Edge

• Jade Perzuck, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2021

I leant against the headstone, one hand tugging at grass, the other resting on her hand, or at least, where I thought it would be. The sky was a solemn blue, awaiting the sun to bathe it in colour and relieve it from its dullness. However, the sun was behind me, so I would not get to see it sink away beneath the ocean. It would have been a pretty sight: the reds, the oranges, the yellows, all bursting miraculously from their source, but I am relieved; I do not want to see anything pretty today.
I relinquished my grip from her hand and made my way to the cliff’s edge, not feeling my bare feet drag against the gravel, nor feel my knees hit its surface; cold and defeated. I peered over the edge, like a child does from behind their hands. The waves were jaunty today - almost mockingly - and were colliding against the cliff face with no regrets. I leant outwards, my hands digging deep into its upturned rim so as not to fall. I bent so far over, I was at an angle a passerby would rush to pull me away from, but I trusted my grip. I was familiar with this edge, the grass, the sycamore. I wasn’t going to fall.
But if I hadn’t been here before? What if I didn’t know of the smooth stone that lay across the rim, caked in dirt and grass, concealed from sight. A surface that one could so easily miss.
And I was falling. But the moment of incomprehensibility - of the spinning and the sounds - was short-lived. The waves swallowed me like they did the sun. The impact was so startling it was as if it had woken me from a dream. It felt as if I had burst from myself, but no glorious lights emitted from my body, the reds and oranges and yellows, just pain and confusion and struggle. I was whipped to and fro, my hands desperately reaching for a hope that wasn’t there. The water and cold filled my lungs, the utter chill paralysing, my flailing arms and legs still searching. Did the sun wrestle this hard? Had she fought to keep above the surface, to keep light to the sky? Or did she allow release, and condemn the world to a night of dark.
I lay on the ocean’s floor, my last means of survival escaping my mouth. Beaten and unable to move, I merely gazed to the sky, where the pink had begun to eat away at the blue. The last forms of light were waning, my last sparks of life were sputtering. I closed my eyes and was engulfed by darkness.
But of course... I wasn’t going to fall.
I look away from the waves against the rock, my hands still clasped around the edge. That must have been what it was like for her to fall with the sun.