“She hates me,” I said.
“Oh, yeah? What’d you do to her?”
“Nothing,” I insisted, annoyed the way he assumed I was to blame for any problem there might be between us. “She’s got a bad attitude.”
That’s as far as we got before the bathroom door opened and Riley sailed back into the kitchen, ending our discussion. She picked up her pizza and had it almost to her mouth when her face suddenly contorted into a look of disgust and she put it back down.
“Ew, gross!” she said. I couldn’t help noticing she was looking at me.
“No need to be mean,” Steve told her. “I admit he’s no hunk, but he’s not that bad.”
“What is that?” Riley asked, ignoring Steve.
I saw that she was actually looking at the glob of pizza in the napkin I was still holding.
“I saved you a bite,” I said, holding it toward her.
Riley made another face, rolled her eyes and turned around so her back was to me. She bit into her slice and made a happy “Mmmm” sound.
“Hey!” I said. “I thought you were vegan. And couldn’t eat gluten!”
“Yeah, that got boring.”
“You can’t just start tolerating gluten because you’re bored,” I pointed out.
“What are you, my mother?” She plunked onto a chair, still facing away from me.
“I have an idea,” Steve said. “How about we drop this and talk about the video?”
I have to admit, Riley had some good ideas, like suggesting we use a fog machine rather than relying on the weather to help mask the Plexiglas cubes. Listening to her describe the shots she was going to get and the music she’d use in the background was enough to distract me from the worry of how I was going to fight off fear and panic. By the time she and Steve had finished planning it all out, I’d even managed to summon some enthusiasm.
The weather forecast suggested that Friday night would be the ideal time. Three days away. I told myself I might as well get it over with instead of having it looming for weeks like a thick, dark cloud. And, at the same time, it gave me a bit of breathing room.
Three days before I had to face my fears.
It was the shortest three days of my life. There hardly seemed to have been enough time to blink before Friday evening was there and the three of us were walking toward the train station.
We made our way along a hard dirt path that skirted the edge of town before it angled downward. It wound its way through a few trees and shrubs until it reached the old abandoned station. The path was too narrow to walk three abreast, but that was fine with me. I hung back a bit behind Steve and Riley, who were yakking away to each other. That gave me a chance to give myself a pep talk.
“I’ve got this. I can do it,” I told myself over and over and over.
Myself didn’t believe a word of it.
By the time the train station came into sight my stomach had manufactured what felt like a bubbling pool of molten acid. Even remembering to take slow, deep breaths did little to help. And then, Riley’s voice reached me from what seemed a long way away.
“Hey! This place is all boarded up.”
My eyes shifted to the structure ahead of us. She was right. Plywood was firmly affixed to every window, and boards had been nailed in place across the huge wooden doors. A couple of faded signs warned against trespassing.
Hope! If we couldn’t get in, we couldn’t get up.
But it was a short-lived reprieve.
“Don’t worry, I’ve already been up there,” Steve told her cheerfully. “There’s a coal door around the side.”
Right. I vaguely remembered him telling me that earlier.
“A what?” Riley asked.
“A coal door. The station used coal heat when it was first built, and there was a door for shoveling it into the basement,” he explained. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
We followed him to the back side of the building and found ourselves in front of what looked like an old raft leaning against the wall. It was tilted up at about a twenty-five-degree angle and you could see, through the overgrown grass, that it was resting on some kind of cement base.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Steve said, pointing at it. “Our way in.”
He leaned forward and tugged at the side sporting a padlock. It lifted free without objection. A second later the whole door was open. We stood facing a passageway of cement steps.
“What about the no trespassing signs?” I said, even though I knew what Steve’s answer would be. I wasn’t wrong.
“Those are a hundred years old,” he scoffed. “No one pays any attention to this place anymore.”
“Okay, so let’s go,” Riley said. And without another word, she scooted down the damp cement steps and gave the massive door at the bottom a good hard yank. It yielded with a sort of groaning sound, revealing a pitch-black cavern beyond.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and switched on its flashlight, following close behind her. Steve did the same, but even with the two beams of light the darkness was practically suffocating as we moved forward.
Riley said, “Uck,” more than once as we made our way through the heavy gloom.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Stupid spiderwebs,” she answered.
A moment later we reached a second set of stairs which let us ascend to the main floor. The light on that level wasn’t great either, but it was better than the basement. Slivery beams of sunlight shone in between the wood slats covering the windows. We were in a large open room.
“So, how do we get to the roof from here?” Riley asked.
Steve took us through there and down a hall to an office where a corner door revealed a narrow staircase to the roof. He and Riley scooted up the stairs and I followed — slowly since I was carrying a hundred pounds of dread. On the small landing beside the roof access door I saw the Plexiglas cubes and fog machine, which Steve told us he’d brought earlier.
My stomach clenched as he swung the door open. A burst of light left us squinting while our eyes adjusted.
Steve and Riley stepped forward, away from the doorway, onto the roof. Meanwhile, I noticed my hands were clutching the doorframe, holding on so hard my fingertips were white.
“Come on out,” Steve said. “It’s really cool — you can see everywhere!”
Those were possibly the least helpful words anyone has ever said to me. Like trying to entice someone to plop their neck down on the guillotine because the blade is nice and sharp.
I tried to remember the strategies I’d planned. Do not look down. Concentrate on breathing evenly. Try not to look like a doofus.
I breathed slowly. In through my nose, out through my mouth. I counted each breath. One, two, three, four. Slowly, slowly, I managed to loosen the death grip I had on the doorframe. I kept my eyes focused straight ahead. Steady, steady.
Do not look down.
I took a small step forward. I counted more breaths. Steve and Riley were arranging the Plexiglas cubes. Neither of them seemed to notice my immobility as they got everything set up. When they’d finished, Riley walked around looking for the best angles for our video.
As for me, I was clinging to the words looping around and around in my head. Do not look down, do not look down, do not look down.
And then Steve spoke.
“Okay, it’s showtime.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The bones in my legs had turned to rubber. Rubber that was oddly disconnected at the knee. This, as you can imagine, made it difficult to take the few steps I had to conquer in order to reach the waiting Plexiglas cubes.
Steve was already up and walking around on them by the time I’d managed to shuffle my way to the one nearest me.
Meanwhile, Riley had wandered over to the roof’s edge — a fact I tried not to register but couldn’t quite
shut out.
“I love this! It’s amazing up here,” she said. “It feels like you’re safe from the whole world.”
Safe wasn’t the word I’d have picked and I almost heaved when she threw her arms into the air as though she was about to dive off.
I looked away a little too quickly, which caused some sort of tilt inside my head. Slamming my eyes closed, I took a couple of long, deep breaths to steady myself before letting them creep back open.
What a nightmare.
“The fog machine is on so you guys need to be ready as soon as it starts rolling,” Riley told us then, her voice suddenly all business. “The batteries won’t last long.”
“Okay,” I croaked.
Steve gave me a curious look.
“You look kind of pale,” he said. “Is it that vertigo thing?”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“That’s not good,” he said. “You want a drink of water or something?”
“I have some water in my pack,” Riley said. She’d stopped whatever she’d been doing and was watching me.
My mouth felt like I’d been swallowing fistfuls of dandelion fluff and a few gulps of water would have been great, but all I wanted was to get this whole business over with. Fog had started to seep from the machine. The sooner we got started, the sooner I’d be back on the ground. I waved off the offer, took a deep breath and stepped up onto the nearest cube.
My knees tried to unhinge. That sent a shock of terror through me — a jolt that actually felt as though it had stabbed my heart. Miniature beads of sweat popped out all over my face and neck. In seconds a cold sheen had spread across my forehead and was moving rapidly downward.
It took everything I had to draw a deep breath and steady myself on that cube.
Slow breaths. One. Two. Three. In and out. Eyes locked straight ahead.
I’m not sure how much time passed. Steve was moving around slowly, his hands exploring the air in front of him as though he was finding his way along. I wanted to yell at him to stay away, in case he bumped me. There was no doubt in my mind that the slightest nudge would topple me and that if I began to fall, there would be no end to the plunge.
“Okay, so go ahead and walk around, Derek,” Riley said. “Right now it looks like Steve is up here with a statue.”
That was when it hit me. In order to take a single step I was going to have to look to see where the other cubes were positioned. Only, the very first downward glance was sure to kick up the panic level that was already threatening to overwhelm me.
I might have processed that and figured out a solution, although my brain was moving as sluggishly as I can ever remember, except for what happened next.
A man’s voice, deep and gruff, sounded from the ground below.
“Hey! What are you kids doing up there?”
And in spite of the quadrillion times I’d told myself not to do it, my automatic reflexes betrayed me.
I looked down.
There was an instant roar in my ears, like water crashing against rocks. At the same time, my stomach lurched and did a couple of backflips (don’t tell me that’s impossible, you weren’t there). My heart screeched to a complete stop. Luckily, it restarted itself, but then it began to thump with such force I could even feel it in my eyebrows.
Trembling and (I might as well admit it since Riley was recording the whole thing) whimpering, I sank in slow motion, first to my knees and then off the cube and onto the flat surface of the roof. I clawed at the surface, desperate to find something to grasp — but there was nothing to hold onto.
Steve had stopped hopping from cube to cube and was staring at me. Until, that is, Riley took a few steps closer and, with a lowered voice, said the man on the ground had his cell phone out and was calling the police.
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” she said.
Obviously. Or, at least, it was obvious to the two of them. For me, it was asking the impossible. So, when they started toward the roof entrance back into the building, I stayed right where I was, with my face pressed tight against the gritty surface of the roof.
Steve realized I wasn’t with them as they reached the doorway.
“Come on, man,” he urged.
I said nothing. But Riley had grasped the truth of the situation.
“He can’t move,” she said. “He’s afraid of heights. We’re going to have to leave him.”
“We can’t do that,” Steve said.
Riley sighed and turned to me. “Can you get up and make it over here if we help you?” she asked.
“No,” I said. I was one hundred percent immobilized. On the other hand, it felt oddly as though the roof itself was shifting and spinning. As if it was trying to jiggle me to the edge and off.
I squeezed my eyes closed, overcome by terror. Even so, I was aware of Steve and Riley arguing, although I couldn’t make out what they were saying over the roar in my head.
In the distance, an abrupt blast of sirens told us the police were close. That seemed to decide the matter for my partners in crime.
“No point in all of us getting busted,” Steve called as they began a hasty descent into the building. “But don’t worry — they’ll help you when they get here.”
Riley’s voice reached me too, even though she was clearly talking to Steve. “Not if they don’t see him, the way he’s flattened on the roof.”
That comment sent my mind racing from horror to horror although I should have realized Steve would come back to help me if the police didn’t find me.
As it happened, the police found me with no trouble. They saw the open cellar door and made their way through the building and up to the roof where the first officer on the scene made what was probably a natural assumption.
“We have a victim of some kind,” she called behind her to her partner. “Radio for an ambulance.”
She was beside me in a flash and I sensed her kneeling and looking into my face. A couple of fingers pressed against my neck and she exhaled hard in relief when she found a pulse.
“Son? Can you hear me?”
I decided to communicate with moans rather than words. Unfortunately, that only reinforced the officer’s idea that I was injured.
The paramedics arrived soon after that and, when they tried to turn me over, the anguished howl that ripped itself from the pit of my fear froze everyone in place for a few seconds.
But the helpful citizen on the ground was still there, waiting to give his statement on the big crime wave he’d prevented, and he clued in to the scene on the roof.
“I heard one of ’em say the kid who’s still up there is scared of heights,” he hollered.
“Hoo boy,” said the officer who’d reached me first. I didn’t think that was very professional of her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
If I had the power to erase a block of time from my memory, the twenty minutes it took for the emergency workers to get me off the roof would be my first choice. But forgetting is impossible — and not only because it’s burned into my brain for all time. My brain is assisted by modern technology.
Apparently, when a siren blares, there are people who will drop everything and race to the scene in the hope that they might witness a complete stranger’s misery.
In this case, I was the stranger — a pale and whimpering wretch being pried off a roof, strapped to a stretcher and carried to solid ground by a couple of paramedics. To their credit, they tried hard to calm me, even if their efforts sounded like things you’d say to reassure a two-year-old.
As they reached the ground, a couple of heroic onlookers had the presence of mind to whip out their phones and record that part of my pathetic rescue.
Then the medics took me to the hospital even though I insisted I’d be able to walk as soon as my legs were ready to cooperate again. They loaded my stretcher into the back of the ambulanc
e and the next thing I knew I was in a small examining room in the emergency department.
A nurse took my blood pressure and told me the doctor would be along to examine me shortly. There was a stack of hospital gowns on a counter so I stripped off and got myself ready.
I was sitting on the examining table when my parents arrived. I heard Mom asking someone which room I was in, her voice tight and worried. Then they burst in.
“Are you hurt?” Dad asked.
“No, I’m okay.”
“What is going on?” Mom said.
“The doctor has to examine me,” I said, which coincidentally, was the exact moment he came into the room.
After introducing himself, Doctor Fenton asked me some questions, shone a light in my eyes, told me to stand up and walk to the doorway and back, and said I could go.
Apparently, I’d undressed for nothing.
BECAUSE BREVAL IS a small place, it took no time for the whole story, along with the videos taken by onlookers, to make its way through the community. It was a safe bet that anyone with a cell phone had seen my sad performance by the end of the day. I could almost hear the message alerts sounding as my escapade raced through town.
The next few days at school were such a misery I actually pitched the idea of home-schooling to my mom, an act of desperation that she shot down with a single question.
“Since your dad and I both work, who exactly is going to home-school you — the goldfish?”
Right.
That was probably for the best anyway. My folks had grounded me indefinitely, making school my only chance to get out of the house.
That didn’t mean it was easy. It was no surprise that there was a gigantic decline in my social status. Overnight, I’d become a laughingstock.
(Specifically, a laughingstock who was in trouble with the law, although I didn’t know that until later on.)
I held my head up, handled the snickers and comments (which were mostly lame) and tried to act like none of it bothered me. It wouldn’t last, I knew that. Those things never do. All I had to do was let it roll off me until everyone got bored saying the same things over and over.
The Rise and Fall of Derek Cowell Page 8