Another mention of a secret.
(Was this the point of the letters, Aunt Helen? A big reveal?) I told Sam where we were going. He was excited—he walked a few steps ahead of me, leading the way to the building’s entrance, but I hung back a little. I didn’t love heights to begin with, and this building stretched too high into the sky, twisting and reaching into the clouds.
Falling off a building—providing it is a very high building—is sure to result in death. The downsides are: very messy, a fair amount of time to consider your imminent landing, and the danger of taking someone else with you, just minding their business on the sidewalk below.
“We’ll stay away from the edge,” Sam said, taking my hand for just a brief second before we pushed through the revolving doors and into the lobby. “They have barriers anyway,” he continued as we waited in line to purchase our elevator tickets.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I don’t even care.”
“Right. So you’ve turned completely pale because . . . you’re scared of elevators?”
I actually didn’t love elevators either, but I could deal with them. Elevator crashes were rare, but they posed the same risks as falling off a building: if it were a short enough trip, it would hurt a lot.
“I’m not scared of elevators,” I muttered.
“Are you scared of ticket lines?”
“I’m not scared of anything,” I said as we reached the window. We paid for our tickets and then took our place in the elevator line.
“That’s impressive. I’m scared of plenty of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like mustard. I really don’t like mustard.”
“You just ate mustard. With your pretzel.”
“Oh, right. Well—I think the best way to get over your fears is to confront them.”
“Ah, is that it?”
“Okay. I’ll tell you something I’m really afraid of if you tell me something you’re afraid of,” he said, turning to face me.
“I’ll tell you at the top.” It would give me enough time to work up the nerve.
We reached the front of the line and stepped into the elevator with a small group of other people. I started counting when the doors clicked shut; I didn’t get to forty before we reached the top.
“These are the fastest elevators in the Western Hemisphere,” I heard a dad tell his kids, who looked thoroughly unimpressed with their dad’s elevator trivia. “We just traveled two thousand feet a minute!”
“Planes go faster,” his son said, shrugging.
“Do cars go faster? Cars probably go faster,” his daughter added.
We filed out of the elevator and into a wide-open space surrounded by massive windows. My stomach flipped as I saw New York spread out all around me. Every single person took out their phone or camera or iPad and started taking pictures of the view. I walked as close to the glass as I could without starting to feel dizzy.
“See,” Sam said, pointing. “Barriers.”
I remembered hearing a story about a man who had thrown himself off the top of the Empire State Building a few years ago. They didn’t have windows there; they had fences. He had run and jumped and climbed up and over before anyone could stop him.
I will never, ever understand suicide.
If anything, I would understand the exact opposite. Locking yourself up in a hermetically sealed bubble for all eternity. Forsaking friends and family to ensure a life free of disease and germs and bacteria. Taking every possible measure to preserve what little time we’re given on this planet. I completely understand why Margo Hatter, only minutes after her and her brother had broken into the house in the middle of the woods, had picked up a dusty glass bottle with a little label that said Everlife Formula and drank it without another thought. Boom. Immortality with only the faintest bit of an aftertaste.
I don’t ever want to die.
I saw my aunt die.
I don’t know why anyone would want that.
Being so far above the city was beautiful, sure, but more than anything it made me think of all the people down below and all the terrible things that could happen to any one of them. I wished we could pause it all. I wished we could rest; I wished we could relax. But we couldn’t ever relax. We had to constantly fight to protect ourselves.
“A really, really long time ago, I made a terrible mistake,” Sam said. “That’s what I’m most afraid of. That I can’t go back and fix it.”
It took me a minute to remember what he was talking about.
I looked over at him. His hair was in a low ponytail, and he bit his lower lip and looked faraway and lost, and it made me feel protective of him. I felt protective of everyone sometimes, but with Sam it was almost frantic. I didn’t know why. I just did.
“Death,” I said. “That’s the only thing I’m scared of.”
After the Freedom Tower, we walked up to Bleeker Street and stood in line for cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery.
“This is the line for cupcakes?” Sam asked, craning his neck to see past the line of people and into the small bakery.
“These cupcakes are worth the wait, trust me.”
We hadn’t talked any more about the things we were afraid of. We walked around the perimeter of the Freedom Tower, and I’d sent a photo to my mom (her response: looks nice, be safe, can’t talk, reading the new book!!!), and then we rode the elevator back down and it felt too much like falling for my taste. It felt too out of control.
It was good to be back on the ground, back outside, and it even felt good to be waiting in line on one of my favorite streets in the city. That old Simon & Garfunkel song played quietly in my head, and I started humming it without meaning to. Then Sam started humming it, and I tried to remember the lyrics to sing along, but I couldn’t think of them.
“I haven’t heard that song in a long time,” he said.
“It’s a sad song,” I said. “I remember something about clouds.”
“All songs can be happy or sad. It just depends on how you look at them. It depends on how you want to feel when you listen to them.”
“Lucky for us, cupcakes can only be happy.”
“Are you going to get a happy chocolate cupcake or a happy vanilla cupcake?”
“I’m going to get a happy vanilla cupcake, and then you should get chocolate, and we should cut them in half and sew them back up with their opposites, and then we’ll have the best of both worlds.”
“That is a truly remarkable cupcake strategy. I can tell you’ve done this before.”
“One or two times.”
We ate our doctored cupcakes on the front stoop of a brownstone. I ate mine so that every bite was chocolate and vanilla. Sam ate his chocolate first, then vanilla. He closed his eyes after the first bite.
“I told you,” I said.
“Wow.”
“They’re good cupcakes.”
“I mean . . .”