For much of my life, I was poor. My house was a cold and clammy building. Two wobbly chairs and a wooden table, with ants crawling through the cracks in the floor. There used to be three chairs— but it didn't matter anymore, the person who used to sit there was gone.
I stood on the roof of the hospital, staring at the moonlit city below. From there, I felt like I belonged in a different world. The shimmering blue lights of corporate buildings, with their flashing advertisements of products that I could never afford. Children with sticky, sugar coated candies laughed as they flew down the busy streets, kites in their hands. Vivid and colorful bursts of fireworks illuminated the sky. It all seemed so bright. Too bright. I looked down at the streets.
What if I just jump from here?
Would people scream in terror, scrambling from the pool of blood, like rain on a summer evening? Would parents cover their children's eyes, protecting their innocence from the childhood I don't remember? Would they forget all about it in one day? Or would they remember me for the rest of their lives? The dead guy. You know, the one who killed himself.
Look, father! If I jump from here, I'll finally be famous, like you always wanted me to be! Like the person you always wanted to be, I thought. Would he be proud, I wondered?
"You must study. You must get perfect marks." My father would always howl at my brother and I.
When I got anything lower than a hundred, he would hit me with a wooden stick until I could not walk the next day. Then, he would turn to my older brother and lash his anger out on him too. Honestly, I didn't really mind the studying. The long hours of writing papers and sharpening pencils didn't bother me. It was better than begging on the streets like a dog for a few coins as people glanced at me with a mixture of disgust and pity.
This morning started out as just another normal day. My father was gone when I woke up. Probably had gone drinking again, drunk on the dreams of his past hopes, trying to forget the present. Sometimes I think he also wants to forget the future. Forget everything.
My feet wobbled and I realized I was still standing on the edge of the hospital roof. An intense flash of light and dust filled the sky. The wind howled in my ear. "Jump," it whispered. "Then, you can forget about your mother. She left you. She's never coming back. Then, you can forget about your brother. He's in a coma. He's never waking up. Then, you can forget everything, just like your father."
"What are you doing?" A calm, curious voice suddenly pierced through the chilly air. "If you're going to die, go die somewhere else where I can't see you. "
I looked back to see a small, pale girl staring back at me, hidden in the shadows of the night. She looked almost ghostly.
I hadn't noticed her there before. Did she just appear, or was she there the whole time? That made me mad. "Were you watching me? What do you want? It's not your problem if I live or die."
"I don't care if you jump or not," she replied coolly. "But this is a hospital. It's New Year's. The doctors are working all night, while you get to sit here and drink alcohol for hours even though I'm sure you're, what, like sixteen?"
"Seventeen. What do you know about me! Just leave me alone." I knew I was a mess. I knew that I shouldn't have said what I said, but… I couldn't take it back. "You're probably rich and happy. You're going to go home and eat all you want, play all you want. Go shopping with your friends. You have all the time in the world."
There was a silence. Then, her voice turned cold.
"Shut up. You don't know the first thing about me."
I heard her voice crack.
"I can already see what you're like."
"You can… see it?"
It was then, in my half-asleep drunkenness, that I saw the girl roll out of the shadows and into the light of the final fireworks. A delicate pair of hands moved her wheelchair toward me. Then she was gone, leaving me alone, my face flushed with the foolishness of my intoxicated half-slumber.
Maybe it was because of the fireworks, or maybe because she had made me so mad, or maybe because of what she had just said— I stepped back from the ledge.