Will to Way, Wilt Away

Chapter 3

Simultaneously, a sweat overwhelmed my entire body while a surge of frigid air sent me shivering to my core. My first instinct was to dart to the elevator. My brain screamed at my legs to move, but as I tried to take my first step, an uncomfortable rush of paralysis crawled up from my toes toward my knees. The same twinging numbness climbed nerve by nerve up my fingertips to my palm and then my forearm. My body held my panicked mind captive in an inescapable trance of immobility. 

Fear fogged my thoughts as I tried to decipher the sight of the boy before me. He just committed a crime. But he's crying. Well then what's the crowbar for. He's definitely a criminal. The light of the setting sun was dim, so I could only see the outline of his body. My eyes focused on the boy's sunken shoulders. They were tense and trembling. He roughly grasped his head in his hands as the ins and outs of his breathing grew heavier and faster. It sounded as if a hurricane was escaping from his lungs with every exhale. My brain told me to run, but every bone in my body knew I needed to stay.

Gradually, the boy's breathing slowed and grew soft, like the whistle of a gentle wind. He continued to cry, but he weeped with a whisper, mumbling a barely audible sentence that my ears couldn't make out. His posture was crestfallen. His neck was too weak to hold his own head up. His fingertips pressed on the glass floor in a seemingly desperate attempt to prevent his body from completely collapsing.

The clouds of fear parted in my mind. I had no idea who this boy was. I had no idea what he had done or what he was going to do. I had no idea why he was crying. But he was crying. Incessantly, uncontrollably, hopelessly crying. I knew he wasn't a criminal or a danger to myself. This boy radiated pure, raw heartbreak.

The paralysis subsided from each of my limbs, trickling away from my arms and legs toward my fingertips and toes. My cold sweat also faded and I brushed away the tiny droplets of perspiration from my forehead. I didn't know whether to say something from outside the glass box or go into the box with the boy. The last thing I wanted to do was startle someone in such distress. I took a small step closer to the box. Then another. Then another. The boy didn't seem to hear me. He remained there sniffling, taking deep breaths, and holding his body upright with his fingertips on the ground.

I decided I was going to say something to get his attention. As my mouth opened to speak, the boy abruptly reached to his side and grasped the crowbar. My hands instinctively covered my mouth in shock. In a violent, forceful motion, he heaved the crowbar above his head. His arm convulsed and shuddered in a bizarre, unnatural manner, as if every last bit of his faith, hope, and strength within him was dangling by a thread.

The grim realization struck my head and heart at once: He was going to kill himself.

His tense, rigid arm, still shaking, extended further into the air. He held such enormous power and tragedy in his hand. With one sweep of his arm, his entire life would nosedive with the broken glass into his grave nine stories below. And I was about to witness it all.

I could feel his certainty about his fate build little by little as he gripped the crowbar tighter. His taut arm jolted a few inches downward but forcefully halted. A little piece of his heart flickered with a small flame, fading but fighting to find another path, a path where being alive and being happy could be reconciled.

I could see it. Feel it. He wanted to live. Just not with his current reality. I knew exactly what that felt like.

His arm remained raised in the air, waiting for a signal to stop or to go, death being as likely a possibility as life. Without any more hesitation, I made my move.

"You don't have to do this," I said with a calm, clear tone.

His arm bent slightly, as he brushed a tear from his cheek and turned his head toward me. I stepped down into the box and was now about six feet away from him, close enough to make out his features. He looked around my age. Although he had rosy and round cheeks, his chiseled jawline balanced out his underlying baby face. His curly caramel brown hair was longer on top of his head and shortened out on the sides. It was difficult to tell when he was kneeling, but I would guess he was about 6'1". He was wearing long gray pants and a pale blue T-shirt that accented his crystal blue eyes that twinkled from the glassiness of his tears. Even with a crowbar in his hand, he looked blameless.

I was about to take another step toward him when he muttered in a soft, low voice, "Stop. Please." A tear rushed down his blush cheeks and he hastily wiped it away.

I took a step closer toward him anyway and the brilliance of his aqua eyes became even more apparent. "You know, it's hard to see things clearly with a layer of tears over your eyes," I explained. "You're bound to see the world through a lens of despair." I spoke from what my isolated childhood taught me.

He shook his head spastically and the crowbar shuddered in his hand. "No, I can't—I have to—" He spoke in a breathy whisper.

"No, you don't. Think about everything you're leaving behind."

"No," he started.

"Yes, there's—"

"NO! There's nothing left! I have nobody!" he interjected. His voice was raspy and aggressive. My heart beat galloped faster and faster. His breathing quickened to near hyperventilation. He grabbed and tugged on his hair with his left hand while still holding the crowbar up with his right.

I remembered what I told myself as a little girl after all of the times my dad beat me to the ground and convinced me that I was worthless."Right now, you feel like there's nothing left." I paused. "Right now, you feel like you have nobody." He turned his head over his shoulder toward me while staring at the drop beneath him. "But what about tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the days, the months, the years after that."

He shut his eyes and a tear fell onto the glass floor. I took a large step toward him. Then another. He could hear my footsteps, but his eyes remained closed. A tortured grimace came upon his face.

"You're young. You haven't given your life a fair chance to blossom. You can't let yourself whither—wilt away." These words effortlessly flowed from my mouth, and it was then that I realized how many times I have spoken the exact same thing to myself.

He now looked up at me with glassy, soulful eyes. Then he looked down at the quiet streets below, and then straight forward at the swirling clouds of the rosy sunset before him. And then his eyes returned to mine. Our communication was now wordless. His eyes glistened against the setting sun rays. They were electric. Alive. And they would remain that way.

I reached my right hand out toward the crowbar which was still high in the air. He let out a long, sighing breath. I nodded my head confidently, convincing him of what I knew about his future: that it existed. And I could tell he knew it, too.

In a single, swift motion, he handed me the crowbar, which I quickly grabbed, and let his right hand collapse to the ground with a loud thud. As his breathing slowed and softened, he looked at the empty town below him, empty except for a single green car. He followed the path of the car with his eyes as it made a right turn and drove out of sight down a new road.