Great Heights
one/one
The fire escape in the back of the classroom was a way out. During the day it was a glimpse into the city moving around outside of the school, showing that we weren’t important to the commuters and the taxi drivers and the hippies that lived in the Village – a part of me wanted to climb out the window and onto the fire escape to show that I was real. That I was there, living and breathing and significant, in one way or another. Useless, of course, but it would send a message to someone out there that I was real and human like them. The emotion that washed over me made me feel nostalgic.
Seventh period English was usually spent like that but, that day, my mind was too fried to think. I just put my head down on my desk and waited for the final bell to ring, my heart thudding in my ears, in tune with the clock ticking up on the wall. I felt unreasonably sick to my stomach with some twisted emotion that I couldn’t place. Behind me, the fire escape beckoned and I held my breath for the last twenty seconds of class. When the bell rang, my ears popped and class was dismissed, my classmates jostling each other as they flocked toward the hall.
My heart ached.
The streets seemed silent as I walked home, the sky gray and lifeless and wintery above the skyscrapers and my apartment building. The complex, Crescent Condominiums by name, anything but classy or clean by appearance, was run by a sweaty old man that lived in the apartment next to my brother and me. He was unfriendly and, when I passed him in the hallway on my way to school, he gave me a fake smile that hurt more than it helped; his teeth were all brown, stubby and gross and his breath smelled constantly of bologna.
My brother wasn’t there when I got home, the note on the counter detailing having to work late and a twenty in the cabinet for a pizza. Chris, having uprooted my peaceful life in Michigan almost two years before, had worked at a company in downtown Chicago since last January, although he knew it was a waste of time – his boss, who had come for dinner a few weeks before, was greasy and gross, his personality similar to that of a sewer rat. He had apparently given my brother a promotion and sixty extra dollars in his paycheck. Chris hadn’t really been around since then. His presence was supposedly necessary for the company to function, but both he and I knew it was complete bull.
Chris’s girlfriend, a pretty girl named Kirsten with dyed red hair, had left a note on the counter. I wasn’t supposed to read it (she was very tetchy about her privacy) but I did anyways. The paper stunk of the hair spray she used daily – pure o-zone. I gagged and put the letter down.
Pepperoni pizza didn’t sound appetizing, and the leftovers in the fridge were all the soy and tofu that Kirsten had started Chris on. The tofurkey, wrapped neatly and labeled, made me feel nauseous; she was everywhere in this stupid apartment and I couldn’t stand it. Opening the window, I stuck my head out and gasped in a few breaths of the smoggy, city air. It didn’t help. Across the street, people were leaning out of windows and smoking cigarettes and staring at me, their bloodshot eyes sad, tired and tear-filled from the smoke.
I ignored them and pulled my head back inside, wandering back into the kitchen with my hand covering my nose. A small sliver of my heart told me to order the pizza, to ignore the note from Kirsten and to do my algebra homework so I could be free that weekend but I couldn’t listen – the conflict resolving, slowly, as I tore up the paper and searched for the Chinese food menu and turned on the TV. My eyes watered and I sniffed, gagging at the o-zone and the leftovers and the tofurkey sandwiches, made so that we could eat healthy and safe money. With love, from Kirsten. It was gross, the way I had never noticed any of it before and how someone had just stepped into our lives and changed our opinions, or at least tried to.
The apartment was cold. The radiator in the corner was popping and sputtering and trying to come to life but it couldn’t – the complex, built in the 60s or 70s or 80s, was vastly outdated. Charlie, the owner, had promised change when we moved in but hadn’t done anything other than taking a shower in various apartments once or twice a week. Our neighbor, Mrs. Levine, had told us about how he had used her shower a few times before; the thought made me shudder and imagine his grubby face peeking in through the crack when I opened the door, asking if he could use our shower. As a friend. Nasty.
The empty promises he had made rang loud and clear in my ears, along with Chris promising that it would get better and the new would be fine. It would all be fine – me, him, the apartment, the promises. Mom would be fine. Dad would be fine. It was a whole lot of lies, in my opinion, and those of whom that had watched from the sidelines when we left for the city. The crash had ruined the lives of so many people: Chris, Mom, Dad, me, the driver and countless others, who had all known that the promises were stupid and empty and they meant nothing at all.
Seventh period English was usually spent like that but, that day, my mind was too fried to think. I just put my head down on my desk and waited for the final bell to ring, my heart thudding in my ears, in tune with the clock ticking up on the wall. I felt unreasonably sick to my stomach with some twisted emotion that I couldn’t place. Behind me, the fire escape beckoned and I held my breath for the last twenty seconds of class. When the bell rang, my ears popped and class was dismissed, my classmates jostling each other as they flocked toward the hall.
My heart ached.
The streets seemed silent as I walked home, the sky gray and lifeless and wintery above the skyscrapers and my apartment building. The complex, Crescent Condominiums by name, anything but classy or clean by appearance, was run by a sweaty old man that lived in the apartment next to my brother and me. He was unfriendly and, when I passed him in the hallway on my way to school, he gave me a fake smile that hurt more than it helped; his teeth were all brown, stubby and gross and his breath smelled constantly of bologna.
My brother wasn’t there when I got home, the note on the counter detailing having to work late and a twenty in the cabinet for a pizza. Chris, having uprooted my peaceful life in Michigan almost two years before, had worked at a company in downtown Chicago since last January, although he knew it was a waste of time – his boss, who had come for dinner a few weeks before, was greasy and gross, his personality similar to that of a sewer rat. He had apparently given my brother a promotion and sixty extra dollars in his paycheck. Chris hadn’t really been around since then. His presence was supposedly necessary for the company to function, but both he and I knew it was complete bull.
Chris’s girlfriend, a pretty girl named Kirsten with dyed red hair, had left a note on the counter. I wasn’t supposed to read it (she was very tetchy about her privacy) but I did anyways. The paper stunk of the hair spray she used daily – pure o-zone. I gagged and put the letter down.
Pepperoni pizza didn’t sound appetizing, and the leftovers in the fridge were all the soy and tofu that Kirsten had started Chris on. The tofurkey, wrapped neatly and labeled, made me feel nauseous; she was everywhere in this stupid apartment and I couldn’t stand it. Opening the window, I stuck my head out and gasped in a few breaths of the smoggy, city air. It didn’t help. Across the street, people were leaning out of windows and smoking cigarettes and staring at me, their bloodshot eyes sad, tired and tear-filled from the smoke.
I ignored them and pulled my head back inside, wandering back into the kitchen with my hand covering my nose. A small sliver of my heart told me to order the pizza, to ignore the note from Kirsten and to do my algebra homework so I could be free that weekend but I couldn’t listen – the conflict resolving, slowly, as I tore up the paper and searched for the Chinese food menu and turned on the TV. My eyes watered and I sniffed, gagging at the o-zone and the leftovers and the tofurkey sandwiches, made so that we could eat healthy and safe money. With love, from Kirsten. It was gross, the way I had never noticed any of it before and how someone had just stepped into our lives and changed our opinions, or at least tried to.
The apartment was cold. The radiator in the corner was popping and sputtering and trying to come to life but it couldn’t – the complex, built in the 60s or 70s or 80s, was vastly outdated. Charlie, the owner, had promised change when we moved in but hadn’t done anything other than taking a shower in various apartments once or twice a week. Our neighbor, Mrs. Levine, had told us about how he had used her shower a few times before; the thought made me shudder and imagine his grubby face peeking in through the crack when I opened the door, asking if he could use our shower. As a friend. Nasty.
The empty promises he had made rang loud and clear in my ears, along with Chris promising that it would get better and the new would be fine. It would all be fine – me, him, the apartment, the promises. Mom would be fine. Dad would be fine. It was a whole lot of lies, in my opinion, and those of whom that had watched from the sidelines when we left for the city. The crash had ruined the lives of so many people: Chris, Mom, Dad, me, the driver and countless others, who had all known that the promises were stupid and empty and they meant nothing at all.
♠ ♠ ♠
comments/criticisms?