Espresso Love: Fragments

Turnaround 3

So two days later, I was standing on the edge. It wasn't an ordinary ledge, it was of red brick. Most schools had the default grey concrete look and standard wired fencing, like military bunkers, but not ours. This was red brick, like what I might imagine as a boarding school in the UK. Looking down from five storeys up, everything looked unnaturally flat. As if someone had been painting on the floor, making a false optical illusion of height. Things were blurry at the bottom and I had to squint to make out any kind of detail. If I just took a step forward, I would continue to walk all over this painting and distort its image. Above, a blue formless sky stretched onwards and onwards straight as an arrow.

In any case, when it started, I knew what they wanted, what they planned to do and I knew whoever would attempt to reach out to me would be the next in line. Such a person could only be her.

I had wasted no time and made my way to the roof. I told no one. But people were already waiting there. Faces I didn't recognize. Blank, empty faces like the sunflowers in the field. I couldn't tell them apart. I ignored them and they said nothing. Nor did they move. They watched.

It wasn't that I was giving in to them, or anyone, but I was making sure there wouldn't be anymore in line. Just a simple job that had to be done, by someone sooner or later. Surely, I couldn't let her do it. If one of us were to wither, it would be me. But I was no heroic martyr, instead, I felt nothing at all.

The last thing I heard after I had taken the step forward was her voice calling out to me from what seemed like the opposite shore of a coursing, raging river.

.

Turn around and take a look around; it's pretty scary. Turn around and have a look inside; it's pretty scary.