They really do look like ants from up here. Wow. I thought people were just joking. I mean, I can't even tell if they are adults or children, for the most part, or men or women.
From the dizzying height of 103 stories up, Diego stands atop the Empire State Building. Conjuring feelings of hopefulness and to a lesser degree dread peering over the edge, he is taken back to when his mother and father were still very much in love, as he puts it. He was a reserved and quiet boy, spending more time in his head dreaming of things to be and avoiding things that are. It's easy to lose sight of the bickering, the time spent in different rooms, the purchase of a second car so they could go to where they needed to separately. He is unable to picture the two birthdays as what they were, celebrations by two people amidst a legal separation, and at 12, only one year from them reconciling.
He could feel his mother's hand in his. Her soft hands and well-manicured nails, that she had purposefully taken care of for her job as a trade show presenter. She oft wore her mother's promise ring, received as part of her inheritance when she passed, given to her by her own mother at the tender age of 9 when her husband, his grandfather, died of a heart attack while driving to the State Fair nearly ending his family line there. He would thumb her ring's band and the tiny blue pearl, faintly covered in a thin patina from years of sitting on display in the attic of his mother's childhood home, for good luck. Even now, he thumbed the air where her hand might be.
I've never considered myself suicidal. I never even imagined I would do anything remotely dangerous enough to cause myself irreparable harm, yet here I am again, about to do something stupid. But how will I know the “extent of my capabilities”, reciting Mrs. Zasha's English class. He didn't spend much time reminiscing much about high school, it was a means to an end. They were four long years of droll, numbly walking through hallways to classes that didn't speak to him, to receive assignments that didn't matter.
How depressed was I in high school?
Chuckling to himself he stands atop the ledge of the highest point atop the Empire State Building, counting the seconds it takes people to pass. There seems to be an endless stream of people meandering to and fro in the busiest city in the US and one of the largest in the world. Unable to see a better way than to just do it he tries to measure the distance from where he currently is to the observation deck just below him thinking, “if I could poof to that high, the fall to the ground wouldn't be deadly.”
I don't think. Worse comes to worst, I'd just end up with a sprained ankle, maybe? Maybe I'd bite my tongue from the impact? Maybe I land on someone... Can I even see any strollers or tinier dots than the dots I'm assuming are adults? Whatever, Nana, Pappas, here I come.
With that, he exhales slowly and releases his hold on the spire in his hand. His other hand still firmly closed he vividly envisions his mother's soft hand, yet sure safe grip on his, and steps off. He begins to fall but remains over the observation deck. Panicking he begins shouting “POOOOOOOF” over and over again. Just before he lands on the floor he is relocated about 10 feet above the sidewalk a mile or so away, his last line of sight before the edges of the walls keeping people from accidentally, or not, stepping off the edge and plummeting to their deaths. Gravity pulling him toward the ground at already 17 mph, he increases his energy of impact two fold and speeds to 24 mph as he slams down into the sidewalk collapsing upon impact and buckling under the force of his jump. A nearly twenty foot fall is survivable, with little wear and is often easily walked away from, however, unready for the height of the fall he began bracing for the impact at 10 feet before his poof and did not adjust for the second leg of his fall.
With a yelp, a crash and a roll, he hit the ground and instinctively barrel rolled to mitigate some of the impact on his knees and his chest had they slammed into it as forcefully as they were about to. Out of control on the ground he knocks over a young woman.. With an oof, he sullies her long green scarf, light sun kissed leather jacket, skinny jeans and a pair of ankle high Michael Kors, in addition to his own three year old Yesler hoodie with slightly frayed cuffs from all the falling he's been doing lately, slim fit Levi's and gray canvas sneakers. She jumps to her feet with a resounding, “What the actual fuck!?”
Still on the ground and laughing to himself, he whispers, I did it... hahaha, I'm alive!
“Excuse me, what the fuck? Why did you knock me over?” She steps back instinctively falling back on the two years of Tae Kwon Do she took starting the summer after she graduated high school at the behest of her parents trying to prepare her for the potential perils of college. Light on her feet, she assumes a fighting stance, ready to fight. “He better not attack me. I'll kill him. Well, I wont kill him kill him, but I will knock him out. Fucking creep” she thinks to herself, justifying her growing desire to pound him to the ground, where he belongs.
“What do you want!? Why did you knock me over?”:
He slowly stands, straightening his still shaky legs, lanky and undefined. Hands on his lower back, he leans back to give it a stretch and finally catches a glimpse of the woman he crashed into. Her jet black hair is pulled back loosely, layered with several strands of hair covering one of her bright green eyes, a slightly pale green with a bit of an orange crest along the pupil, that she routinely tosses aside with a small shake of her head. He notices her confident stance and toned legs. Mustering the courage to apologize while thinking up an explanation that doesn't make him seem super creepy he blurts out,
I'm so sorry, I wasn't paying attention. I was jumping for joy (Wait... what? Why would you say that?) and I lost my balance and tumbled. I tucked and rolled instinctively. I was a gymnast as a kid. Well not a gymnast, but I practiced with my sister's squad. I just wanted to flip. I figured, if I could flip I would be that much closer to being a ninja... (nooooooooooo)
Instant regret. He tried to walk it back, to put the words back in his stupid mouth. Desperately trying to save face he tries to conjure words to straighten things without coming off as weird.
“A ninja? You knocked me down because you want to be a ninja?” Unsure if he was being ridiculous or trying to pick her up with the weirdest come on, she was in no mood for his shenanigans. Eyeing him up and down and sizing up his moderate build, “he doesn't seem to work out” she posits, his disheveled sandy brown hair and chocolate brown eyes, olive skin and sheepish posture help calm her anger. Deciding he was just some harmless idiot, she continues, “Just watch where you're going. Idiot.”
The satisfaction of his surviving the jump competes with relief that he didn't just get his face pounded by a second stranger and is dwarfed by the embarrassment of revealing he was on a gymnastics team, not to compete, but to train to be a ninja. Defeated, but laughing it off he looks up for a quiet place to head home. Just then there is a shouting match across the street and he notices everyone shift their attention. Just then, Home. In the blink of an eye he stands in his bedroom, dimly lit as the sun is currently on the far side of the house. His favorite aspect of the room is how cool it is in the summer as it receives very little sunlight, conversely it is just as chilly in the winter as it experiences the same lack of direct sunlight.
Still a little annoyed she was so roughly bumped into, as regularly coming into physical contact with passersby isn't an odd occurrence on Manhattan, it's rarely to this degree. When that happens it's usually kids running around, someone trying to pickpocket you, though those are few and far between, or some idiot boy trying to get your attention. She looked back to maybe head back and give him a real piece of her mind, she saw he was gone. She could hear the yelling and thought he might have “bumped” into someone else, but saw it was a couple arguing about one of them spending too much time talking to exes. Gone, without a trace. But how? Struggling to shrug it off, she squinted in disbelief, narrowing her eyes and scrunching up her button nose. With a sniffle, she turned back and went about the rest of her day.