Fall. Fall? Fall.

• Caitlin Ross , Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2017

Fall. Fall? Fall.
It was three years before he could ever face going there again. Climbing the wall. Seeing all of everything that was not his. It hurt even now. In both ways. Ruined leg dragging, pulling him down and his spirit threatening to do the same to upset the balance like before. He had been younger then. Younger, smaller, stronger, smarter. It was so much simpler to climb last time. Waves of nostalgia washed over him like a humid breeze. So much harder. He was no longer able to run. The years of inactivity weighing on him. Pushing. Wounded leg, pulling. Resolve, falling. Night sky, calling. CALLING. He kept going.
To any ordinary onlooker it would seem like a disabled boy testing his freedom. To anyone who didn’t know. To anyone who hadn’t been at this spot on this day three years ago. Jack had. Jack knew. He wasn’t a normal onlooker. He had been normal boy three years. How could a normal life could be taken away so quickly by the slip of a foot? Creepy. He looked down from the top of the wall at the small boy climbing. Leg dragging him down. His brother Julian climbed upwards.
So. Tired. Out. Of. Air. How. Far.
Jack is at the top of the wall I can see him looking out at the desert trying to figure it out. Its empty nothing. A gap. A mirror. Or maybe he is just thinking of he will do tomorrow of how he is wasting the last day of freedom waiting for a crippled boy to climb a bit of concreate. It is all ways like this.
Julian thinks I hate him. He hated me since…. Well since I told him to climb the wall with me. He thinks I hate him because I have to look after him, because I can’t hang out with anyone any more, he has to have someone with him, always, and who better than a brother. It sucks it really does but if that is what I have to pay for doing that to him. I will live with it. It still stinks though.
He just sits by the window now alone and upset all the old spark that gone. That is what Julian does. Sits and thinks. Sits and thinks.
He hates me. He really does. Through and through I am just Julian the boy that fell. The boy that he has to always be with. The reason he can’t be normal. He just doesn’t care. He hates me.
Why won’t he see I want to help him?
Maybe I hate him to.
Why?
Maybe I do, Jack, maybe I do.
The boy is so close to the top now. The other on top helping him. To the casual onlooker it would just seem like two boys on a wall. But then, what would the casual onlooker know?