Where the Staircase Ends

by Stacy A. Stokes

  I went back into the Africa room and climbed into the bed on the opposite wall from the broken lamp, avoiding any glass that may have fallen into the other twin bed. The covers felt cool and inviting, and I let out a long, exhausted sigh. On a whim, I checked my cell phone and saw one missed text message. I didn’t think it was possible, but I smiled even bigger when I saw it was from Justin.

  Justin: GNite Sweet Taylor

  I could have died right then and there because I was so happy. In hindsight, it seemed silly to have wished for something so finite on a night that felt so full of possibilities. But of course no one ever believes they’re actually going to die when they think things like that. I certainly didn’t.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SIGNS OF LIFE

  One thousand steps. I never really thought about how high up in the sky I would have to climb to get to one thousand, because it seemed like an impossible number. I remember reading somewhere that the Eiffel Tower has over two thousand steps leading to the top, but most people opt to take the elevator. Why? Because climbing over two thousand steps to get to anything would be insane. Like, whack-job dress-up-like-your-mother-and-murder-people-in-the-shower crazy. Which pretty much made me certifiable.

  I started counting the steps out of boredom sometime after the snow began to slow down. Without the drifts to hop on or the snow to play with, I was going a bit crazy, and I assumed I’d reach the end of the stairs long before I could actually count to one thousand.

  I was wrong.

  My foot slid as easily onto the one thousandth step as it had the first, and what little resolve I’d managed to hold on to slipped through my fingers. My throat turned thick with frustrated tears, and I had to kneel forward because my knees were shaking. Even though I wasn’t the least bit tired from climbing so long and so high, I didn’t think I could manage to lift one more foot to climb one more step. I was done. I’d had enough.

  I crouched on my heels and wished more than anything that I had a door to slam. That always made me feel better when I fought with my mom. It didn’t matter who was right or what the fight was about, a solid slam of a door always made me feel like I was back in control of the situation.

  But of course there were no doors for me to slam and no one to yell at. I couldn’t even throw a snowball because the snow had slowed to a trickle and there wasn’t enough sticking to the stairs for me to scoop up. Instead I banged my fists on the step in front of me, letting out a scream of frustration.

  A string of spit escaped my lips and dribbled down my chin. I was too angry to bother wiping it away, so instead I let it hang there, not caring that I looked like a rabid animal clawing its way up a stone mountain. Just how big was this piece-of-shit staircase? Did it even have an end? I had the inkling I’d become Sisyphus. He’s that guy who had to push a rock up a hill for eternity, and every time he got to the top the rock would roll back down and he’d have to start all over again. What if the stairs went on forever and I was stuck walking for eternity with no way to turn around and go back down? It didn’t matter whether or not I was already dead—I would die again.

  I pounded the step in front of me, this time harder, slapping my palms against the stone with so much vigor I was sure my skin would split from the force. But of course, like everything on the stairs, nothing changed. My palms were smooth and scrape-free. They didn’t even sting from the impact.

  I crouched down on the step and ground my teeth to keep from screaming again. That’s when I heard the buzzing sound.

  It was light, like the sharp whine of a mosquito, and it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It sounded like an insect was circling my head or hovering behind me, just out of reach.

  My head jerked left and right, searching for the source. I expected to see Sunny, Logan, or some other ghostly abomination glowering at me, but the staircase was empty.

  The buzzing finally settled next to my left ear, and when I swatted at it, my hand made contact with something soft and bullet-shaped. The thing zipped out in front of me, and I caught sight of an insect slightly larger than my thumb, with four diaphanous wings propelling it forward.

  It was a dragonfly. At least I thought it was a dragonfly. There was something about it that seemed too large or too bird-like, but I couldn’t think of what else it might be. Before I could get a closer look, it darted forward, moving like an arrow released from the belly of a bow.

  It left a trail behind as it moved, its small body splitting the air into a pinkish wake. It looked like the thing was moving the sky. How was that possible?

  The trail hung ribbon-like and glistened like light reflecting off a cresting wave. Then the path slowly began to fade from view, as though the dragonfly-thing had somehow ripped the sky into two halves and it was mending itself back together.

  The creature zipped ahead of me until it was at the edge of my line of sight, then it hovered in place, waiting.

  Was it waiting for me? It didn’t seem like an insect could actually wait for someone, but I moved my feet quickly up the stairs anyway, following its glistening path.

  It hovered until I was close enough to touch it. I could make out tiny hairs covering its thin, greenish body. Its dark eyes were large and placed on either side of its head, and below that sat the thin line of its mouth. And then—I might have thought I was hallucinating if it weren’t for all the other crazy things I’d seen on the stairs—the thing smiled at me. The edges of its mouth tipped upward into a U, a gesture so familiar that it almost seemed human.

  What the hell was it?

  With what seemed like a final smirk, the creature bolted from its stationary position, flying with such speed that it was gone from my sight before I’d even had time to register its movement. The only clue that it had been there at all was the pinkish trail left in its wake, beckoning me to follow.

  I ran after it, my flip-flops clapping against the stone steps in a metronome rhythm. The trail snaked from side to side, and in a few places looped around in a circle, as if the fly had spun back around to make sure I still followed.

  Whatever it was, it was fast. I ran as quickly as my legs could manage, but I still couldn’t seem to catch up, even though the winding path made it look like the creature was meandering its way up the steps rather than racing me to the top.

  I pumped my arms harder, using them to propel myself forward. In the distance, I caught sight of the dragonfly’s elongated green body as it zipped from side to side on the steps, but it disappeared again in a deft burst of speed.

  Come on. I urged my feet to keep moving. It circled back in my direction, a pinkish figure eight trailing behind it, and just when I thought I might catch up to it, the plastic bolt between my toes ripped free from the sole of my flip-flop and I tumbled forward, knocking my knee on the edge of a step.

  Man, it hurt. It really, really hurt. So much so that stars burst behind my eyes, white and hot with everything my nerve endings could deliver.

  Blood gushed from the open wound on my knee. I was suddenly dizzy from it, feeling for a moment like I might faint.

  Then it hit me—it hurt.

  I could actually feel real honest-to-God pain in my knee. I hadn’t felt pain since arriving on the stairs—not when I tried to pull the flower up from the ground, not when I slammed my hands against the steps, not even when I ran as hard as I could. I should have felt something all those other times, but I didn’t. So what changed? Why was I suddenly feeling things again?

  I ran a thumb across my knee, smearing blood on my clean skin. A sharp jab of pain shot up my leg when I poked at the cut. It was such a relief that I started to laugh. I could feel again. I was bleeding! It was like I was alive again.

  Up ahead, the dragonfly had disappeared from view and its pink path began to fade into the sky. I’d have to hurry if I didn’t want to lose the trail.

  I leaned on the step in front for support as I stood, ready to run, but stopped short. Something was different. The step felt wrong, like it had change
d. Not a major change—it wasn’t like it had suddenly turned from stone to carpet or anything—but it was definitely different than it had been a moment before.

  I ran my hand over the top a few times to be sure, then crawled forward a few more steps to check those as well. Sure enough, it was the same on all of them. The center of every step was worn down and grooved, the way staircases leading up to old buildings are worn down from all the feet constantly hitting them and wearing away at the stone. It was a subtle change, but an important one. Because it meant that someone was here before me. And not just someone—someones. There would’ve had to be hundreds, maybe even thousands of feet hitting the steps to wear them down like this. So where did everybody go?

  I stood up to look around, or as around as you can look when you aren’t able to move your head or body backwards.

  Nothing looked any different beyond the hint of the pink trail left behind by the dragonfly. The sky was still clear, the air was still quiet and motionless. A few tiny flakes of snow drifted down from invisible clouds, but otherwise there was no movement beyond the rising and falling of my own chest. Where was everyone? Did they all poof and disappear?

  “Hello?” I called, my voice sticking to the sides of my throat from lack of use. “Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me? Hello!”

  My voice came back to me in an echo, reverberating off the stone steps like I was standing inside an empty canyon. For a moment I stood there, remembering earlier when the snow started to fall after I yelled at the sky. Someone listened to me then, so where were they now? Why wasn’t anyone helping me?

  Even stranger than where everybody went was how they managed to get to that point on the stairs. How was it that this part of the stairs was worn down, but the part I started on was perfectly smooth and flat? It would make more sense for the beginning part of the steps to be worn down because that’s the place where everyone had to start. Right?

  But the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t be sure that I started at the bottom of the staircase. I couldn’t turn around to look behind me, so there was no way for me to know whether or not I started at the beginning. I just assumed it was the beginning, because, well, that’s how stairs usually work. But what if I appeared somewhere in the middle of the staircase? Given everything that had happened, it wasn’t farfetched to think I might have poofed into the center of the stairs when the car hit me, which was disconcerting. How big was this thing?

  I crouched down on the step again, rocking on my heels while I tried to work it out in my head. My fingers worked around my temples the way they sometimes did when I tried to squeeze an answer out of my brain in class. What if when we died we all started at a different place on the stairs? What if there was no beginning, or the beginning was different for all of us? It wasn’t logical, but then again nothing about the stairs seemed logical.

  If you assumed there was only one set of stairs for everyone and we all started at different points, then that meant I’d hit the place on the staircase that everyone else eventually reached. And if that was the place we all eventually reached, wouldn’t that mean I was close to the top?

  My heart hammered in my chest, clanging against my skin like it wanted to escape. I still couldn’t see the top of the stairs, so there was no guarantee I was right. But it gave me hope. Hope that there was something waiting for me up there. Hope that I wasn’t alone after all.

  I was on my feet before I knew what I was doing, running as if my life depended on it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WORDS THAT SWIM

  The sun screamed through the cheetah-printed curtains when I woke up the morning after the party. I tried hiding my head under the pillow, but the sun leaked through the sides until I finally gave up and went to Sunny’s room to see if she was awake.

  Her door was cracked, so I pushed it open wider and tiptoed inside. Sunny was buried under her white duvet, a soundless lump under a mass of blankets. I took a running leap onto the bed and started jumping up and down to wake her.

  “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood!” I sang. “A beautiful day in the neighborhood! Won’t you please, won’t you please, please won’t you be my … neighbor!” I hopped on top of her when I sang the last line, grabbing at the blankets to yank them away from her body. She was curled up into a ball, her face buried inside her hands so I couldn’t see her.

  “Sunny, wake up. Yoo-hoo!” I reached out to tickle her, the way she used to do when we were kids and she woke up before me at one of our ritual sleepovers. She pulled her hands away from her face long enough to slap me away, and that’s when I saw she was crying.

  “Sunny?” I stopped bouncing, the grin slipping from my face as I sat down on the bed next to her. “Sunny, what’s wrong? What happened?”

  She sniffled loudly and hid her face underneath one of her pillows.

  “Please go away, Taylor. Please.”

  Her voice was small and muffled. The bed shook with the rhythm of her crying, and I didn’t know what to do. Sunny never cried. Not when Mark Schroen dumped her, not when she lost homecoming princess to Lizzie Masters, not even when someone stole her Coach handbag from her gym locker. There was only that one time, many years ago, when her mom left.

  “Sunny,” I whispered, reaching out to smooth the hair that poked out from underneath the pillow. “Sunny, what’s wrong? What happened?”

  She started sobbing louder, and that made me even more nervous. My first thought was maybe someone had told her about me and Justin, but that didn’t make sense. I expected her to be mad, pissed even, but she wouldn’t cry about it. Not like this. Then I remembered someone was in the room with her when I went to bed. They were laughing, but maybe something went down after I’d gone to sleep?

  “Sunny, did something happen last night? With the guy who was in the room with you?”

  I waited, listening to the sound of her ragged breath under the downy pillow. When she didn’t say anything, I lay down on the bed and wrapped my arms around her. She felt small, like a frail bird shaking underneath the weight of my arms. I never realized how tiny she was; she always seemed bigger than life.

  “Sunny, please. I’m your best friend. You can tell me anything. Whatever it is, I’ll help. But you have to tell me what happened, okay? I can’t help unless you talk to me.”

  I squeezed her tighter, pressing my knees against the back of her legs and my face against her hair. She smelled like a hangover, a mix of last night’s cigarettes and beer.

  “Come on, Sunny. Talk to me,” I pleaded. When that didn’t work I added, “If you don’t say something soon I’m going to assume it’s because you’ve gone lesbo and want me to spoon you all morning. Ooooo,” I said, my tone playful so she’d know I was kidding. “Maybe it wasn’t a guy you had in here last night. Maybe it was a chick with a really low voice. Are you playing for the other side now, Sunny? You better get up and look at me or I’m going to tell the whole school that you’ve joined the softball team.”

  She let out a short laugh and sat up. I sat up too, looking at her red and swollen eyes straight on.

  “What happened?” I asked again. Her bottom lip quivered and a single tear slid down her cheek, tracing the trail of wetness left behind by earlier tears. It freaked me out to see her that way.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” she said, her voice small and unsure. “We were in here talking, and then suddenly we were kissing, and then … then … ” She looked down at her hands, studying the lines on her palms. “We’d had a lot to drink, and I should have stopped him. It all happened so fast. Please don’t be mad at me.”

  When she looked back at me, her eyes were wide and wet, pleading with me. It was a look I recognized from the many apologies she’d given me throughout the years. The Sunny mantra: better to ask forgiveness than permission.

  “Please,” she repeated. “Please don’t be mad at me. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was drunk and stupid and out of control. You have to believe me. You’re my best friend. I
don’t want to lose you.” She reached out and took my hands, but I yanked them away.

  “Who were you with last night?” I asked, my voice flat. The air in her bedroom had suddenly become thick and hot. The sunlight streaming in through the slats of her blinds warmed my skin to an almost unbearable temperature.

  I thought back to the day when Logan had asked me out, to the drawing he’d done of me and the all-caps words scrawled on the bottom of the page asking me if I wanted to grab a bite sometime. I’d brought the note with me to history class to show Sunny, floating into the classroom as I held the picture out for her to see. She made a face, looking at it like it was a flaming baggy of dog poop.

  “That doesn’t look anything like you,” she’d said, pushing it away.

  I had looked down at the drawing, marveling at the way he’d made me look graceful, elegant. It may not have looked exactly like me, but I thought there were some similarities. And it didn’t matter if I really looked like that; what mattered was he saw me that way, and that made me feel pretty amazing. Beautiful, even.

  Sunny laughed when I said the words out loud, making me wish I could have sucked them back inside my mouth. “It’s just a picture, Taylor. It’s not like he actually said you were beautiful. You’re not going to go out with him, are you?”

  “He’s taking me out Friday.” My voice sounded small and inferior. She made a face at me again and shrugged.

  “I suppose you could do worse,” she had said.

  I thought about those words as I watched Sunny sitting on top of her white duvet, her bottom lip trembling as more tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. Even though I knew the answer, I wanted her to say it out loud.

  “Who was in the room with you last night, Sunny?” My teeth were clenched, and my fingers were balled into tight fists.

  “Please don’t make me say it, Taylor,” she whispered.