Maybe I Can Fly [Completed]

Part One

My footsteps echoed as I walked up the stairs, stopping every so often to regain my balance. The alcohol was starting to affect my cognition, as I thought it would have by now. The lighting in the small stairway was dim, and in my drunken state it was a wonder that I didn't fall flat on my face and bust my teeth. And every so often, the bottle of whiskey hit the railing creating an awful screech in my ears that bounced up and down the hall, along with evidently my sanity.

My mind was swimming as I ascended the steps. I couldn't focus, so my thoughts were racing. But I could hardly even tell them apart, and I wasn't sure if that was entirely due to the alcohol.

It took longer than I anticipated, the liquid courage being to blame, but I finally saw the door that I had been longing to find. My pace quickened as I reached the top of the stairwell, and I practically ran to the door. I gripped onto the handle, steadying myself once more after I took an unsteady dip backwards for a second. I was dizzy, my emotions were numb, and my mind was clouded over, but that was exactly how I wanted it, how I needed it. Tonight was the night that I had been waiting for my whole life, or at least for the past half a year, and I couldn't let a thing like logic stop me.

I turned the knob and forced the door open, and the frigid air of late fall began to wrap itself around my body. Being drunk off your ass not only means that you can't really stand up straight, but also that you forget things. Like a jacket. On the coldest night of autumn. I shook the thoughts out of my head as I stumbled through the doorway and onto the roof. The night was clear, which made it seem so empty. You couldn't see any stars, but then again it was always like that. The city lights do that. They make the sky look hopeless and threatening, nothing but a void for you to get lost in.

I staggered over to an air conditioning unit. Whiskey never necessarily agreed with me, but maybe that was why I picked it. I leaned against the machinery that was up to my waist, squeezing my eyes closed when I realized I hit it a little too hard. I attempted to steady myself, the glass bottle clinking against the metal, but after a few seconds of my head spinning, I gave up. I sat down, my back against the cold paneling. I turned my head, taking another swig, and my mind started to drift again. But this time, it drifted to a place I didn't wanna be.

I closed my eyes and I was at school again, walking down the empty hallways. It was after the bell, so the halls were eerily quiet (I had a meeting with the counselor that day, that's why I was at school at that hour). I looked down at my feet, counting how many black marks from the soles of shoes I could see on the floor. I didn't wanna see the educational propaganda that littered the walls, embodying and presenting a false sense of belonging and comfort and encouragement, or the teachers in their classrooms who would give me puzzled or concerned looks. So I kept my eyes on the floor, trying to be as small as I possibly could. By the time I got to the center of this hell that I was trapped in, I counted forty-seven marks on the floor, thinking about how pissed off the janitors must be at our choices of footwear.

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door, entering after I heard a rough 'come in' from my guidance counselor. She wasn't happy, but I don't think she ever was. She seemed more tired than anything when I walked in; she was in the same shirt and pants she had on yesterday, both crumpled, and she was just poorly concealing a thin blanket under her desk as I walked in. Maybe she was having trouble with her husband again; I didn't know. I didn't really care.

I didn't do much of that those days, care that is. Caring for others seemed rather irrelevant in the large scheme of things; investing your emotions in people that just always left anyway, even if it wasn't their choice, seemed futile. It added wounds to our already multiplying scars, cutting its way through our flesh and into our hearts, ripping them out and shredding them thin. And in light of recent events, I thought that there was just too much to lose when caring. I wouldn't let my heart overrule my head. Not this time.