For The Record

13

13

I finish inching up the sloped skirting-board and collapse on the landing, mere inches from the ajar door of the room I call mine. The light isn't on, so I traverse it in the dark, almost preferring the pervasive shadow of the ceiling itself instead of the towering furniture which seems to grow when the lights are on. 

This is no good. I can't stop Ariel if he chooses to march upstairs and force me to talk to him. All he'd have to do is grab me and I wouldn't have a choice in the matter. 

My chest seizes at the thought. How did chasing Skylar end up here? I always thought I was tethered to her, but now we're life-and-death apart, and right now, I want her next to me more than anything. 

It's not enough to be thinking about her in every spare moment, and having her in my thoughts at night. I want to give her a hug and smell the strawberry shampoo on her hair, with the platinum highlights embedded in her shiny caramel locks she always wanted to get. I want to be with her while she tours every Japanese restaurant in town and critiques their food to me, because we both agree her Mum's food is better.

I want her to be alive, because I never even got my chance to say goodbye. 

Her suicide note was one-sided and blank: she wrote things in so many words they ceased to make sense, but she left a mystery for me to unfold. I keep it with me, tucked in the bottom of my bag. The last words she ever wrote--a promise for me to keep.

It makes me regret that I spent our last night together selfishly venting when her world was spiralling out of control. 

My eyes begin to water, but I furiously rub my tears away with my arm, blinking up at the window-sill. The window is ajar, sweet summer air flowing in through the crack. I begin to map out my plan in my head: the water pipe, the heat knob, the rungs of the radiator, up to the sill itself. 

Perfect.

I put on my shoes. 

Steeling my resolve, I charge across the floor with no hesitation and throw myself at the pipe, shimmying up it with the arm strength I've developed from hours at the gym. The heat knob is easier, slats carved into the plastic I can burrow my arms and legs into and use to pull myself up onto the flat top, where the first cut-out on the side of the radiator is within arm's reach.

Since it's summer, the metal is ice-cold. This makes it easier for me to grip the first hand-holds and find placement for my feet until I advance to the next one. The heater is tall, and the metal cuts into my hands and the soles of my shoes, nearly slicing through the skin, but I persevere, sweat beading on my forehead and the crevices of my limbs. 

I allow myself to rest for a few relieving moments on the chilled wood of the window-sill, surveying the outside. For a summer evening, its brutally dark, the surrounding trees and houses ink-black silhouettes against the sky.

But the faint glow of the lampposts shed light on the small outside ledge, and how, if I creep to the very end of it, the gutter pipe outside can take me all the way down. 

I close my eyes and swallow down any fear, lifting one leg, then the other, over the base of the window-frame. The soles of my shoes cut into the thick layer of dirt on the outside ledge, leaving an Everleigh-sized reminder of tonight.

The night I'll finally see my best friend.

If I don't fall.

My hands are white and trembling as I hug the window to my torso. I can't look. This would be a dizzying, dangerous height for someone Ariel's size, let alone my own.

Don't look, don't look, don't look, I repeat to myself like a mantra, arranging my feet to tiptoe around where the window juts out into the air.

There's a sickening moment where there's nothing between my feet. They dangle helplessly from a height so vast I can't even come up with a comparison--something beyond skyscrapers and giant trees, perhaps even heaven itself.

Sweat builds up on my arms and my palms start to skid. My stomach lurches, and in a frenzied panic, I throw myself to the side, hoping to catch a foot on the ledge on the other side.

One hand slips. Half of my body pivots on one foot, all my weight pressed into one ankle until I can regain enough sense to thrust forward into the glass. 

My head spins. My breathing is shallow and rapid, and my heart elephant-stomps in my chest, but both feet are planted on solid ground, and the hand clutching the window with a death-grip is rooted in place.

Oh god oh god oh god. I survived.

After a reprieve to allow my heart rate to slow, I swivel my gaze to the gutter-pipe. Thin rings rim the outside, each about a metre apart. A long stride, but not impossible.

I don't think about the danger as I descend, one rung then the next in a systematic rhythm. It's a long journey, and my muscles burn and my chest aches with exertion, so when I drop down into the tall, over-arching strands of grass of Ariel's back garden, I feel a sense of relief. 

[ ME ] 

can u come pick me up need to go somewhere

[ NATH ] 

Do you ever read my texts ev

[ ME ]

???

I scroll up, realising he's been texting non-stop since the day he left, updating me on things at the house while trying to apologise and ask if I'm okay. 

oops? anyway can u?

[ NATH ]

Your lucky Im sober

And dont think you won't have to explain

[ ME ]

cheeors :p

By the time Nathan makes it up the mountain to the outside of Ariel's house, I've managed to traverse to the front of the house, and climb into the passenger as soon as it's offered to me.

"So, where did you want to go, Ev?" my brother asks, adjusting his mirrors and pulling out of sight before either of us are detected.

I bite my lip. "Take me to the graveyard where Skylar was buried."