It started out as a dare. A lot of my stupider decisions did.
We were out by the power plant on Sunday, practicing kickflips and trying to get up the nerve to go for a Casper slide despite neither of us really knew how to do one, when Blayne saw the stairs.
“Dude,” he said, pointing.
Didn’t really have to go for details. If you see something weird and horizontal, you grind it. If it’s weird and vertical, you climb it. Life is easier when you keep your rules simple.
This was the most vertical thing I’d ever seen. It was a tiny spiral staircase on the side of some kind of huge storage tank, had to be six, seven stories tall.
And, as the one duded, I had to go climb it.
No big. Not like it was an access ladder or something dangerous. It had railings, for God’s sake. If nothing else I could probably get a hell of a selfie from the top.
No lock at the bottom. They didn’t care if people got on this, further proof it was harmless. I took the steps two at a time.
Two stories up and I stopped to give Blayne a thumbs-up. He was videoing me, the bastard. Probably hoping I’d fall and his Facebook Live would go viral. I began walking slowly and sedately, to make it more boring. Take that.
I walked up four more flights and figured I was near the end, but the stairs kept going. I must have counted wrong. Easy to do, the stairs just kept coming and they all looked the same. I stopped and leaned over the railing.
Then I threw myself back, flat against the side of the tank.
A few years back we went to New York City and did the tourist things. Couldn’t get to the Statue of Liberty but we did the ferry and the shopping, and the Empire State Building. Long-ass wait, long way up, but the view was amazing, even if you had to put up with a lot of other tourists to see it.
102 floors in the Empire State Building. I had walked up six here, but already I was the same height over the ground as I was that day. Below me I could see the patchwork colors of fields and farms. Strips of roads led to and around the city, off in the distance. I could see thousands of cars moving about, and clouds moving, and, far off, the curvature of the damn Earth. If Blayne was still down there he was way too small to see.
Ha! I could see my house from here!
It took me awhile to stop laughing, and I was getting a little worried I’d broken something in my head, but I managed. What the actual hell?
Yeah, whatever weird trip I was on, I was cutting this in the bud. I headed back down the steps.
Then I stopped, and held my phone up so the skyline was behind me, and I took the selfie. Hey, got to eat the strawberry, right?
Shot, posted. Time to see if I could descend as quickly.
Only…
There were more stairs above me. How far up did this thing go, anyway? I mean, it had only taken me a few minutes to get this far.
I could kill a few more.
One more floor, and I could see space.
I wasn’t IN space, there was air and stuff, but I could see it wrapping around the Earth. There was a deep blue haze, I guess where the atmosphere ran out, and I leaned on the railing and just looked at it for awhile. Below me the state stretched out, no longer looking real.
More stairs waiting.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to breathe on the next landing, so just in case I’m posting this. I am not on drugs. I did not run away.
But hey. When someone dudes you, you gotta do it.