I Can't Hang

It wasn’t a real stretch of reality for me to be back on Earth again. I was looking forward to it, honestly. Still, that little nagging voice in the back of my head was telling me that something was about to go wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. But that was just my persistent pessimism.

St. James was the one who helped us get back to Earth. Since Brady and I couldn’t fly, we were basically deadweight and had to hold onto him for the ride in order to be safe.

“How ‘bout Kyle holds onto ya from the back, and I hold onto your feet?” Brady suggested as we stood on the edge of Heaven.

“No,” St. James stated rather bluntly. Then he held out his hands, motioning for us to hold them. Each of us grabbed one.

St. James then muttered something under his breath and then dropped off the edge of the cloud, taking us with him. Instantly, bales of wind pelted me in the face and whipped my hair back out of my face. If I had my wings, they’d be parachuting up and breaking my fall – but this time, the only thing keeping me from falling to my second death was James, and that was it. The experience was a little scary at first, but once St. James had silently reassured us everything was alright, I relaxed.

I felt like I was in a scene from Peter Pan. Except we all kinda didn’t like each other and none of us were smiling. You know.

Brady was silent through the whole thing, just kinda looking around the land below us. James actually appeared to be nervous. His hands were sweating (and I know this because I was holding one of them) and his face was blotchy red.

Finally, St. James spoke up. “Where do you guys wanna land?”

Brady cleared his throat but didn’t answer, so I did it for him. “Wherever there’s a free or cheap apartment.”

“How do we know…?” he asked timidly.

That was a good question, actually. “Well, never mind. I, uh…I guess we’re gonna have to look for one…”

We hovered above the city for a moment, but not nearly close enough to be seen again by the naked eye. St. James suspended us in midair miles above Manhattan just below the clouds. Staring at nothing in particular, he said, “We’re gonna go somewhere no one can see us. And then we’ll go into the city.”

“Makes sense,” Brady shrugged.

James was panting from being out of breath, but still held steady as we swooped quietly over the immense amount of buildings. It wasn’t a novelty to me to be thousands of feet above my hometown anymore, and after realizing that, I kinda smiled to myself. Funny how things could change in just a few days.

It took a while to actually see a mostly foolproof spot. In a city like this, it’s hard to make a quiet entrance when you’ve got wings and people are already in a tizzy over angels visiting earlier, but since it was cloudy and everyone’s attention was on each other, it wasn’t too difficult.

Fear began to creep into my system. What if it all went wrong? What if somebody saw us again? Then what would happen to us?

Brady pointed down at Manhattan and sighed. “Why don’t we just land on a building and take the stairs down?”

“Yeah,” St. James agreed hastily. “My wings are getting tired…”

“Aw, shoot. That’s right, you’re still all screwy from bein’ frozen, ain’t ya?” Brady said, sounding a bit surprised.

James just coughed.

He chose a spot a good distance from common eyeshot and hovered above one of the tallest buildings in the skyline. I made myself not look down out of the fear that I’d pee myself. Slowly and silently, St. James began retracting his wings inward, lowering the three of us to the ground in the incognito fashion that we needed.

The roof of that building got closer and closer to us at a rapid rate, and my heart was pounding into my throat. I’d seen skydiving videos where people break their legs upon impact. I braced myself for a horrific landing, closing my eyes to keep myself from seeing a painful death – but then, all in a second I realized that I was already dead.

Still wasn’t totally used to that aspect yet, I guess.

While I was caught up over that, we touched down on Earth. Still so high above the ground, our hands separated instantly as we made contact with the skyscraper. My knees were weak from feeling wind pound at them for a half hour.

James was doubled over, out of breath. His wings were shivering as he pulled them back in, disappearing under the red button-up shirt he wore over a white tee.

Brady was walking around in circles, running his hands all in his hair and everything, complete with annoyed grunts and mutterings under his breath. He kicked rocks everywhere as he aimlessly strode, until he made his way over to the edge of the roof and leaned forward, staring at the city streets below us. Then he backed away slowly.

“We’re here…” he whimpered. “I…I can’t believe this.”

“What’s your problem?” I asked.

He pursed his lips and darted his head around in my direction. “For your information, Kyle, I haven’t been a ‘human’ for around twenty-four years.”

St. James kinda snickered, which took both of us off guard since we hadn’t even seen him smile really. “Kid, I’ve been dead for fifty-two years.”

Brady folded his arms in defiance. “And you were stranded in Antarctica for a while there, too. Huh, kid?”

I had to laugh. I couldn’t help it.

“Listen, don’t call me kid, alright? I’m older than you, if we’re talkin’ about bodies here,” Brady stated sternly, pointing a finger.

St. James averted eye contact with him and instead turned toward the city, blushing.

In the distance, the sun was beginning to set, washing everything in a distinct yellow tint of late afternoon. Something dawned on me at that moment – something I didn’t have a lot of hope would be solved easily.

“Hey, uh…where are we gonna stay for tonight? I mean, not like we have to sleep or anything apparently, but we can’t be walkin’ the streets for the whole night,” I spoke up.

Brady and James looked at each other and exchanged an expression of confusion.

“That’s a good question,” St. James said softly.

“I say we sneak back up to Heaven and beg the Big Man to let us stay there for a while.” Brady had his hands on his hips and a childish smirk plastered to his mug. “What have we got to lose?”

“We’ll all get kicked outta Heaven, so we’re not doing that, for sure,” James spoke up finally. For a second I just stood there staring at him in disbelief. I think those were the most assertive words I’d heard him say in one sentence, and the loudest I’d heard him yet.

Brady seemed to react the same way. He cocked his head at the younger man and asked, “Did…what the heck is up with you? Why’re you talking all of a sudden here?”

And St. James just did what he did best and turned scarlet. “Let’s just…find somewhere to stay, alright?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

I felt like I was home at last. The big bustling crowds pushing us around like we were just nobodies adrift amidst the city streets, the hollow rush of cars zooming by us at light speed. The setting sun chilled the air. I could tell it was gonna be a cold night. In some ways, that was comforting, but in other ways it only made me anticipate our next moves even more.

I always walked home from school and everything, but for some reason I felt out-of-touch with what I was doing then. Instead of walking alone to one place only – home – I was accompanied by two dudes I didn’t know for a hole in the ground. And we had no clue in heck where we were gonna end up. That was what scared me the most.

To tourists, every street seemed foreign and distant, like they were stepping into some brand new kind of world at every corner. I could tell that in the way St. James was looking around rapidly with each step he took. Brady had a little grin on his face the whole time like he was busy remembering something. And I know he knew this place – he had the accent to show it. James, on the other hand, didn’t.

I’d lived there all my life. I knew my way around. However, I didn’t know all of the buildings by the back of my hand or what was inside of them. So, honestly, I really wasn’t much help to them.

Manhattan never seemed so scary. There we were, running in circles to find a place to stay, and we didn’t have the first clue on where to start. I never thought I’d be scared by my hometown.

St. James tapped my shoulder. “Where are we going?”

I shrugged since I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me over the crowds. Instead, I grabbed Brady by the arm and yanked him back, stopping sidewalk traffic, clogging up the flow, and pissing a lot of people off. I led them to a sheltered bus stop where we were the only people there, plus a little Asian kid.

“Do you know any, like, hotels or anything?” St. James asked, growing more nervous. If he had his wings out (which he didn’t; they were retracted fully), they’d be twitching and shivering. His halo was poorly camouflaged to look invisible, but it still distorted the area above his head. “There’s gotta be one around here.”

“I say we crash at Kyle’s parents’ place. They’re still around, right?” Brady boasted.

My hand crashed into my forehead. That might have been the dumbest thing he could have said. Not only would they have a conniption fit upon seeing me after learning I was dead (I’m sure they got the news by then), they’d also flip the hell out if they saw me with two older men by my side. I could almost hear the accusations of pedophilia being spat in James and Brady’s direction.

On the other hand, I never got to tell them I loved them before I died…

Alright, still, I went with logic.

“No!” I grunted. “We’re gonna look for a motel or something. Maybe there’s a phone somewhere around here, a payphone or something…”

I searched what I could see from inside the bus stop. It only took me all of five seconds to realize that nobody in 2010 used a freakin’ payphone anymore.

“Hold on, guys. We’re gonna have to, like…” I paused, whipping my head around one last time to make sure I didn’t miss anything. “Man, we’re gonna have to bum a cell phone off of someone.”

Both of them looked at me like I was the most insane kid to ever hit the scene.

“…Um…?” I said, not realizing just what I said.

“A…a what? What’re you talking about?” Brady asked bluntly.

“What’s a ‘cell phone’?” St. James spoke slowly, pronouncing the term like I just made it up.

I sighed. I really didn’t wanna explain it – we couldn’t waste time – but I guess I had to. “They’re phones, but they’re little and you can carry ‘em in your pockets and everything and you can call and listen to music and text people and get maps. Okay?”

Fifties kid and eighties boy had their eyes glazed over, but they didn’t object. Guess up in Heaven they still used toasters for phones.

So I turned my attention to the Asian girl sitting next to us who had headphones on and was tapping her foot to whatever beat she was listening to. Mom always told me not to talk to strangers, but anyway, I touched her shoulder to get her attention. She looked up at me and jumped.

“Um, hi,” I cleared my throat. “Do you have a cell phone I can borrow for a minute?”

She gave a crooked smile and reached into her purse, pulling out a super-deluxe SkyPhone that I could only dream of affording. I held it softly, terrified of dropping it. After fiddling around for a second or two, I found the Internet and pulled up a map website.

Brady was busy breathing down my back in googly-eyed fascination. “You sure that’s not a bomb, man?”

“It’s technology. You could use some,” I snickered devilishly. “We’ve come a long way since caller ID.”

I scrolled down and across the various options it gave. Finally, Manhattan was shown on the map, a big blob of buildings and streets in a tangle of commotion. Now it was time to actually find what the heck we were looking for – a decent hotel. A crappy one, even. Whatever we could afford.

“How much money do you guys have?” I said over my shoulder.

James dug into his pockets, pulling out a couple of bills and some change. Brady pulled out a wallet and a credit card. I smiled, eyeing the handful of crap Brady had.

“Yes! You got a credit card?” I gasped.

He nodded. “And I’m still payin’ for it even though I’m dead. Hah. Those companies don’t even care that I kicked the bucket, they just want my money.”

“Alright. We can use that to pay for a hotel,” I declared. Surfing the Asian chick’s SkyPhone for a few more minutes, I found a motel only a few blocks down from where we were at the moment, silently cheering on the inside.

“D’you find anything yet?” Brady insisted.

I nodded. “Yeah. The…Sunny Day Motel just two blocks from here. Looks nice, but it’s cheap. We’re gonna have to share a room.”

He groaned like a diva. James bit his lip and pouted. I can’t say I was surprised by that.

I handed the girl back her phone with a thanks. With my palms up at my two new roommates, I smiled expectantly and shrugged.

“Well, let’s go,” I ushered.