The cold air bit through her temples like long-neglected sleep. Eighteen floors up, Maya thought, careful not to look down. Not as high as I imagined.
The few inches of steel that her feet stood on seemed to slowly shrink. Behind her, the voices of her classmates trailed and deafened, as if someone placed a giant damp cloth over the once-lovely classroom.
She recognized someone shouting, someone jumping up and down and pointing, and someone running from the back of the room to the front. Did I hear my name?
Then someone pushed her.
She fell forward, turning. Weirdly, no one was there on the balcony with her. By the window, her eyes met those of Mr. Ramos, her teacher, through his brown square-framed glasses.
The classroom disappeared behind the ledge.
Time seemed to slow. She turned, again, careful not to look down. But the rushing wind forced her eyelids open.
A thousand rooftops jutted like a thousand knives from eighteen stories high. Soft wind traveled through her hair, and she could feel the microseconds trudge along reluctantly.
Her insides pressed against herself. The knives below looked sharp. Maya wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. The butterflies in her stomach had turned into scorpions, piercing her lips shut from within.
She tried to claw her mouth open, but her arm moved too slow. Everything did.
She didn’t want to die. She wanted to glide. She wanted to fly. But she wasn’t flying. She was suspended. Suspended in mid-air.
Time stopped completely.
Warm strings attached themselves to Maya’s ankle, preventing her from falling.
Time moved again.
A pair of brown glasses fell past her.
“You going somewhere?” Mr. Ramos grunted. He had one hand on Maya’s leg and another on the cold steel ledge above. He dangled between Maya and the balcony. “Boys?” he called. About a handful of the class’s largest students lifted him back onto safety, Maya in tow.
She stood there, motionless like a statue. Mr. Ramos dusted himself off, casually stretching both his arms. They must’ve been sore. She noticed a rip on his shoulder sleeve. He placed his hands on hers. “When I said, ‘take a breather’, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I’m not giving up on you.”
The scorpions died. Maya cried, and Mr. Ramos hugged her. He pulled the whole class in, and they hugged her too. The damp cloth over her class vanished, and all that’s left were her tears. Her tears for a new, enduring tomorrow.
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