Lies on the Border Line

The View From the Top

Some of Aaron's happiest memories were from when he was 11. For the first time ever, lived with his mother and her boyfriend in a house of their own. He'd lived in houses before, but only ever with his Uncle and Aunt and his 2 cousins. While he didn't really mind living with them, it was always hard to have time to yourself in a house with that many people. However, this house was all theirs. He had his own room, which is something he'd never had before, and everything was more or less perfect for a short time.

His mother and her boyfriend, Ken, were not exactly the most ideal couple. The had strange and often disturbing ways of treating each other that Aaron didn't understand. They would fight like the world was ending, and then make up up a minute later. They also had gross 'baby talk' nicknames they would call each other, like 'wuver'. However, they seemed happy enough at the time and it didn't even matter to Aaron that Ken was an ex-convict. Although there was that one time that they got into a really big fight, and Aaron's mother told him to go down the street to call the cops from a payphone (because they didn't have a house phone). This turned out to be a mistake as the cops took both his mother and Ken away in handcuffs. Despite these struggles, these were some of the happier times in Aaron's life.

For the first time in years, Aaron also had friends. There was Adam (10), and his sister Andrea (6) who lived in the house next door, and TJ (11) and his sister Leelee (10) who lived at the end of the street. His friends weren't without their quirks... Adam and Andrea had, reportedly, engaged in incestuous activities before, although they were both somewhat ashamed about it and the details were never clear. Leelee was also not a virgin despite being only 10, and was rather proud of her sexual exploits, seeing as she would brag about them to the group. Despite their flaws, Aaron knew that having any friends was better than having none at all.

Aaron and his friends would often play around in the field behind their houses where there was lots of room to run and explore. There were trees to climb and they would often have competitions on who could climb the fastest or the highest. Aaron, being rather thin and gangly looking excelled at climbing. Aaron weighed considerably less than Adam who was rather rotund for his age, and would often boast to Adam about being able to climb to the very tops of all of the trees; a feat that Adam could not do because the branches were too thin to hold his weight. There was one tree in particular that Aaron loved climbing; an old Walnut tree that was the tallest of all the trees in the field.

It was around this time in Aaron's life, despite everything being the best they'd ever been, that he had some confusing and rather conflicting emotions. Aaron would stay out late and climb to the top of that old walnut tree and watch the sunset. The view from the top made everything in the world feel so small and trivial. He would look out as far as the eye could see in awe at the spectacle of colors that the sunset provided.

As the sunset faded and the stars began to shine, Aaron would feel sad. He didn't really understand why. Nothing was wrong. Life was the best he could remember it ever being. So why did he feel this way? Standing on the very tip of the tree, leaning out over nothing, Aaron would think, "I wonder what would happen if I just let go? Would a fall from this height be enough to kill me? What does it feel like to die?"

Aaron thought about letting go, and for a moment his grip began to slip. The bough of the tree bowed, and a momentary panic overcame Aaron as he realized that he was about to fall. One of his palms, cold with sweat, lost its grip on the branches and for a moment Aaron felt everything just slip away. In this moment, everything in Aaron's life melted away. All of the friends that he had worked so hard to obtain suddenly didn't matter. The house, his mother and her boyfriend, everything; nothing mattered. For just a moment, Aaron was free of all of his burdens and he felt as though he could just fly away from it all.

As gravity reminded Aaron that he was indeed about to fly away, but not in the way he had intended, he panicked and frantically attempted to grabbed the bough of the tree. Rapidly he fell, scraping his arms and legs up on the slim branches, which broke as he descended. Once Aaron hit the bulk of the tree, he landed on some of the sturdier branches which were not so inclined to break under the added strain of his momentum. He landed, not so much with a thud, but with a slow grinding halt. All in all he had fallen less than ten feet, although it felt like much more to him at the time. Scraped in just about every way imaginable, Aaron examined himself. Nothing was broken, and while he would surely be sore from the experience, he wasn't worse for wear. He checked his arms and legs to make sure he was fit to move, and then he slowly climbed down from the tree.

It wasn't long after that experience that Aaron lost all desire to climb the trees in the field that was his back yard. He claimed that he was just getting too old to be interested in that sort of thing anymore, but he knew the real reason. He knew that the feeling he felt at the top wasn't gone. The rush he felt in that moment where he was completely weightless called to him. If anything he thought that, if he was going to die, that falling would be the way he wanted to go. He never climb another tree again, but he never forgot the view from the top.