by Keri Lake
My jaw damn near creaked as I stared up at him in awe.
Tipping my head to hide what little he might see of my scar, I stepped backward again and tucked my hands into the loose pockets of my shorts. Flipped the safety of my pepper spray. Set my finger to the button. “Am I making you nervous, or something?”
Those eyes scanned down and back up, softening with amusement. “Am I making you nervous?” Standing well over six feet tall, he could’ve easily hoisted me over the edge of the building. So, yes, I supposed he was.
“Is that why you came up here? To try to scare me?”
“I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of announcing my presence, if that were the case.” He lurched toward me, and I squeezed the canister in my hand, ready to douse his eyeballs with a horrific burn, but he just jumped up onto the scaffolding beside me.
I watched in both terror and wonderment, as he climbed higher and higher, his tall, but agile, body scaling the rusted metal like a panther against the gloomy gothic sky, until he nearly reached the top. A small pack clung to his back, as if hanging on to him for dear life. I knew how it felt. The mere sight of him teetering along the narrow steel coiled my stomach.
“You, um …. It really wouldn’t take much to slip, you know. I think it’s, like, one in three people stupid enough to climb those things end up falling to their deaths.” I prattled on with some nonexistent statistic I’d pulled out of my ass, but it really didn’t seem to have much effect on him. He still pulled himself one rung higher than the last.
“You think?” Feet skidding across the bar, he fell, catching himself on the lower rung, while the acids of the vending burrito I’d scarfed down earlier burned in my chest. His chuckle grated my spine, as he pulled himself back to a stand. “That would’ve spattered the brains, for sure.”
I clamped my eyes shut at the disgusting visual that planted in my head. “If you came up here for some crazy act of suicide, you could’ve at least had the courtesy to wait until I’d left,” I shouted up to him.
His elbows rested on the bar above his head, and he leaned forward, staring down at me. “I think most people vain enough to commit suicide like the idea of an audience.”
Asshole.
“That’s a misconception. Some people just want to disappear.” I peered over the edge of the building, once again struck with the image of him lying in a pool of brains. “Can you just come down? I really don’t need your blood on my hands. This night’s been shitty enough for me.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“A series of unfortunate, stupid decisions.”
“Is that why you’re up here?”
“Touché,” I muttered. It probably was stupid of me to come to the roof of an abandoned building without telling anyone.
He scaled back down the scaffolding as if he’d done it a million times, and jumped from the last rung to land beside me. Not even breathless from the act. “You would know?”
“Know what?”
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he backed away and shrugged. “About wanting to disappear.”
“I’m sure every teenager’s had a phase.” Mine’d come right after my mother had died and I was forced to live with my father.
He tipped his head, eyes roving up and down me, as if in appraisal. “You don’t seem the type.”
“Why’s that?”
As if the light hit just right, catching the scar at my chin, his eyes seemed drawn to that part of my face, flickering with the same curiosity I’d seen countless times before. In fact, I anticipated he’d ask the same question that’d plagued me for the last two years, so I didn’t even bother to hide the scar that time.
“What are you doing up here?” he asked instead. “Only two reasons people ever come up here. For a thrill, or to escape something.”
“Neither. I was just curious.”
“What are you curious about?”
I looked out over the city, then back to him, biting my cheek to hide a smile. “How long it would take for some asshole to find me up here and harass me.”
His lips twitched like he might smile, too, but he glanced away as if to squash it, before turning back. “You came with two girls, right? Braids and the vampire?”
“Maybe. Why?”
He jutted his chin toward me. “Think your ride’s leaving.”
Jolts of panic rippled down my spine, and I pivoted to see Simone and Bea shuffling to their car, the scant bit of moonlight catching the silver braids and that conspicuous red cardigan. Two extra silhouettes, presumably Theo, the guy Dax’d sent off, and the nosy backseat drunk stumbled after them. “Shit!” I leaned forward, fingers curling around the edge of the building. “Bea! Simone! Wait!” Jogging along the edge of the building, I attempted to get closer. “Wait! I’m up here!” Not even my hands waving in the air elicited so much as a glance back. “Bea! Simone! It’s Sera!”
The four of them piled into the Prius, and I spun around, searching for the stairs.
“Don’t think you’re going to catch them. By the time you make it through the crowd and back through the building, they’ll be a long ways down Jefferson.”
I lodged my fingers in my hair, my heart beating hard enough to punch through my ribs. “They’re my ride. What the hell am I going to do? Is there a bus, or something?”
“It’s two in the morning. If there is a bus, I imagine it’s packed with all kinds of shady ass characters.”
Lifting my phone from my pocket, I scrolled through names. “Damn them! I can’t call my dad. He’ll kill me,” I mumbled. “I’ll have to get an Uber, or something.”
“Or I can give you a ride.”
Something about the way he said the words tickled my spine. “I don’t even know you,” I answered, perhaps a bit too brusquely.
“You know the Uber driver?”
“No. But there’s a certain accountability. They …. They’re not supposed …. They could—”
He tipped his head, watching my fumbling with amusement. “We have some accountability between us, too.”
“How so?”
“You know Dax. Dax knows your friends.”
“None of whom know I’m up here with you.”
“That was pretty stupid of you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes, and when he offered me one, I declined. “Here’s the deal,” he said around his cancer stick. “You can take the bus. You can call some fuckin’ pansy ass Uber.” He flicked his Zippo, shielding the end of the cigarette with his cupped palms, and puffed it a few times, blowing the smoke off to the side like some kind of modern day James Dean. “Or you can say to hell with this suburban girl shit, and let me give you a ride.”
No lie, I actually thought about that for a minute.
But only a minute.
“Thanks, but I’ll take my chances with the pansy ass.” I stepped past him, noting the difference in size, and breathing in the heady notes of his cologne that hit the back of my throat. An intoxicating sweetness quickly stamped out by my frustration, as my hands burned with the urge to throttle my roommate’s neck.
With anger simmering in my stomach, I hustled down the dark stairwell, flashlight leading the way, certain that the stranger would pop out any minute and grab me.
My feet slowed. Halfway down the stairwell, I stopped. I was behaving as my father expected. In fact, I could almost hear him laughing at my panic, telling me that was what I got for choosing a Detroit school and hanging out with thugs and hoodlums, as he commonly referred to the art majors. He would’ve told me I couldn’t handle a city like Detroit. He did tell me that.
But I’d chosen it as my home. They weren’t thugs and hoodlums. They were my people, and even if I didn’t quite fit in with them, I was a part of them.
I strolled the rest of the way down, until I reached the lower level, and pulled up the Uber app on my phone.
A thunderous crack reverberated down my spine.
A collection of shouts and screams pierced throug
h the music, which cut out with an abrupt scratch.
What sounded like a train rolling through the building, all the footsteps pounding against the gravelly floor, kept me frozen in place. In complete horror, I watched the crowd disperse in a chaotic wave toward the non-boarded up windows and entrances.
Another crack, the sound unmistakable that time. Gunshots.
My blood ran cold, my whole body paralyzed.
Move! my head commanded, but all I could do was stare from the shadows, while bodies forced their way to the exits, squeezing through broken windows like rats in a flood. Climbing over each other to get away from whoever held the gun.
The screams grew louder.
Someone tipped over the trashcan, and fire caught the papers strewn about.
The DJ rushed over to stamp it out, catching his pants leg on fire. A second guy doused him with beer, putting out the flame.
Another trashcan toppled over, once again sending flames across the garbage littered ground.
Go. Get out.
I had no place to run, though. The crammed exits meant getting trampled alive. Or burned.
I was trapped.
Something gripped my elbow, and I swung around to see the guy from the rooftop standing over me. “C’mon. I know a way out.”
At another tug, I shook my head. “Up? Up is not a way out!”
“There’s a fire escape on the east wall.”
Fire escape. Made for fire. And escape. I pushed after him, trailing behind as we made our way back up toward the rooftop.
“Why do we have to go to the roof? Why not just catch the fire escape on one of the lower levels?”
He didn’t answer, and eventually, we pushed through the rusted door, back out onto the rooftop. Below us, the crowd trickled out of the building like bugs scampering out of a nest. I followed the stranger to the east side of the building, where we came to a stop in front of a narrow wall of bricks sticking up from the edge. A chimney, I guessed.
“Where’s the escape?”
“You’re looking at it.” After shrugging the pack from his back, he unzipped it and pulled out a skinny flashlight, tucking it between his teeth. Rising to his feet, he hoisted the pack over the top of the chimney, down which it tapped against the bricks, falling out of sight. Angling the flashlight over the building’s edge, he swept it across the lawn below, a circle of light cutting over the dark abyss. “There.” He pointed to the pack where it lay on the ground about a hundred feet down.
Sickness churned in my stomach as his plan crystalized in front of me. “No. No, no, no.”
“This building is nine stories. About ninety feet in the air. There used to be a storefront connected to it that they demolished after it caught fire a few years back. The chimney ends just below the second story. We’d drop, not even twenty feet.”
A nervous chuckle burst through my chest. “Unless we drop ninety feet from the top. I’m not doing this.”
“You wanna head back in with the gunman? Be my guest. I’ll see you on the other side.”
“Wait. I …. I’m afraid of …. It’s a tight squeeze in there. What if we get stuck?”
“We won’t.”
“How do you know? Haven’t you heard the Santa horror stories? Guys getting stuck in chimneys?”
His lips stretched into a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “This ain’t my first time. The masonry inside is shit. The mortar sticks out from the brick, so you can climb down. Easy. Like climbing stairs.”
“Then drop two stories.”
“Drop and roll. S’all you gotta do.”
“What are you? One of those parkour freaks?”
The distant sounds of sirens from the south side of the building filled my chest with warm and fuzzy blossoms of hope. “Police are here. We’ll be fine. No need to fall to our deaths.”
“Yeah. Because anyone’s permitted to break into a building and set it on fire. This is breaking and entering. And destruction of property.”
“We didn’t break in. We climbed through a window.”
“This building was recently purchased by some bigwig investor. Don’t think the new owner’s going to give a shit whether you broke in, or climbed in.” He raised a brow and spun toward the chimney, where he hoisted himself up over the bricks.
I rushed forward, peering into the dark tunnel closing in around him. His flashlight bounced off the walls, while he scooted his way down the brick. His movements were slow and tedious, but in seconds, I stared down at the top of his head, already about ten feet below me.
Tight pangs hit my chest, bullets of panic that mirrored my panting breaths, and a cold, nauseous sensation tickled my ribs. A sharp ping zapped my skull, and I relaxed my clenched jaw. I can’t get caught here. My father would yank my tuition money so fast, it’d make my head spin.
I pushed up to the chimney, just as he had, choking back the acids at the back of my throat as I stared down over the edge to the drop below.
“Don’t look down, just climb in, and keep your eyes focused on the bricks below your feet.” The guy called up from another twenty feet down, putting him thirty feet closer than I was to the ground.
Taking a few deep breaths, I clasped my eyes shut to center my head, and slid off the edge of the brick. My shoes skidded along the surface, and the darkness slipped in my periphery as I dropped, letting out a shriek. “Fuck!” Stomach balled into a knot, I caught my fall on a brick and hung from the edge, one foot against one wall, the other against the one behind me.
“Fuck!” I breathed out a second time, trembling to pull myself up. My arms wobbled like jelly, my muscles weak.
“It’s all right. You’re all right now. Just scoot yourself down slowly.”
“I can’t!” A sob broke in my chest, and a dry scratch in my throat burned as I pushed past the lump there. “I’m …. I’m afraid of tight spaces!”
“You’re gonna be okay. Bend your knees and push against the bricks.”
I shook my head, clutching onto the edge of the chimney, and closed my eyes, praying for those seconds just before I’d agreed to come to this shithole to return.
Never again. Please, God, I’ll never do anything stupid again.
“Let go. Just let go. You’re not going to fall. And if you do, I’ll catch your fall. C’mon.”
“Catch my fall?” The incredulous tone of my voice bounced off the soot-stained wall in front of me. “As we both tumble to our death, you mean?”
“Your alternative is sitting there all night. ‘S’at what you want?”
No. Hell, no. I wanted a nice warm bath with Epsom salts, and two ibuprofens to steal away the monster headache I’d worked up in all of my panic. Hand trembling, I let go and slapped my palm against the wall behind me, then pressed the other into the wall in front of me.
“Now walk down. Slowly.”
The confidence and command in his voice seemed to speak to my muscles more than my own, so I did as he instructed. Walking down the wall. Little steps at a time. Hoping not to die.
A sweat broke over my skin, my heart racing with every shift of my hands. My breaths arrived fast and broken. I didn’t even know how far down I’d climbed before the anxiety settled over me.
Rope biting into my wrists. Gasoline burning my nose. So cold, I can’t get warm.
“I can’t.” The words seeped past my clenched teeth, my jaw tight and aching. “I can’t do this.”
“You’re almost there, keep going.”
“You don’t …. You don’t understand. I can’t do this.”
“Only way out is down at this point. C’mon, we’ve got about forty feet to the drop.”
My eyelids shot open, and I snapped my head back, estimating the distance from the top. “Oh, God, I’ve only gone thirty feet?”
“Keep going.”
Keep going. Keep going. My muscles twitched at the sound of his voice, and I hated their sense of loyalty to his command over mine.
I scooted down, breathing in thro
ugh my nose, out through my mouth. I tried not to think of the bricks slithering in around me. The scent of fire in my nose. The fact that my space seemed to be getting tighter. Or maybe it just felt that way. I kept moving, focusing on the wall ahead of me, and the placement of my feet below me.
“Okay, here’s where we drop. Use as much space as you can. Don’t just drop straight down. Roll once your toes hit the grass.”
The tone of his voice sounded like what I imagined a skydiving instructor might, right before pushing some poor sap out the door.
And yet, I’d never wanted to get out of a place so much in my life. I didn’t even care if I broke a leg trying.
His body dropped out below me, and I watched him do exactly as he’d directed—drop and roll. In one fluid movement, he swiped up his pack and stepped aside.
“It’s about fifteen feet. You can do this.”
I allowed my shaky hands to slide against the wall, and the second I pulled my feet in, my body fell through the air, crashing to the earth with a resounding pain that traveled up my shins, along my spine, and slammed into my sinuses. I tumbled to the side in an awkward roll, and lay there, staring up at the moon.
The stranger stepped into my view, his hand outstretched. “So you did it.”
In spite of the ache in my back, I allowed him to pull me up to a stand.
The echo of pain lingered in my ankle, knocking me back a step, but he yanked tight, and wrapped his hand around my waist to steady me.
“You need me to carry you?”
“No. This is humiliating enough. I’ll suffer the walk, thanks.”
We rounded the building—ungracefully hobbled, in my case—to find a fire truck, police cars, and a crowd of people corralled together.
Though, that didn’t shock me quite as much as seeing the long, sturdy-looking fire escape snaking down the side of the building.
“You said there wasn’t a fire escape! Why did you lie?”
He shot a glance over his shoulder, but kept on down the side street. “You said you couldn’t climb down the chimney. You lied, too.”
“I had no choice! I could’ve died up there!”
“Everyone has a choice. So, how does it feel?”