Heights, regardless of whether I was one or ten stories off the ground, had always proposed a threat to my fearless attitude. My fear of heights was my own secret, hidden behind a guise of recklessness that I had carefully thrown over myself to conceal my vulnerabilities. I was an avid reader at a young age, always drawn by an invisible force to books about rebels. As the charisma of rebels grasped my attention, forcing me deeper and deeper into the novels, I began to realize that I admired these rebels. The impressive way in which these characters boldly protruded from society without apology - ‘isn’t it amazing?’ - spurred a change in my own character.
Now, probably fifteen years from when I had vowed to become a rebel myself (my definition had been a person without fear, mind), my fear of heights was vigorously pulling on the chains that bound itself to its confines.
I sat on the middle of the roof, three stories above the ground. She talked on and on, sitting four feet in front of me, dangling her feet over the edge. I watched the pattern of her swinging feet, trying to settle my nerves; they swung like a pendulum, east, then west, then back to east again. While I would have normally been completely engaged in conversation with her, every time I looked down, my voice got caught in my throat and returned me to silence.
“Don’t you think, Tristan?” She was asking me eagerly, “Don’t you?”
I stopped wringing my hands for a moment to look towards her. She was turned around, her back facing my eyes. She was leaning on her hands, slouching almost elegantly. She was looking beyond the darkness, towards where the dark skyline met the deserted waves.
“Don’t you?” She asked demandingly, craning her neck back to face me. She had a stern look on her face, which contrasted her usual jovial demeanor.
“Of course,” I whispered inaudibly into the empty atmosphere.
“Hm?” She questioned me, her stern eyes boring into mine. Now she had turned around completely, her body facing mine. She was only four feet away, but she, sitting criss-crossed at the end of the slanted roof, felt like an unreachable aspiration.
I looked down at my feet sheepishly. “I’m sorry... what were you saying again?”.
She heaved a deep sigh, then stood up straight on the bottom of the roof. I breathed in harshly; not only was my fear of heights pressuring me to yank her from the slanted surface where the jeopardy of falling was at a pinnacle, but my newfound fear of losing her was tempting me to yank her into my arms. She giggled quietly at the sign of my fear, then walked across the roof to sit down next to me.
“I was saying”, she started, as she folded her legs into a criss-cross position once again, “that my parents are constantly on my case. They keep asking me, ‘do you know how old you are?’ ‘Do you even know how many years you have before you graduate high school?’. Or sometimes they go right for the heartstrings, and they start asking me things like, ‘do you even care about your future? Do you even care about your life?’. I tell them I don’t. Every single time, I tell them I don’t.” She said the last words boldly, with more character than I had ever heard her speak with before. She meant the words she said, and I understood what she meant.
“I don’t understand…” I said plainly, just to hear her explanation, “you don’t care about your life?”
She looked up at me with pitiful eyes and placed her hand on my leg.
“No. Not in the way they want me to. They expect me to spend every minute of my life continually submerged in a textbook or receiving notices of achievements. And they won’t settle until they’ve ingrained it in my mind that I want to become a victim of this lifestyle. I don’t want to be a doctor, Tristan, I don’t want to be a lawyer. I don’t want to be an engineer, or a scientist, or a politician.’ She took a deep breath, looking out again towards where the dark skyline met the deserted waves.
‘I feel like life is more than what they perceive it is; it’s more than just bringing home money every day, to buy things we don’t need, then setting out the next day to find a higher paying job so we can bring home more money. And then we buy more things we don’t need, and then we look for more money, for more things. Life is more than things. It’s laughing, it’s hiking up a mountain, it’s sleeping in the jungle, it’s becoming cultured, it’s the world and it’s other people. And I don’t want to settle for seeing a fraction of the world, Tristan… I want to see everything, and I want to meet everyone. I don’t want to look back on my deathbed and -” she stopped, sighing.
I gazed at her, my heart wrenching itself out of my chest. I understood every word she said, yet I wanted to know more. I wanted to hear every word she had to say, and I wanted to study the way she said them. I didn’t love her; I admired her.
She stood up slowly, returning back to her previous spot on the edge of the roof. She stood on the slant, the breeze blowing her shirt behind her. I could see the small of her back, tanned from the long summer, willingly savoring the open air. I got up from my place on the roof and walked towards her in two strides. I held her around her waist, standing with her as she looked out towards where the dark skyline met the deserted waves.
We stood there for awhile. She looked out beyond the darkness while I looked at her. Finally, she took in a sharp breath.
“What are we doing with our lives?!” She screamed into the open air.
A wave crashed in the middle of the darkness in response, it’s sound echoing in my ears like the beat of a reverberating drum. Complete silence followed.
I had abandoned the burden of my fear of heights. I sat down on the edge of the slanted roof, and watched the pattern of my swinging feet, trying to formulate words to speak back to her; my feet swung like a pendulum, east, then west, then back to east again.
I sighed deeply, then drew in a sharp breath. She stood next to me, standing nobly on the edge, looking out beyond the darkness, daring the darkness to answer her.
“Maybe we aren’t meant to know just yet,” I said plainly, following her glance. My voice echoed in my ears, repeating my words back to me.
‘Not just yet’, I whispered to myself, reiterating what I had just voiced. But the meaning behind these words had completely evolved into something much more.
My feet stopped swinging, and for the first time, I was able to breath in; I breathed in the sound of the waves rolling on the beach, and the feel of the summer wind against my face, and the breath of the girl next to me, whom I wanted to become. They were all much more real than they had been a minute ago.
Then I raised my eyes, and looked out towards where the dark skyline met the deserted waves. I was a rebel.