Even though the bell has rung, some of my classmates are still milling around on the ground. It’s the first week of the second semester of senior year, and already they’re acting as if they’re almost done and out of here. One of them looks up in my direction, as if he heard me, but the others don’t, either because they haven’t spotted me or because they know I’m there and Oh well, it’s just Theodore Freak.
Then his head turns away from me and he points at the sky. At first I think he’s pointing at me, but it’s at that moment I see her, the girl. She stands a few feet away on the other side of the tower, also out on the ledge, dark-blond hair waving in the breeze, the hem of her skirt blowing up like a parachute. Even though it’s January in Indiana, she is shoeless in tights, a pair of boots in her hand, and staring either at her feet or at the ground—it’s hard to tell. She seems frozen in place.
In my regular, nonpreacher voice I say, as calmly as possible, “Take it from me, the worst thing you can do is look down.”
Very slowly, she turns her head toward me, and I know this girl, or at least I’ve seen her in the hallways. I can’t resist: “Come here often? Because this is kind of my spot and I don’t remember seeing you here before.”
She doesn’t laugh or blink, just gazes out at me from behind these clunky glasses that almost cover her face. She tries to take a step back and her foot bumps the railing. She teeters a little, and before she can panic, I say, “I don’t know what brings you up here, but to me the town looks prettier and the people look nicer and even the worst of them look almost kind. Except for Gabe Romero and Amanda Monk and that whole crowd you hang out with.”
Her name is Violet Something. She is cheerleader popular—one of those girls you would never think of running into on a ledge six stories above the ground. Behind the ugly glasses she’s pretty, almost like a china doll. Large eyes, sweet face shaped like a heart, a mouth that wants to curve into a perfect little smile. She’s a girl who dates guys like Ryan Cross, baseball star, and sits with Amanda Monk and the other queen bees at lunch.
“But let’s face it, we didn’t come up here for the view. You’re Violet, right?”
She blinks once, and I take this as a yes.
“Theodore Finch. I think we had pre-cal together last year.” She blinks again.
“I hate math, but that’s not why I’m up here. No offense if that’s why you are. You’re probably better at math than I am, because pretty much everyone’s better at math than I am, but it’s okay, I’m fine with it. See, I excel at other, more important things—guitar, sex, and consistently disappointing my dad, to name a few. By the way, it’s apparently true that you’ll never use it in the real world. Math, I mean.”
I keep talking, but I can tell I’m running out of steam. I need to take a piss, for one thing, and so my words aren’t the only thing twitching. (Note to self: Before attempting to take own life, remember to take a leak.) And, two, it’s starting to rain, which, in this temperature, will probably turn to sleet before it hits the ground.
“It’s starting to rain,” I say, as if she doesn’t know this. “I guess there’s an argument to be made that the rain will wash away the blood, leaving us a neater mess to clean up than otherwise. But it’s the mess part that’s got me thinking. I’m not a vain person, but I am human, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to look like I’ve been run through the wood chipper at my funeral.”
She’s shivering or shaking, I can’t tell which, and so I slowly inch my way toward her, hoping I don’t fall off before I get there, because the last thing I want to do is make a jackass out of myself in front of this girl. “I’ve made it clear I want cremation, but my mom doesn’t believe in it.” And my dad will do whatever she says so he won’t upset her any more than he already has, and besides, You’re far too young to think about this, you know your Grandma Finch lived to be ninety-eight, we don’t need to talk about that now, Theodore, don’t upset your mother.
“So it’ll be an open coffin for me, which means if I jump, it ain’t gonna be pretty. Besides, I kind of like my face intact like this, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, a full set of teeth, which, if I’m being honest, is one of my better features.” I smile so she can see what I mean. Everything where it should be, on the outside at least.
When she doesn’t say anything, I go on inching and talking. “Most of all, I feel bad for the undertaker. What a shitty job that must be anyway, but then to have to deal with an asshole like me?”
From down below, someone yells, “Violet? Is that Violet up there?”
“Oh God,” she says, so low I barely hear it. “OhGodohGodohGod.” The wind blows her skirt and hair, and it looks like she’s going to fly away.
There is general buzzing from the ground, and I shout, “Don’t try to save me! You’ll only kill yourself!” Then I say, very low, just to her, “Here’s what I think we should do.” I’m about a foot away from her now. “I want you to throw your shoes toward the bell and then hold on to the rail, just grab right onto it, and once you’ve got it, lean against it and then lift your right foot up and over. Got that?”
She nods and almost loses her balance.
“Don’t nod. And whatever you do, don’t go the wrong way and step forward instead of back. I’ll count you off. On three.”
She throws her boots in the direction of the bell, and they fall with a thud, thud onto the concrete.
“One. Two. Three.”
She grips the stone and kind of props herself against it and then lifts her leg up and over so that she’s sitting on the railing. She stares down at the ground and I can see that she’s frozen again, and so I say, “Good. Great. Just stop looking down.”
She slowly looks at me and then reaches for the floor of the bell tower with her right foot, and once she’s found it, I say, “Now get that left leg back over however you can. Don’t let go of the wall.” By now she’s shaking so hard I can hear her teeth chatter, but I watch as her left foot joins her right, and she is safe.
So now it’s just me out here. I gaze down at the ground one last time, past my size-thirteen feet that won’t stop growing—today I’m wearing sneakers with fluorescent laces—past the open windows of the fourth floor, the third, the second, past Amanda Monk, who is cackling from the front steps and swishing her blond hair like a pony, books over her head, trying to flirt and protect herself from the rain at the same time.
I gaze past all of this at the ground itself, which is now slick and damp, and imagine myself lying there.
I could just step off. It would be over in seconds. No more “Theodore Freak.” No more hurt. No more anything.
I try to get past the unexpected interruption of saving a life and return to the business at hand. For a minute, I can feel it: the sense of peace as my mind goes quiet, like I’m already dead. I am weightless and free. Nothing and no one to fear, not even myself.
Then a voice from behind me says, “I want you to hold on to the rail, and once you’ve got it, lean against it and lift your right foot up and over.”
Like that, I can feel the moment passing, maybe already passed, and now it seems like a stupid idea, except for picturing the look on Amanda’s face as I go sailing by her. I laugh at the thought. I laugh so hard I almost fall off, and this scares me—like, really scares me—and I catch myself and Violet catches me as Amanda looks up. “Weirdo!” someone shouts. Amanda’s little group snickers. She cups her big mouth and aims it sky-ward. “You okay, V?”
Violet leans over the rail, still holding on to my legs. “I’m okay.”
The door at the top of the tower stairs cracks open and my best friend, Charlie Donahue, appears. Charlie is black. Not CW black, but black-black. He also gets laid more than anyone else I know.
He says, “They’re serving pizza today,” as if I wasn’t standing on a ledge six stories above the ground, my arms outstretched, a girl wrapped around my knees.