held her hips, and I could feel her on top of me, breathing me in.
After a while, we got up and Octavia turned to me. She asked a serious question.
She leaned toward me and said, “You feel like getting high?”
“High?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She smiled in a dangerous, self-mocking way, and I only began to understand why when we headed back toward the middle of the city, to the tower.
We entered the lift and it took us right to the top, with some English golf pro–looking types, and a family on a Sunday outing. One of the kids kept stepping on my foot.
“Little bastard,” I felt like saying. If I had been with Rube I probably would have, but with Octavia, I only looked at her and implied it. She nodded back as if to say, “Exactly.”
Once up there, we walked around the whole floor and I couldn’t help but look for my own house, imagining what was happening there, and hoping, even praying, that everything was going okay. That extended to include everyone down there, as far as I could see, and as I always do when I pray to a God I wouldn’t have a clue about, I stood there, lightly beating at my heart, without even thinking.
Especially this girl, though, I prayed. Let her be okay, God. All right? All right God?
That was when Octavia noticed my fist lightly touching my heart. There was no answer from God. There was a question from the girl.
She asked, “What are you doing?” I could feel the curiosity of her eyes on my face. “Cameron?”
I stayed focused on the city sprawled out beneath us. “Just sort of prayin’, y’ know?”
“For what?”
“Just that things will be okay.” I stopped, continued. Almost laughed. “And I haven’t been in a church for nearly seven years….”
We stayed up there for over an hour, walking around to see the whole city from this high up.
“I come up here a fair bit,” she told me. “I like the height.” She even climbed to the carpeted step at the window and stood there, leaning forward onto the glass. “You comin’ up?” she asked, and I’ll be honest — I tried, but no matter how much I wanted to lean forward onto that glass, I couldn’t. I kept feeling like I was going to fall through.
So I sat there.
Only for a few seconds.
When she came back down she could see I wasn’t doing too well.
“I wanted to,” I said. “Don’t worry, Cam.”
The thing was, I knew there was something I had to ask, and I did it. I even promised myself that this would be the last time I asked a question like this.
I said, “Octavia?” I kept hearing her telling me that she came up here all the time. I heard it when I spoke the words, “Did you bring Rube up here too?”
Slowly, she nodded.
“But he leaned on the glass,” I answered my own question. “Didn’t he?”
Again, she nodded. “Yeah.”
I don’t know why, but it seemed important. It was important. I felt like a failure because my older brother leaned on the glass and I couldn’t. It made me feel hopeless in some way. Like I wasn’t even half the guy he was.
All because he leaned on glass and I couldn’t.
All because he had the neck and I didn’t.
All because …
“That doesn’t mean anything.” She shot down my thoughts. “Not to me.” She thought for a moment and faced me. “He leaned on the window, but he never made me feel like you do. He never stood outside my house. He never gave me any truth, the way you have with your pages there. He never gave me something he couldn’t give to anyone else.” She struggled not to explain it, but to actually say it. “The few times I’ve been with you, I feel like I’m kind of outside myself, you know?” She finished me. “I don’t want Rube. I don’t want anyone else.” Her eyes ate me, quietly. “I want you.”
I looked.
Down.
At my shoes, then back up, at Octavia Ash. I went to say, “Thanks,” but she stopped me by pushing her fingers up to my mouth.
“Always remember that,” she spoke. “All right?”
I nodded. “Say it.”
“All right,” I said, and her cool hands touched me on my neck, my shoulder, my face.
SOMETIMES YOU GET THE GIRL —
SOMETIMES THE GIRL GETS YOU
Inside me, I’m high up, leaning forward onto glass. It cracks.
It comes apart and falls open. Momentum pushes me out and I’m being dragged to