by Sky Chase
“Rob a bank and then hide,” I replied. She flashed a grin as if she was proud of my answer.
“What would you do with the money?” For a moment I noted that this felt like the start to every great heist.
“I would go straight to Sam’s Club and get the big family pack of pizza rolls.” And then she laughed, like really laughed.
“Is that really the first thing you would buy?”
“Hell, yeah.”
The game continued until the bell rang and it was time to go to class. Before leaving, I realized that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I had a friend.
11
Beverly
Later that day while I was at work, hour by hour, I couldn’t get what happened at lunch out of my mind, and I couldn’t even begin to explain what it felt like to have someone actually be interested in who I was. My brain tried to sort out the emotions, but I couldn’t place my finger on them. He actually wanted to know me—Beverly Davis—the girl who usually sat in the shadows.
I learned a lot about Everest today. Among those things was that his favorite singer was John Mayer, his favorite number was three, his favorite animal was a lion, and he was afraid of cats. I had laughed at the irony while he’d done this side-smile.
I noticed how he side-smiled a lot, like he was restricting himself from fully smiling. I noticed how he chewed on his lip when he was slightly embarrassed, and I noticed how his laughs were never wild like mine, and his chuckles were also restricted.
All it took was one period, and those forty-five minutes left me wanting more. I wanted to know everything there was to possibly know about him.
“Hey, Betty, don’t you just love open mic night?” Poppy hummed, breaking me out of my thoughts.
I couldn’t help but agree. Open mic night was when the small café filled a little more than usual. People came to watch their friends make fools of themselves, or an upcoming artist came to play hoping to get their sound out. I remembered when I first starting working here, the place would be packed. It still filled up, but it wasn’t what it used to be.
“Hey, Betty, could you be a doll and clean the chai tea that spilled?” Lily called from across the café. I glanced at the liquid dribbling from a nearby table and onto the floor.
“I’ll do it,” I said, and grabbed a nearby rag as I made my way to the liquid mess. But being the uncoordinated person that I was, I slipped on the mess and fell backward, landing flat on my back. The impact from me hitting my head caused me to groan in pain. I lay there for a second, eyes closed, as the ache increased.
“Really, Bev? Napping on the job? I expected more from you,” a deep, teasing voice called from above me. My dirt eyes met his Earth. Everest really did have some beautiful eyes, with swirls of green drowning in the pools of blue. It was so cool how his eyes wouldn’t make up their mind on what they wanted to be.
His lips were curled in that side-smile, and his eyes were slightly teasing.
“Oh goodness, Betty! Are you okay?” Lily asked, pushing Everest aside, Rose and Poppy standing by her.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I assured her, and even started to stand up. Though the ache in my head from hitting the ground increased, it was nothing.
Being up on my feet, the wetness on my back became uncomfortable. I rubbed a little at my shoulder blade, trying not to meet his eye.
“Go sit down for a second, that was a pretty nasty fall,” Lily said. “I’ll clean it.”
I sat at a table and Everest sat across from me.
“Are you really okay?” he asked, slight amusement on his features.
I rubbed my head a little. “Yeah, my shirt kinda absorbed all of the mess when I took the fall, and that’s bothering me more than anything.”
“Here,” Everest said as he pulled his hoodie off, “wear this.”
The infamous gray hoodie was warm and smelled just like I imagined—of his natural scent with a slight undertone of nicotine. The hoodie was big, but that just made it all that more comforting. Everest wore a fitted short-sleeved black T-shirt underneath. His arms were lean but muscular. A tattoo caught my eye and I was shocked—I’d had no clue he had a tattoo.
“I didn’t know you had tats,” I chuckled, poking his arm.
He pulled his arm onto his lap. “I only have one.”
“Anyway, I think it’s cool,” I responded, and he looked up from his lap, his eyes meeting mine and an unreadable expression on his face.
“You think anything is cool,” he said, a ghost smile of a smile on his lips.
I scoffed. “No, I do not.”
“You find the beauty in anything. It’s like you’re not real—unicorns and fairies come over your house on Saturdays and you have tea parties.”
I threw a nearby sugar packet at him. He chuckled.
“Life is too short to live it recklessly. I can’t do negative things, it’s better to be positive, to be good. I need to be mature and see the world on its better side,” I explained.
“You know, I never saw you until recently. Not at a party or a football game or anything. You don’t even eat in the cafeteria, it’s like you want to be invisible. You’re a teenager, you’re supposed to be reckless and stupid.”
I took in his words as I stared at a nearby napkin dispenser. He talked a lot of game for someone who didn’t even want to continue his life. And that was when an idea struck me.
The words came out before I could stop them. “Okay, let’s make a deal. You teach me to be a bit reckless and I’ll teach you to see the beauty.”
I whipped my hand out for him to shake. His large sleeve slid down my arm and covered my hand, and I pushed it up to my elbow. It was no doubt the strangest thing I had ever said, and I hoped that I hadn’t ruined whatever we had with my silly proposal.
By now I realized that he was still staring at my outstretched hand, probably thinking of an excuse to never talk to me again, before taking me by surprise and gripping the handshake. “You got yourself a deal.”
I felt a wave of victory crash over me—I was going to have a chance to convince him that this world was worth staying on.
“Welcome to open mic night, would anyone like to go first?” Rose announced, and I nudged Everest.
“Hell, no,” Everest mouthed back at me, as if I’d asked him to suck my right toe.
“Remember the deal,” I whispered, before standing up. “Everest will.”
His eyes grew big and he shook his head vigorously. I pulled him by his arm to make him stand up, and he looked around the semicrowded café. His eyes flickered to each corner and each person, and he gulped visibly.
“I don’t have my guitar or anything,” he announced, trying to get out of performing.
I felt a bit guilty for putting him in this situation, but there were only about fifteen people in here. He should explore interests other than football. And even if he was bad, he’d learn that this wasn’t for him. Singing wasn’t the only thing in the music industry.
“That’s all right, come on up. We have an extra one, you can use it.”
Poppy pushed Everest toward the stage, and he looked helplessly back at me. He climbed up, and blocked his eyes from the overhanging lights. Rose nudged him closer to the band. “Tell us what you’re going to sing,” she encouraged, before exiting the stage.
He awkwardly tuned the guitar as he stood in front of the mic.
“Hi, my name is Everest. For the first time, I’m going to cover ‘Mad World.’”
The slow melody carried through the café, and from the first haunting note that passed through his lips, he captured the attention of everyone there. I couldn’t tell a lie, as that note crawled from the soles of my feet and engulfed me whole, it was so disturbingly beautiful, and it didn’t make sense but it made sense.
That moment made sense.
When he first sang into the
mic, it was like everything disappeared and it was just him and his emotions.
People looked up from their laptops, and conversations stopped—all attention was on him.
I did not know he could sing like that. The runs and riffs were perfectly imperfect, something that couldn’t be rehearsed. The raw emotion that spilled from his diaphragm and passed his lips knocked everyone off their feet. I felt like I was someplace different. His tone was raspy, his face contorted in pain—the emotional kind.
I wanted to cry, because, my God, that was too perfect.
When he finished, the room was dead silent. We were all in shock. He gripped the mic like he was afraid it was going to leave him. His head hung low, and his chest expanded as he took deep breaths. It was like he didn’t know we were there, like he’d completely forgotten that people were watching him.
Poppy was the first to clap. She jumped up from her chair and hooted. The rest of the room followed, clapping loudly and whistl-
ing, but I still couldn’t move.
He slowly looked up, and watched as people cheered for him. There were only fifteen people, but it felt like more. I felt so incredibly proud of him. I watched his features as they grew into a breathtaking smile. His smile was like living poetry. His gaze met mine, and it seemed as though his eyes were smiling. I thought the rain was beautiful, but nothing compared to this—watching someone broken finally getting a glimpse of happiness after so long.
12
Everest
Confession: sometimes I wonder if I’m playing this whole life-game all wrong.
—CF, April 29, 2002
Looking at my uncle’s notebook the other day made me feel like I wasn’t the only one who felt off in this family. You’d never have known it by looking at him, but my uncle struggled. We were more alike than I thought. Like him, I knew firsthand that it wasn’t as good as it seemed to have everyone adore you. At first, it was great, knowing that people put you in the limelight. But all that praise was just in their minds; that made-up idea that something and/or someone was close to perfection. And I was for damn sure not perfect.
My tears, blood, scars, and toxic mind were proof of that.
People expected so much from you. You weren’t supposed to screw up because in their minds you weren’t a screw-up. Being up on the stage took me back—too far back. In the fields, halls, and practically everywhere that I went, people looked at me like they wanted more. Admiring faces and loving gazes. Being up on that stage took me to a time when I was in everyone’s good graces. You would think that all that praise would have led my dad to start being proud of me, but no. He strove for perfection, and no matter what I did, I was always doing something wrong in his mind.
I didn’t know why I needed my dad to be proud of me. I guessed I wanted him to show up to my games and not criticize me afterward. I guessed I wanted him to look at me one time and say “Son, I’m proud of you,” or “You did a good job,” or even “How was your day?”
When he didn’t approve, I beat myself up. He drove me to become this perfectionist, and I hated it. I was trying to teach myself not to care about the same things that mattered to him, but no matter how much I lied to myself, I still cared.
How did anyone not know that my depression was still here, if not stronger than ever? I was suffocating. And the people who at least acted like they once cared were now turning their backs.
It wasn’t just my dad’s disapproving eyes anymore. It was everyone who knew me and everyone who didn’t know me. Everyone had joined his team and I was sick of pretending that I didn’t notice.
I wanted people to like me so badly; I wanted to like me. But I always found something that I didn’t like, and now I’d given up.
Being on stage at first made me feel like I was worth something. When I was singing, I kind of blanked out. I was happy, but then I realized that the gazes of admiration would soon change to disgust. And that sucked because it felt good. It felt so good to momentarily be happy. But happiness wasn’t meant for people like me, because it would always crash and burn.
Fire. Ashes. Smoke.
I couldn’t breathe.
I exited the stage in a rush, people patting me on the back and smiling to my face, and I was sure my smile lacked the enthusiasm it once had. I had to get out of here, because my thoughts were clawing at my skin from the inside out.
The September night air was chilled with the upcoming October and swallowed me whole. My hands gripped my keys so tightly that I swore the scent of my blood would soon start to fill my senses.
“Everest!”
“Everest!”
“Are you all right?”
I turned my head to see Lily, Poppy, Rose, and Beverly in the doorway.
I turned my head and rubbed roughly at my jaw, before murmuring a curse and turning back toward them.
“Sure, I’m . . . not feeling too well. I think I’m catching a cold.”
Poppy and Rose told me to take a minute and then went back into the café. Lily reluctantly nodded, whispered quickly to Beverly, and then followed her sisters.
Beverly didn’t say anything as she stared at me. Her large brown eyes zoned in on mine, and I hated how hers knew mine were lying. She was too observant for her own good.
“I’m fine,” I assured her as the depression zoomed, bolted, and leaped through my veins, begging to be cut and released.
She took a step closer to me. “No, you’re not.”
I stared at her, shocked by how much I wanted someone to say that to me. I found it hard to accept how much she cared about me. One half of me believed that I was just too damaged to even be around someone like her. But the other part of me selfishly wanted her around. And I didn’t know why. Maybe it was because I was lonely. And maybe it was because I found it sad how she was always alone.
But either way, this friendship could end badly, and I wanted to put the embers out before they caught fire.
“I have to show you something,” I said, hoping that maybe I could scare her away.
The entire drive, I was anxious. Beverly sat in the passenger seat and I could practically smell the unspoken questions she desperately wanted to ask. My mocking heartbeat filled my ears with its rhythm, and I wanted to claw the sound out. Finally, we arrived, and I felt like I was going back in time. I looked at Beverly and her expression was one of confusion.
“It’s this way,” I said, leading the way to the back of the building. Through the door and up trillions of steps, I led us to the top of the building. I jiggled the knob like I had a hundred times before, and it swung open.
Holding the door, I glanced back at Beverly.
“This isn’t the part where you kill me right?” she half joked.
I chuckled as she walked through the door. “No promises.”
Being on the rooftop made all the swimming memories float past me. I walked toward the ledge.
“When I was figuring out how I wanted to kill myself, I would sit up here . . .”
Beverly stayed silent. I looked over the edge and watched the cars drive by.
“I contemplated just getting it over with and jumping off this building. But I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to fail and be paralyzed for the rest of my life. Every day I would think about how I should do it,” I said. “It’s crazy how many ideas I came up with. Everywhere I was at, I thought about it. I convinced myself that the reason I hadn’t done it yet was because I hadn’t picked the right way, but I was actually just waiting. I was waiting for someone—anyone, really—to notice, to notice that I was drowning while watching everyone take a breath.”
I looked up at her, my unshed tears betraying me with their presence. Clearing my throat, I turned away from her. It used to be so easy hiding my emotions, but my emotions had gained strength, and my resistance was weakening.
Suddenly, her presence came at arm’s length from be
hind me. “Do . . . do you still think you want to die?” she asked me, and I turned around to face her.
Think?
“I want to die,” I told her, straightening my back. She needed to leave me alone now. She needed to come to her senses and just leave me alone.
“No, you don’t.” She spoke with confidence and assurance. “Tell me this: why haven’t you tried again? If you really wanted to die, then you would have done anything to get the deed done.”
She looked up at the night sky and sighed. Then her eyes met mine and she smiled gently. “You don’t want to die. You just need to figure out how to start living.”
And in that moment I realized that she was going to be someone that I would never forget.
13
Beverly
We sat up on the roof for a while until Everest noticed I was getting really cold. He led me back downstairs through the industrial hallway, and into the parking lot, which was so quiet and still.
“What was that place anyway?” I asked Everest once we were back in his car.
“It’s one of my dad’s hotels. You didn’t see the sign on the way in?”
He jerked his head at a sign once we passed the lot. The sign was forest green with gold lettering. The Finley Inn.
I hadn’t noticed, but I knew that his family owned a bunch of establishments in the city. I remembered when they first moved here—the Finleys. They moved in the summer before ninth grade, and when they came, they knocked down half the east side with them, rebuilding it from the ground up. The place I grew up in was no longer corner stores on every block and abandoned buildings; now it had superconvienience stores, coffee shops, and luxury hotels.
Everest’s name was a big hit before he even started his first day of school. His family practically owned a portion of Pittsburgh—bars, restaurants, the aforementioned hotels. The first day of ninth grade, everyone was talking about the new kid—the new rich kid, his football legacy, the handsome son of a handsome father. The perfect family. The gold standard.