Burn the Past

“Do people even use these stairs?”
“Not anymore. After the fire, they had to redo the interior of the buildin- Don’t step on that one, Riley! They just kinda left these stairs untouched.”
“What?” Cole sheepishly acknowledged the step I was about to sink through. The carpet had melted away and the wood beneath that had crumbled to near ash. I gingerly steeped over it pausing to reach my hand out to brush the charred walls. “I was just about to tell you how much I liked this wall paper," I half heartily joked as black ash crumbled to the floor. Cole grabbed my hand.
“Don’t touch."
My fingers retreated into my pocket. With his verbal guidance I made it up with rest of the stairs alive and stopped behind him at a black crème wall chaste and untouched by the flames.
“Okay? Now what?”
“Shh.” He lifted his hands to the ceiling, his long fingers searching for something. I watched him with interest. His eyes were closed in concentration and his lips moved, counting out numbers silently. Then, he pushed up suddenly on one of the ceiling tiles that I hadn’t noticed existed until they disappeared. Fresh air and moonlight flooded the narrow corridor.
“You’re really going to like this.”
Behind me, the black stairs fell to darkness after the first turn. I couldn’t believe I’d followed him up here. I turned back and he had disappeared, except for his hand which hung over the edge of the ceiling tiles. I reached up for it, then paused.
“I’m not sure I want to go up there.”
“Why? Do you not trust me?” His head slid into view, his dark hair flipped forward and hung wildly.
“I trust you. I just. . .I just don’t want you to get hurt trying to pull me up there.”
“Really, why don’t you trust me?” Several valid things popped into my head each involving varies degrees of illegal activity. I chose to not mention any of them.
“We had to sneak past people to get up here. I was expecting you to hand me a blindfold and throw me in the back of a black unmarked car.”
“That would have been a little unconventional. And ridiculous. Come on, Riley. Please?” His face pleaded with me. I was noticing how the wrinkles around his mouth framed his smile and how his nose crinkled, when his head vanished again. He shuffled around and then he slid, feet first, to the ground beside me holding in one hand a rope ladder too long for the seven foot distance from me to the roof. He presented it to me.
“What’s that for?”
“In case there is a fire.”
“Ironic,” I mentioned softly taking in the state of the building around me.
“Close your eyes, okay?”
“While I climb the ladder?”
“Yes.”
“Right.” I muttered sarcastically. “That’s safe.”
My eyelids fluttered closed. Then, wrinkling my eyebrows, I opened them again watching him skeptically. He said nothing, but there was something about the look on his face that was reassuring. I had just snuck out of my roommate’s birthday party- his ex-girlfriend,- up several flights of stairs crumbling beneath our feet. If I was in danger, there was no going back. I was safest right where I was with his hand placing mine onto one of the ropes.
He helped me up the ladder until the tantalizing warm air of the evening washed over my face. My eyelids still fastened shut, I felt the ground and hoisted myself the rest of the way onto the gravely rooftop. Lacking upper body strength, I rolled over like a beached whale and grimaced as each tiny rock burrowed into my skin. I laid still, my face to the heavens. I heard him gracefully slide beside me.
“Just breathe,” He said. And until that moment I hadn’t realized how relaxing and simultaneously exhilarating it was to be laying under the stars doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and just feeling.
“Is this what you do with your time?” I mumbled softly.
“Yes,” He chuckled.
“Just…find rooftops, and lay there?” We shared a chortle both knowing very well that was not how he spent his time.
“My apartment has a balcony. It’s close enough.”
“Mmm,” I took several deep breaths. “Why is something this simple so amazing?”
“Depends on the company.” I heard the rocks crunch as he shifted. His hand grazed my forehead and I opened my eyes. He was leaning over me and, against my will, my heart beat a little faster. He lingered for a moment.
“Come on. You haven’t even seen the best part yet.” He jumped up and looked down at me, his hand extended. He was like Tom Sawyer, always onto the next adventure, showing off all the while. Beaming gently, I let him pull me up. Like a child, he slid one hand around my eyes. Started, I pulled away slightly, then relaxed into a smile. With his other hand on the small of my back, our feet crunched loudly on the tiny pebbles littering the roof as he led me to what I knew was the edge of the building. With a flourish he removed his hand and instructed me to open my eyes. The entire city of Los Angeles was spread out in front of me, twinkling in the darkness.
With a barely audible gasp, I searched every inch of the endless lights in front of me. The clouded sky above was a hue of orange as the bulbs of the city reflected off of the rapidly approaching masses. A light breeze infused with the scent of gardenias ruffled our hair and blew away all hesitation. In awe, we both stood in a content silence.
“I wanted you to have it,” He muttered softly beside my ear gesturing towards the view while watching for my reaction with earnest. My face slid out of a smile. He looked slightly put out. I took a moment to watch him.
“You’re so interesting to me, Colton. You seem so childish and eager and spontaneous. But, there’s so much more I don’t know. I can’t really place you.” I laughed, but his face lost all of it’s infantile-like glow.
“I’m not childish. I’m usually very serious. I just, for some reason, act differently when I’m around you,” Frustration sat in every syllable.
“I don’t mean it as an insul-”
“What about you, Riley?” He daringly trudged over to the rim of the rooftop and flipped his legs over the edge so they dangled freely in the air. “Why are you so cautious? You don't do anything out of turn. I haven’t seen you take any risks, not in the way you act, dress, anything. You’re almost boring.” In an attempt to prove him wrong, I marched over and slid beside him on the slender lip of the rooftop. I tried to ignore the heavy nervous pounding of my heart every time my eyes glanced to the cars hundreds of feet below.
“If I’m boring, Cole, don’t spend time with me.” I answered simply.
“Really, Riley. Why are you so careful?”
“There’s too much to lose in being stupid and daring. I’ve had to learn that from everyone else’s mistakes.”
“You have to learn from your own mistakes,” He stated as if this was the motto he lived by.
“And I have! I’ve made plenty of my own. But, it’s everyone around me that influences me the most.”
“You-”
“ Do you have any brothers or sisters Cole?” I cut him off and he retreated into silence. “ I have two older siblings. My brother is 26 and he has three beautiful children,” I took a moment to think of each of their round faces and happy laughter with blue eyes so unlike my own. “Well, had. It turned out they were living in his car and he couldn’t afford to feed them all. So, now they’re in lovely foster homes across the country.”
“I’m sorry, Riley.”
“I saw it coming. My brother doesn’t know how to think of anyone but himself,” We sat in heavy silence each of us considering our own families.
“And you have another sibling?” He finally asked.
“My sister.”
“What happened to her?”
“She made some terrible mistakes.” I took a deep breath. Cole was watching me with sympathetic interest. My eyes blurred over with warm salty water. “She abandoned me, her family, in the worst way she could. I haven’t seen her in two years and I never will again,” My stomach filled hot rage and I swallowed my tears. I refused to let myself cry about her anymore. “My parents gave up on them and focused on making sure that I wasn’t a screw up. So, I learned that I needed to be careful and observant and not too daring and I’ll get along just fine.”
“It’s all for your parents? You can’t live for someone else.”
“If you could have seen everything they went though, you would do anything you could to keep them happy. Besides, I moved here didn’t I? And in doing that, in losing me, it killed them. But, you’re righr. For once in my life I wanted to live for me instead of taking care of everyone else. And this is where I wanted to do that.”
The wind was growing stronger bringing in a chill. I slid off the edge of the roof turning back towards the door in the ground we’d crawled out of. Cole followed suit and I slid closer to him.
“Why does everyone move to L.A.?” He asked softly staring at the Hollywood sign in the distance.
“Because it has potential.”
“What do you mean?”
“A person hears so much about this city, and then they come here and find out that it’s just another home, with the potential of being amazing hidden somewhere within the maze of downtown. All of my life, I’ve wanted to perform. And I always have been. Until I came here and no one seemed to want to watch anymore. And it kills me to see people like you, up on stage living my dream. It especially hurts when I know that I could be just as good or better then the people who take everything they have for granted!”
“Riley, it just takes a lot of hard work.”

. . . . . . . . .