The Perks of Being a Freak (Editing)

55. Fight Like She Did

As part of their senior year, Seth and Cody were participating in an internship with a semi-local science facility in Boston. And, because I’m their sister and they love me, they brought me along with them to the seventieth floor of the skyscraper.

At seven in the morning.

On a Saturday.

Bastards.

The overall best part was that I wasn’t allowed to participate at all in the lab. I was sent to the seventy-second floor, which was a lounge, to wait for three hours.

Three. Whole. Hours.

Good thing I had my laptop.

I was maybe an hour and a half into my three-hour torture when I heard screaming from the street, and saw the man standing outside the window.

I do not remember ever formulating a plan before I reacted. One second, I was looking up to see a man gripping the building, and the next I had a scarf around my nose and mouth, and I was out there with him.

At first he didn’t notice me, and I had a second to ponder what the hell I was doing on the outside of a scyscraper, trying to talk down a guy I didn’t even know.

“Whatcha doin’?” I asked, holding tightly to a support beam on the outside of one of the windows. The man jumped and looked over, shocked.

“How did you get out here?” He demanded.

“Same as you,” I shrugged and adjusted the scarf over my nose.

“Don’t try and stop me,” he warned.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” lies. “I just wanted to know why you thought that your life was so miserable that you had to end it.

He looked tired. His suit jacket was creased, and his tie was loosened. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair looked like it needed a good combing.

He was hesitant to answer.

“Or, we could start small. Like… what’s your name?”  

“Steven,” he spoke quietly, almost inaudible over the loud wind. It was incredibly strong, almost pulling me off of the building. I’m guessing that Steven was having an even harder time holding on.

“I’m Julie,” I lied. “It’s nice to meet you. Although, I think I’d prefer to have met you inside the tower, instead of outside.”

“I’m going to kill myself,” he said, looking heartbroken. “I’m going to die.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why are you going to kill yourself?”

“No one cares about me,” he murmured, silent tears running down his cheeks. “No one loves me.”

“Well I don’t love you,” I shook my head. “But obviously there are people who care about you. I care about you enough to crawl out a window and try to talk you down.”

“You don’t know me,” he said.

“And if you go through with this, no one will ever know you,” this was frustrating. “Look, I understand what you feel like.”

“I doubt that,” he laughed coldly.

“I used to be the kid that no one cared about, douchebag,” I growled. “My parents hardly ever look at me. I haven’t gotten a birthday present since I was ten years old. Hell, I haven’t gotten anything since I was ten, unless I got it for myself. I thought that I was alone. I thought that it was me versus the world but I was wrong. Okay? There were people all around me who loved me and cared for me but I was too blind to see them. Don’t be blind, you idiot! Find those people and cherish them!”

Steven was quiet for a long time.

“How old are you?” He asked.

“I turned seventeen last month,” I sighed, brushing back a piece of hair.

“You’re too old to be seventeen,” Steven sounded mournful.

“This isn’t the way to fix things, y’know,” I took a step towards him, and then there were only a couple of yards between us. “Killing yourself will make it so that your life can never get better.”

“And it can never get worse,” he spoke bleakly.

“But that’s what life does,” I said. “Life gets worse and worse until you think that you’ll go insane but then it gets so much better and you’ll look back and realize that it was never as bad as you thought that it was.”

“My baby died.” Steven whispered. “My beautiful little girl.”

“And I am so sorry,” I told him. “I really am. But do you think that she would want you to throw your life away? I don’t care what happens to me, but I would never want my father to die because of it, even if he hasn’t looked at me since I was younger.”

“Her name was Leah,” Steven whispered.

“Leah is a beautiful name,” I told him. “And I’m sure that she was a beautiful girl. And she would not want this for you.”

“She was so strong,” Steven said. “Fighting ‘til the very end.”

“Well, you should follow her example.” I narrowed my eyes. “This isn’t strong of you. This isn’t fighting. This is giving up because life hurts a little bit more than you expected.”

“It isn’t fair!” He screamed, looking over with crazed eyes. “It’s not fair!”

“Life isn’t fair, Steven,” I snapped. “It’s not fair to you, it hasn’t been fair to me, and it’s not going to be fair to anybody. You got dealt a shit hand. Now you’ve got to work a little bit harder to turn that around.”

Steven looked down at the dizzying height, at the traffic and the people looking up at him, yelling and screaming.

Once upon a time I would have been terrified of the height. Once upon a time I would have never been so selfless as to climb out onto the windowsill. But I had kissed the stars. I had given up my normalcy in exchange for every humans dream. There was nothing that I wanted anymore, because all that I had was what I would get.

But this wasn’t ‘Once Upon A Time.’ This was now, and I had a life to save.