. “Did I hear you speak, blasphemer? What words of mutiny are you planning against our High Father?” He shakes her, roughly. My sister has awoken to a nightmare, but still she has the sense not to babble. She only watches him, mutely, eyes wide and terrified. The acolyte’s hand goes to his belt, fumbles at his side. It is all I need for the ember in my chest to burst into flames, unthinking, furious, and free. I kick him in the side with all the strength I possess. He tumbles over the edge, his face blank with surprise. A few moments later, I hear a wail rise. Cautiously, I look over the edge. Far below, lying swathed in the acolyte’s robes, a newborn infant squirms and cries in the drawer-bed.

            I pull my head back inside. Despite the cold knowledge that we are now in imminent danger, the flames in my chest glow brighter than ever. A slow, mad grin spreads across my face.

            It is late that wake-cycle, almost too late for dinner, and we wait in suspense. Have I been discovered? Then at last, I hear the slow, plodding steps of a meal-bearer, and I check a sigh of relief. But when the meal-bearer comes into sight, he is not wearing the white robes of an acolyte, but a black, close-fitting outfit of a type I have never seen before. His face, too, is not smooth like that of everyone but the Wisewomen. It is craggy, and rough, and slashed by lines that darken when he frowns. Silently, he holds out the tray. On it is a single white envelope. I take it. He turns and leaves, before I can voice a single hushed question.

            The faces of my family are furrowed by the same question that is on my own. Carefully, I tear the envelope open. A piece of paper falls out, haphazardly folded. Unfolded, it reads: 1000 breaths past the start of the sleep-cycle. Meet me at the top. This is your family’s only chance for salvation. Marked hastily lower down, as if a last-minute thought, is: Bring your sister. The paper answers no questions. If anything, it raises a thousand new ones. My family had not been to the top since the time we received our newest baby—my youngest brother, sleeping soundly at my feet. And by sister, he can only mean… My gaze travels upwards. No longer does my oldest sister scream, but sometimes, in the middle of the sleep-cycle, when the only sound is the continuous breathing of a thousand families, I can hear her muffled sobs.

            It only takes a few moments to decide. It is die trying to escape, or wait for the priests to come next morning and drag us all to a permanent death. At least this way, we can act instead of waiting for our fate to come to us. At least this way, we have hope.

            We do not sleep that sleep-cycle, as my youngest sister counts the steady breaths of my youngest brother. Instead, we huddle together, one pack, one circle. We reminisce, remembering past lives as well as this present. In all, we had been together. I apologize and they forgive. We weep and laugh together, sharing our goodbyes until my youngest sister speaks and tells us it is time.

            Silently, we climb the ladder, I in the front, my youngest brother cradled in one arm. Desperately, I hope that he will not awake, that all the priests and acolytes are sleeping and not climbing the stairs. My head knows that this is most likely a suicide mission, but my heart clings to hope and life with fervor. A moment passes, then another, and we reach the level of my sister’s exorcism. My heart nearly stops. I hoped that my sister’s torturers would be resting in their own beds, but they are curled asleep around their victim. Three lions, so close to their terrified prey! My sister is awake. She is looking at me.

            She is thin and pale, but more alive than the skeleton I expected. She is sitting upright, and her eyes bore intensely into mine. The spirit in those eyes had not been broken by the endless cycles of torture. Instead, her ordeal tempered her, forging that spirit into something as hard and bright as steel. I am gratified, and a little afraid. The sister I knew, the comforting mother figure who sang hushed lullabies at night, is nowhere to be seen.

            Her gaze breaks from mine, and I exhale. I pass my youngest brother down to my second-oldest sister, unwilling to set him down on my sister’s bloodstained mattress. Now, I can freely examine my oldest sister. She is fumbling at the oldest priest’s belt, the shackles around her wrists clinking as she moves. Her fingers seem stiff, and as she bends over him, I notice white streaks in her hair. There are old scars showing through the tears of her clothes, silvery-white, and some new ones. The priests healed her as well as hurt her, so as to prolong the torture. I see burns, as well, and wounds that have a strange resemblance to tooth marks.

            At last, my sister stops fumbling, having found what she was looking for. She takes a key from the priest’s belt and unlocks first the shackles around her wrists, then the ones around her ankles. They fall without a sound, revealing chafed red wounds underneath. Slowly, ever so carefully, she walks toward us, stopping a few times as the pain takes her. After what seems like an age, she is before me on the ladder, and without so much as a nod, she starts climbing. I take my brother from my second-oldest sister’s arms, and we resume our ascent.

            We pass a thousand levels by, leaving the place of my sister’s torture far behind. As my arm cramps and my legs start to burn, my sister does not seem to tire, but climbs more quickly than ever, hurrying to get to the top. My muscles protesting, I climb faster as well. The sleep-light falls softly on us, silvery, and a little bluish. It gleams on my sister’s scars, on the white streaks in her hair that were never there before, and lends a dreamy sense to our quiet ascent. It feels almost as if I am asleep, but for the cold on my skin and the light that grows ever brighter as we near the top.

            We are there. My legs keep on climbing into the air, and I collapse onto the soft mattress, my brother rolling from my arms, still asleep despite everything. My sister stands before me, looking into the eyes of the man clad in black standing at the far edge, waiting for us. “We are ready,” she says, and her quiet words seem loud in the stillness of the sleep-cycle. The man nods. “Very well,” he says, and gestures for us to come to the edge. My sister takes my hand and pulls me up, and I take up my brother in turn. We walk to the edge. All of us are there, our faces pale and grave in the sleep-light. My sister is palest of all.

            We look down. Here is the endless abyss, the place the priests throw those of us who have committed the greatest of crimes. Fall here, it is said, and you will die a permanent death. But now, glinting at the very bottom where there should be naught but utter black, I see a faint gleam of white. I have just begun to turn when the man pushes us, as I knew he would, as I have always known he would. We fall.

            We fall in silence, befitting this world of silence. The cold wind feels refreshing on my skin, and I smile. For the first time, I feel almost alive. We fall into oblivion, but the light grows brighter still—a pure, clear light, silvery, and a little blue.

            I wake up. The cool sheets feel nice on my skin, and I wonder if it was all a dream. Lying around me is my family: Andrew, Alex, Avery, Angela, Ally…Alexis. I say the names out loud, taste them on my tongue. There’s a window high above our place of rest. Through it, I can see the sky. Blue.

Stone Mountain

I woke up from a dream one night with the phrase 'I'm a ghetto kid of Stone' echoing in my head. 

I’m a ghetto kid of Stone

Black face, dirty feet,

Angry to the bone.

Living hard on the street.

Hoodlums on the curbs,

Swearing oaths, spitting turds.

Gangstas after dark.

That’s when the shooting starts.

Police cars wait like sharks

Engines purr the city’s song.

Come out after dark.

Sirens, screaming all night long.

Last night I saw the war

In a boy that looked like me

Some blood, not much gore,

And the marks I couldn’t see.

I ran from death in the dark,

My rage, my coward heart,

Danger lurking at my side.

I ran, but I can’t hide.

Got no words left ‘cause I bit it,

But do I dare to admit it?

I’m scared and I’m alone.

I’m a ghetto kid of Stone.

To Save a Life

         It was a damp, gusty March day, and the man huddled deeper into the recesses of his coat as he walked to the station, striding quickly to warm his legs. He noticed the masses of pedestrians only as obstacles on his planned path. His mind was on greater things.

            It was all he could think about. He would immerse himself in his work, spending late hours bent over charts and newspapers, thermoses of black coffee standing all around him like sentries. Histograms, numbers, names he burned into his brain, glowing afterimages that floated through his dreams at night. Always, though, the dream came, like some creature that stalked him through the woods, pouncing on him when he least expected it. It would come as a physical blow, the dream of Theresa lying naked and gray in the tub, her long black hair floating around her like a halo. In the dream, she sat up, water rushing off her, and opened her arms. In the dream, she welcomed him, a smile on her face, her eyes blank and dead.

            The man walked faster now, shoving pedestrians out of his way, the brisk clack of his boots setting a swift rhythm. His face was closed and blank, a mask. The indignant cries of civilians did not reach him behind a steel wall ten stories high, a mile thick. Near him now, his destination rose gray and forbidding, harshened by the dour light. The station.

            The woman behind the desk looked up as he came in. “We have an urgent for you. Elmer Street, the Don Castro building.” She didn’t bother with greetings. They knew each other well. The man nodded, and walked briskly back out of the door, having spent little more than a moment inside.

            As soon as he came under the chilly white sky again, the memories hit him. He remembered the sound of Theresa’s voice, rough from the inhaler she used for the asthma that had plagued her from age six. It made him ache to recall it. After it happened, he had spent hours at the answering machine, playing her voice mail again and again. He remembered staring out at the ruthless sky, the phone creaking under his white-knuckled grip. The last thing she said to him was about the garden. He remembered her complaining about the cinder blocks strewn in the petunias, left over from remodeling. They were crushing the new seedlings, he heard her say. He had promised to help after school, but he didn’t make it. There was a boy with his father’s rifle, and that took priority. Those were the same blocks that had been resting on her thin chest, weighing down her down, when he walked in.

            He turned the corner onto Elmer Street. It was a kind of twisted irony that the daughter of a suicide prevention officer had committed suicide herself. He had been so busy trying to help the despairing and the desperate, so passionate about his work and the good he was doing in the world, that he had neglected his own daughter. He had been too busy to comprehend the signs of her depression, her growing inclination towards suicide. He hadn’t been able to convince her out of it. He hadn’t been around to convince her of anything. He hadn’t done his duty, as a suicide prevention officer and as a father.

            The Don Castro building came into sight, cordoned off with yellow tape and surrounded by onlookers. A murmuring crowd, staring at the tiny dot above it with a mixture of fear and excitement. He hated jumpers, had always hated them. He hated the splattered sidewalk and the desiccated bodies when he failed, the uneasy feeling of the building swaying beneath him. He hated the thrilled anticipation of the spectators, like it couldn’t just as easily be one of them. One of their children. He flashed his badge at the police lieutenant in a familiar gesture, and he let him in. He ducked under yellow tape and into the front door, ignoring shouts and queries all the way.

            The Don Castro building had stood in the city for decades. The wallpaper was peeling, the industrial carpet stained. It bore no resemblance to the grand Italian hotel it was named for. The spiral stairway was rickety as well--rusted wrought iron, that shook underneath his nervous grip. The door swung open before him, hinges shrieking. And then he was out, onto the roof.

            If it was gusty on the sidewalk, it was a hurricane up here. He hunched against the screaming wind, his breath coming out in crystalline puffs. His eyes automatically sought the jumper.

            She stood with ease on the edge, perched lightly as if the wind wasn’t tearing at her, sending her hair snapping and crackling around her. Her back was straight, at attention. Her gaze clear and bright, unlike the many dull, hopeless eyes he had seen, in person, and in death.  She was looking at him.

            There was a cluster of officers around her, close but not too close, talking into belt radios that squawked back chatter. They seemed absurdly like worshippers bowed in prayer to him, bent as they were against the wind. They broke apart as they saw him, heads turning in relief. One of them, a tall man named Tim, walked up to him.

            “Thank goodness you’re here. She won’t listen to us, to any of us. Just turns her head and stares at the view like that’s what she came for. Maybe you can do something.”

            He nodded, but his eyes were on the girl. She looked serene, and utterly unafraid. Amused, like she could hear what they’re saying, and thought it funny. All the man could see was that she was Theresa. From the hair to the pose to those clear, bright eyes.

            He walked up to her, straight and tall now, demeanor calm and resolute. He spoke to her, voice patient and gentle. It was an act. He was a wreck.

            “Come down, now. It’s not worth it. You’ve got your life ahead of you.”

            She stared at him, eyes no longer amused, and spoke. Her voice was high and fluting, so unlike Theresa’s that he was taken aback.

            “I have a math teacher, 7^th grade. He teaches Honors Pre-algebra, and he once told us about a friend of his. He said he was a police officer, and his job was to convince people about to commit suicide out of it. He told us all about the banal things he convinced them with-things like it wasn’t worth it, and all their problems would pass eventually. Do you know what I said?”

             “What?”

            “I said if I was standing on top of that building, wind rushing in my hair, I wouldn’t be convinced.”

            The man’s shoulders drew back. He could recognize a challenge when he heard one. “I’m sorry you think that way,” he said.

            She regarded him, eyes clear, cocky, bitter. “Do you care?” she said.

            “Care about what?” That you do think that way? That you believe in it?

            “Care about me. Do you honestly care whether I step off this building or not? I can see it in your eyes. You’ve seen too many kids like me. You just want this to be over with. For me to be over with.”

            The man didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. He thought again of Theresa, gray and lifeless in the tub. He thought of how this girl who looked so much like her was someone else’s daughter, someone else’s sister or friend or lover, maybe. Why didn’t I stop her? He wondered, for the thousandth time.

            “Yes. I do care.” He said. And this time he meant it.

How to Save A Life

            It was a stormy winter morning. The dawn was hidden by a towering mass of clouds, and the chill wind was sweeping along in gusts, sending fall’s decaying leaves into the air in rustling clouds. He was huddling inside his coat, trying to conserve the little warmth he had, when he found the girl.

            She was sitting on the green bench just beside the sidewalk, nibbling an apple and swinging her feet, carefree. She was dressed in a skimpy chiffon top and tiny short-shorts, and the goosebumps were standing up like quills on her milk-white arms. In her left hand was a book, 1000 Chinese Folktales. Despite her apparent blitheness, she was shivering.

            He stopped. He hadn’t meant to stop, had meant to keep walking past to the door of his warm apartment a few feet away. He hadn’t wanted to stop in the middle of a rising winter storm before an apparently insane stranger, but his feet slowed of their own volition. His mouth opened, and the words came out, without thinking. “Aren’t you cold?”

            She looked up. She looked Chinese, he noticed, and her long black hair was tangled across her face by the force of the wind. “I’m f-fucking freezing.”

            Again, words came before he could summon them back. “Would you like to come in?” Internally, he winced. What was he doing, inviting a complete stranger into his home? This was a mistake…

            She sprang to her feet. “Sure, dude. Thanks!” Dude? After hesitating for an awkward moment, he continued striding down the sidewalk. The girl followed, tossing her apple into a bush. He stopped before his door, fumbled for his key in the depths of his coat pocket. Desperate to break the silence between them, he asked her name.

            “Alice.”

            “What were you doing out there?” The door swung open, and he stepped with relief into the heat, her following after.

            “Waiting for D-waiting for someone.”

            He stopped, abruptly. She crashed into him with a soft oof. “Look,” he said sharply, without turning, “I’m taking you in against my better judgment. You could at least tell me what the hell you were doing sitting in the middle of a storm.”

            She sighed, sounding exactly like a typical exasperated teenager. “Fine. I was waiting for my boyfriend, Darren. He told me he was going to show up f-for our date, but he…” Her voice broke off into a stifled sob. He turned, alarmed. He had never been one for raising a family. He had no idea how to deal with a crying young girl. But before could get out a semblance of consolation, his temple exploded with agony. He staggered. His feet collapsed from under him, and his head hit the linoleum with a crack. Through blurry vision, he saw Alice holding a lamp, and felt vaguely ashamed before he passed out.

            He woke with a splitting headache. He now fully understood the meaning behind ‘splitting’: it felt as if there was an ax cleaving his skull in half, sinking deeper with every passing moment. Groaning, he sat up stiffly. Like a wave, the events of before flooded back to him. He cursed, vividly. Then he got to his feet, rubbed his head, and went to get some aspirin.

            “Shit!” He uttered vehemently when he found his cell phone on the ground, the wallet that had been resting on top of it nowhere to be seen. He opened the drawer where he had hidden a few hundred dollars inside an empty pill bottle. Gone, as well. The girl had been through. Resourceful, as well, to trick a stranger into letting her into his home. He gave her that. For the rest…well, he would stop short of throttling her if he happened to get his hands on her, but at the very least, he wanted to see her put to justice at the hands of the police. And where were the girl’s parents? Her family couldn’t be poor enough for her to be forced to steal, for her appearance, if not entirely decent for December, had been well-off enough. Muttering to himself, he dialed a number on his phone. If he couldn’t deal with the girl in person, at least he could report her.

            It was a few weeks after the event, and he couldn’t help himself from wondering about Alice. She had caused him no small amount of trouble: he had been forced to withdraw more money from his already impoverished account to buy a new wallet and another cheap lamp (the one Alice bludgeoned him with had cracked) and he had to wait for a replacement credit card to be approved before he could buy anything online, which was how he usually shopped. On top of everything else, she had emptied the cookie jar. Yet after the irritation and the resentment had worn off some, curiosity, and a little sympathy, had kicked in. Who was she? What had driven her to steal? Why had she been sitting on a bench a few feet from his door, in the middle of December? If her intent had been to steal from the beginning, why hadn’t she put on a warmer outfit? And if she had wanted to inspire a stranger’s sympathy over her plight, why had she been whistling, eating an apple, and reading? It didn’t exactly suggest someone in need of dire help—even if she had been shivering. It’s only because I’m a sentimental fool, he thought ruefully, that I extended a helping hand.

            Such was his state of mind when he was walking to the grocery store a few miles from his apartment (the reason he shopped online, as he didn’t own a car—his scant salary didn’t allow for one) and a familiar form flashed in his peripheral vision. His footsteps slowed, then came to a stop. Slowly, as if in a dream, he pivoted. It couldn’t be… But it was. There, sitting hunched against a wall, was the very girl who had caused him so much misery.

            “You!” He blurted out accusingly, and pointed at her with a shaking hand. Several passers-by turned to give him odd looks, but he took little notice. He was overwhelmed with shock. He had only ever encountered extraordinary coincidences like this in novels, or movies. Long ago, he had decided they rarely, if ever, occurred in real life. Alice looked up, blearily. She looked considerably worse off than she had before. Her eyes were bloodshot, as if from tears and too little sleep. Her hair was lank and tangled. She was wearing the same chiffon top and shorts from before, but they were now ragged and stained. Her skin was streaked with filth, and she was shivering, for it was quite chilly. Most changed of all, however, was her demeanor. Before, she had been an ordinary enough girl, if a little odd: blithe, carefree that fortune would smile on her, because all she knew of life were the privileges her station came with. Innocent, in the way that naivety is a kind of innocence. But her eyes now, as she gazed indifferently at him, were the eyes of an adult who has learned of the harshness of the world, the cruelty it showed to the unfortunate who fell by the road of life. She knew the truth of reality, now, and somehow the change saddened him.

            All the anger that had rushed to him at that moment dissipated in the face of empathy. He lowered his arm. He saw that while before, she had been thin in a fashionable way, she was now gaunt from lack of proper food. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. Still a child, in the eyes of the law, but no one had stopped to offer help or even to call the police. He offered her the hand that had pointed at her so reproachfully before. “Come on,” he said softly. “I’ll take you to my apartment.”

            She had showered, and brushed, and combed her hair. She was dressed now in an old, too-small t-shirt of his that still hung like a dress on her bony frame. She sat quietly on the office chair he had drawn up for her to the small, shabby table. Two bowls of instant macaroni revolved in the microwave, and a covered pan of spinach and crumbled beef simmered on the stove. He seated himself across from her, and waited.

            She met his gaze directly. Her skin was a clean, if sallow, white again, and her hair shone, but her face had a hollowed look, both in her cheeks and her haunted eyes. She spoke without him having to prompt her, in a soft, low voice totally unlike her earlier, self-assured manner. “It’s strange, I don’t know what to say first: ‘Thank you,’ or, ‘I’m sorry.’ I mean both of them…how much I can’t express. I guess I have to explain everything to explain that. God knows I owe you the explanation.”

            “The day you found me, I had just been kicked out onto the street. It wasn’t really a surprise. My mom had been getting more and more pissed off at me since the night she had found me drunk and smoking pot with Darren in the living room. She kept telling me to leave the loser and get my grades up, or she was going to disown me—unofficially. I never thought she was serious. But even when the threats turned to reality, I wasn’t worried, stupidly enough. I thought Darren would come and get me, and we’d live together in his flat.”

            “Some dream.” A bitter laugh. “I had been waiting on that bench for a couple of hours, waiting for Darren to meet me like we usually did. All I had managed to bring was an apple and a book I snagged off the kitchen counter when I was leaving. I was freezing my ass off, and I was a little hungry, but-get this-I was excited. I couldn’t wait to start living with Darren. We’d party every night with his friends, and I wouldn’t have to go to school anymore. Maybe we’d get married, once I was old enough. As the hours passed, and I got colder and hungrier, I started thinking maybe he was mad at me. He had asked me more than once to give him some money to buy pot with, just until he got the profits back, and I had taken some bills from my mom’s purse and given them to him. Around the time my mom started threatening to kick him out, I stopped giving him money, because she told me point-blank she knew I had been stealing from her, and because he never paid me back like he promised to. He was pretty mad about it, too—said I thought I was too good for him. So I thought he was leaving me there as punishment.”

            “Then I saw you, and you saw me, and you offered to let me into your house. At first I just wanted to get indoors. Then I started thinking that maybe if I came up with a few hundred bucks, Darren wouldn’t be mad at me anymore. I felt kinda bad about stealing from you, after you had let me in. But I figured Darren and me needed it more, because he couldn’t seem to hold down a job-his bosses were always assholes-and I was going to be living with him soon. So I grabbed the first thing I could see and knocked you out when your back was turned.” Silence, dragging on long enough that he wondered whether she was going to continue. When she spoke again, it was barely above a whisper, in a voice filled with self-loathing. “But here’s the thing. I didn’t feel any worse about it than I did when I was stealing from my mother’s purse.”

            She continued on, after another awful pause. “Darren never showed up. At first I wondered whether something had happened to him. It was freezing that night, and I wanted to buy food with some of the money. But I saved it. I thought he would be happy when he learned I had done that for him.” Her shoulders tensed, and a brittle edge came into her voice. “It got colder. The wind started to blow, and I could feel the coldness seeping into my flesh, into my very bones, up from the ground. I was going to buy a coat, screw Darren, when I heard footsteps behind me, and a man’s voice, laughing. There was a clank, and then something-I think it was a pipe-hit me on the back of my head. When I woke up again, my head was throbbing like hell, and all the money was gone.”  He almost smiled, but was quickly sobered by her following words. “The next few days were hell. It was freezing, and the ground was no better than ice for sleeping. I drank water from a dripping pipe to fill my stomach. I couldn’t even read to pass the time—the man had taken my book too. At first I just sat on a bench, waiting, just waiting, for Darren to come by-for anyone to come by.  But no one stopped, and when I got hungry enough, I went looking for food.”

            “There wasn’t much I could find. I tried shoplifting. I had done it a few times before, with Darren distracting the cashier and me stuffing cigarettes into my pockets. But this time, the cashier recognized me. He pointed at me and said loudly, in front of the entire store, that I could either get out, or he could call the police to kick me out. I left, still hungry. There was some bread lying on the ground, for the pigeons, I suppose. They must have been full, because they left most of it. I ate that. And when I couldn’t find anything else, I looked in Dumpsters.”

            “Worse than the cold and the hunger, though, was the knowledge that no one was looking for me. After a few days, it was obvious that Darren wasn’t going to come, and my mom wasn’t going to come. At first, I was angry that passing strangers and police barely spared me a glance, that no one seemed to care. Then, as the days passed, I grew lonely, and afraid—afraid of the men that came hunting in the night, afraid that I would die alone and filthy on the streets, like an animal. Afraid that there wouldn’t be a single soul that cared when I died. I cried a lot those first nights.”

            “But I stopped crying—I stopped crying when I realized there was no reason anyone should care.”

            She lifted her gaze, and stared at him with an expression he could not interpret. “So now you know. Now you know who the girl you trusted really is. And now you know-” she faltered-“that you’ve made the wrong decision.”

            He was pinned by her gaze, a curious mixture of anguish and despair. He didn’t know what to say. Conflicting emotions shook him, and he could not find the words for any of them. And then he knew two words that expressed them all.

            “I care.” He said, seriously, sincerely, almost fiercely. He reached across the table and took her by the shoulders, tried to express his conviction through the force of his eyes. “I care, and I’ll take care of you-you can live with me if you want-but as long as I’m alive, I won’t let you die.”

            Beneath his hands, her shoulders shook. She hiccupped, and tears started their silent passage down her face, meeting at the point of her chin and dripping onto the worn wood of the table. Coming from her, broken and nearly unintelligible, was a single, repeating word. “Why? Why?” She asked, nearly sobbing.

            “Because you need me to.” He said simply, and held her until her shaking subsided, and her cries petered out.