Six Last Lessons

lesson three: you will outgrow your scars

I trembled slightly, a shiver that started at the base of my spine and rippled through my body.

It was cold out, but the fresh air made me feel alert. I could taste the metallic tang of the cold air, feel it in my lungs as I drew it in. I exhaled heavily, watching the steam curl up into the night as it caught the porch light, before drifting away into the dark. It was early, only four 'o clock in the afternoon, but the day was already drawing to a close. I burrowed further into the blanket, which smelled like old wood and earth, musty and suspiciously tangy. I had found it in the box next to the porch swing, and thrown it up onto the shed roof before climbing up myself. It was my favourite place to sit and think sometimes, above the rest of the world. Sometimes I imagined that I could leave my problems behind on the ground, sitting up there on my little island of calm whilst the sea raged on around me.

In the east, the sky was darkening, peppered with promise of stars. However, in the west, the sky was still a pale, undecided blue. I rolled my head to one side and watched as the last sliver of the cold winter sun disappeared below the horizon. High above, the pale moon, which had been lurking in the sky all day like a translucent ghost, was gaining more substance as the light died. I lay there, trying to fight off the tremors that ran involuntarily through my body as the cold crept in. I knew I should be leaving, that if I didn't, I'd risk falling asleep out here and catching my death of cold, but I couldn't bring myself to haul my heavy limbs into action. Instead, I just lay there like a rag doll tossed onto the ground and forgotten, staring up at the frosty stars.

I thought about how the light that I was seeing in order to see them had travelled for thousands, maybe millions of years just to reach me. As I turned my eyes up to the sky, I was essentially seeing the past, seeing something that had long since begun and ended. I suddenly felt very small.

The creaking of a door startled me out of my thoughts. Quietly, I propped myself up on my elbows, staring down into the now-dark garden with wide eyes.

"Emily, is that you?" came a raspy whisper across the flowerbeds. I recognised the voice instantly and relaxed. My back thumped down onto the cold corrugated iron of the garden shed roof.

"Yeah, I'm up here."

There was no reply, but rather a crunching of feet on frost and then the sound of someone scrambling up the trellis on the side of the shed. A blonde head peered over the top, earnest blue eyes stained indigo in the darkness of the approaching night. By now, only the last of the sun's light remained in the west, and the east was now fading to black in gradients of deep blue.

"What are you doing up here?" she asked softly, but her voice seemed loud in the comparative silence of the night that pooled around us. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to fend off the cold. Only then did I move, sitting up and untangling myself from the sheets so I could offer them to her. She wrinkled her nose at the musty smell, but didn't decline the offer. We huddled together, and I felt her cold hair brush against my cheek as she made herself comfortable.

"I came to see if everything was okay, and then I couldn't make myself leave." I had wanted to be somewhere that I could leave my troubling thoughts behind, but I felt as if I was trying desperately to keep my head above water while the heavy feeling in my chest weighed me down like a brick tied to my foot. So I heaved myself up to safety, to refuge, onto the roof of the shed so that I could watch the sun go down for once. "I wanted to be up here."

"Did nobody ever tell you it's creepy to lurk in people's back gardens?" she asked, a rogue shiver making her quake involuntarily.

"Sure, plenty of times. But I don't follow the rules, Sophie. I live life on the edge. You know that." I said, cracking a smile. I could feel the adrenaline pumping through me, keeping my heart beating despite the pervasive chill that was stealing through my bones. I could feel my heart pumping in my chest. I could feel the pulse going in my neck. I felt alive.