How High We Are

Greetings, reader. I hope you had an amazing Christmas and a happy New Year. I have been absent from the blogging world for the past few weeks.

Yes, I was on winter break.

Yes, I stayed up late and took naps and played board games and got stranded at my friend's houses in the snow and watched movies and giggled with my best friends and watched Forrest Gump and played basketball.

I enjoyed my break profusely, even though I hate being cold and snow, which we seemed to have a surplus of. Sadly, I did not write at all over break. At all. I did not work on my novel or a short story. Technically, I wrote a feminist critique of a play but that was because I had to. Don't worry - I am already itching to write something.

I didn't write anything new, but I have been reading so much lately. So many amazing books. I have also been picking through some of my old short stories and I thought I would share one with you because I have been a bad blogger these past few months.

So, without further ado, How High We Are.
Just a warning: it is extremely sad. It's based on a true story about a school shooting. However, it is one of my most favorite short stories I have ever written. It's also named after a poem by Emily Dickinson.
 Here we go.
 

How High We Are 

The monster stands with a gun in his hands.

The silence is deathly quiet. Fear, loud and poignant, clings to every girl in the room. It covers my heart with a layer of ice, leaving me feeling so alone and exposed. My breath sticks in my throat and I search for air, but I can’t do it. My whole body is frozen, petrified by the monster’s eyes, which cut right through me. It has been 7 minutes since this monster burst into our classroom – and in every moment, every second since my world has imploded, my life is free falling to its end.

I knew him. He had brought us milk.

And now he has evil in his hand and malice in his heart.

“Why are you doing this?” Mary’s voice breaks the silence, full of trembling and hushed panic and prayers and the hope that this is not real. This does not happen to us. I have never even seen a gun before – except, one time when I saw a commercial on the television at the hospital when Peter got kicked by a horse and had to go. It looked like just a piece of cold metal, then. In reality, the sound it makes splits eardrums and means the end of life as we know it. It is the end of innocence. It is cold and black and the last thing I may ever see.

Mary tries again, “We’re . . . what did we do to deserve this?”

The man sets his small handgun on our teacher’s desk – the one my dad made for her as a wedding present. He glances at her body, which hangs halfway out of her chair. I can’t look at her; I can't see her brown hair falling out of it's carefully twisted bun, one that her fingers knew by heart, that she probably did without a mirror or a second thought. I can't see those blue eyes that used to shine with hope and knowledge now empty. I can’t look at anyone. Not my friends, my cousins, my little sisters. Because if I look at them, I accept that this is real. That they are going to die. And that soon, I will die too. 

The monster’s eyes are unyielding, a dark pit of something I can only describe as hell. His eyes travel over all of us, his fingers tensing on the trigger of a bigger gun. “Get up,” he speaks, his voice quiet and polite. His voice is that feeling when ice cracks beneath your feet and dark water threatens to steal you away from the world. It makes my heart tighten in my chest.

I hear the other girls start to move, hope shadowing their movements. I can almost hear the thoughts they have and I know they are false. This man, this monster, he is going to kill us. One by one, so we know it’s coming. Because he wants to, and for no other reason than that. And he will probably enjoy it, or maybe not, but he will still do it because we are mankind. 

My heart hammers in my chest; I realize I am going to die. 

It's like a funny taste in my mouth. How can I die? It doesn't even make sense. My whole world is me. How can the world go on without me? 

I make myself get up. I stand, pulling my blue, worn dress around myself. I see my little sister with her big, brown eyes the color of dead leaves. They are full of tears. I tuck a piece of her hair under her bonnet and take her hand in mine. She is too young to grip the fact that she is no more. She is too special for this horrific ending. Too pure and sweet.

I can’t let her die. Not like this. Not as a baby, a child, too young to even be at school if it wasn’t for the fact that she won’t let me out of her sight. And I am nothing special. Out of my six siblings, I am the one who backs out of an argument. I am the one who stares at the floor. I sit obediently, meekly, in front of Father – taking everyone’s punishments, faults, mistakes on my shoulders. I’m not brave; I have never had courage. I am nothing special.

But I have stolen a book.

It was before I knew how to read. Father wouldn’t let us go to an ungodly school and our village didn’t have a new teacher. We had gone into town where Father and my two eldest brothers were building a new home. Cheap labor, the gruff man had called them. The woman, his wife or girlfriend, had shown me inside her new home. It smelled like sawdust and damp wood. It smelled like it was waiting eagerly for its people. It was unfinished, a skeleton rising up into the sky. The kitchen had a hole for a roof, but the office was newly finished with rose-patterned walls and wood floor. She gently shoved open the door and, for a moment, my heart stopped. 

There were so many books. A whole room full of books. I had never seen so many. Blue, black, new, old, weathered spines. The words of souls who had lived and seen and loved and probably died. Dreamers. Writers. Hopers. Lovers. They had lived, and had been brave enough to put thoughts on paper and show their souls to the world. 

The woman left, going to get something. I looked at the books, which seemed to whisper their sweet words at me.

I looked at the books and knew in my heart that I was a sinner.

The monster takes a step toward our small group. “Line up,” he orders, his voice biting at the hope in the room. “Against that wall.”

The girls in front of me move slowly, like the dead rising from their graves. The bigger girls move with dread while the littler ones stumble along with eyes the size of the moon. Saucers. I can’t bring myself to move. Nobody is doing anything. Nobody is coming to save us. This is not a fairy tale. This will not have a happy ending.

I remember when I learned to read. When the shapes became letters and then fell off my lips into real sounds. I took the book I had coveted, hidden in its proper spot under the floorboards, and let the words fill my mind, like light in the darkness.

The author – her name was the same as mine.

Emily, with a funny last name.

And she was not afraid to put a pencil to paper and write truth.

She was brave. And far more special than I’ll ever be. 

I move forward, standing next to last in line with my little sister on my right. I hear the monster cross the room, his boots crushing pencils and dreams and futures. I hear a sound, like something clicking into place. The gun, probably. A lock sliding home. Our fates snapping into place. One of the girls sobs. Sobs for the babies she will never have, the man she will never hold in her arms. Sobs for what is getting taken away from us.

The words from the book enter my mind. A poem by Emily Dickenson. It’s words come to me, slow at first but then faster and faster, pounding in time with my heart.

We never know how high we are

The man steps up behind Mary, his face a shadow, eyes the color of a moonless night.

Til we are asked to rise

Mary closes her eyes tightly, her face contorting, breaking. I hear the girls between her and me start to sob harder, wailing, lamenting. I let go of my sister’s soft hand, telling her goodbye. I will leave this world with the sweat from her tiny palm against my skin. 

I wouldn't have it any other way.

We never know how high we are

Some things must be worth dying for. I step backward, out of line.

Til we are asked to rise

The man’s eyes flicker to me, narrowing, bloodshot. I push myself forward, cutting through the air. My dress catches around my legs and I fall, my hands reaching for the gun. Air rushes past me, tearing to get free.

And then if we are true to plan

His finger goes to the trigger just as my hands touch his gun. I had to try. I couldn’t just let us die. I had to try. And if I fail at least I will have tried.

I was nothing special.

But maybe, I was brave. 

After all, I did steal a book.

            I close my eyes as his finger presses the trigger.

Our statures touch the skies.