About the Author: Merry is 14 and likes to read, write and draw. They also enjoy playing percussion in band.
The school was several stories high, five to be exact. For students, this was a pain. They had to go up four flights of stairs just to go to Math. Then back down again to go to PE. They practically don’t need a PE class because it takes them so long to go down the stairs, and they are slow as sloths in class, all of them panting.
There is only one slow, sad, and rickety elevator in the entire school, and you are only supposed to use it if you are physically incapable of climbing the stairs in a reasonable amount of time and a reasonable amount of work.
But even though those who climb the stairs are sweating when they come down from Math to the gym, so was a girl who had taken the elevator and merely walked down the long hallway. Though her leg looked normal on the outside, the inside made it painful to walk, and very painful to climb the stairs. If she took the stairs between each class, by the time she would get to the gym, the school day would have been over.
Kyle didn’t really mind, except that the elevator was so slow. She got to the gym at the same time as the other kids.
It was also lonely, just there with her limp. Not enough time to open a book, but too much time to just stand there.
She usually just read the graffiti; imagined what the people who wrote them were like. “Max hearts Lily”, “Riley is awesome--1996”, “Mrs. Evans sucks”, “Ellen likes Spencer”. Then the various insults and swears regarding other students and teachers.
Ahhhh… like old friends. Since the fourth grade, she had ridden this very elevator. Now she was in eighth grade. Almost no one had ever ridden the elevator with her, some others with broken toes from soccer or lacrosse. From any extracurricular sport that normal kids do. Not Kyle.
Straight brown hair with big bangs. Shy to begin with, she had almost never had friends. Everyone was friendly; it didn’t happen very often that someone was explicitly mean. They would say hi to her in the hallways, “Hi Kyle! See you in Art!” Yeah, like they cared about her at all.
It was one of those things that everyone does sometimes: pretend your someone’s friends and you have a relationship with them, even though you don’t. Sometimes because you’re bored, you’ll wave to them; or to show that you’re a “nice” person to your friends. If you play with the cripple, you’re a samaritan, right? Just assuming you are higher than them, and they are so desperate for friends that you pretend to be their friend for a lunch period, or a band class. But you can tell they would rather be talking to someone else the whole time, and after the class, they don’t say hi to you until next year. So when Kyle automatically doubts her classmate’s intentions before she really gets to know them, it’s understandable because of her treatment by other ignorant students.
Alone in the elevator, Kyle didn’t expect the onslaught of students and teachers, carrying a stretcher, waiting outside the elevator door to the third floor. Mr. Lieven and Mrs. Nardelli carried the stretcher, and a third one was on their cell phone, most likely calling the office.
Students were fighting to get on the elevator with him, but the teacher with the cell phone was holding them back. Kyle decided it was hopeless to attempt to get off the elevator as she had planned to get to her next class, since she was now effectively trapped by the stretcher. Everyone (two teachers, one student, plus one more unconscious student on a stretcher) could barely fit in the elevator; the stretcher could only fit from corner to corner. So, the teachers holding the ends of the stretcher were both awkwardly pressed into the corner.
Kyle was just standing there observing all this and recovering from the abrupt surprise.
It appeared that the student on the stretcher was Mason Wells. Mason Wells was the boy that everyone has a few of at their school: Hung out with the blonde girls and the tanned boys, played soccer every day at recess, and was always picked first for teams. He was the popular boy, if you know what I mean.
“What happened?” Kyle stuttered out awkwardly.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Nardelli. “He was just playing soccer, about to score, and something happened.”
“Yeah,” responded Mr. Lieven. “Mason just fell down, and didn’t get back up.” Kyle nodded back. The grey metal door slid open to the lobby, and the teachers rushed out with the stretcher plus Mason. They pushed through the same hoard of students, who had rushed down two flights of stairs to see how he was in the two minutes that had past since they had last seen him.
Kyle remained in the elevators as the doors slowly closed the curtains on the drama, and she pressed the button for the third floor for the second time in the past five minutes. The noise disappeared, and the silence flooded in. She stepped out into the empty hallway and headed to her next class.
After limping, tripping, and almost falling over all the backpacks and legs in the bus aisle, she made it to her doorstep. The screen door of the trailer slammed behind her. She heard glasses clinking together and some too-loud chatter coming from the kitchen. In the kitchen, she found her parents counting the money they had earned from their jobs at the nearest gas station. Her mom, a college drop-out, and dad, a high school drug addict. Kyle’s family had spent the remains of their money on rehab. In the long run, it would be worth it because her dad, Vic, wouldn’t be sneaking away their money. But her mom, Karla, still spent a lot of money on beer, and so this was the usual welcome home. Kyle walked through the hallway towards the kitchen, bracing herself. The walls were stained with various things, the rug littered with holes, tears, stains, and dust. When Kyle limped into the room, there were a tower of dishes in the sink, salami and cheese left open and untouched on the counter, and two pudgy adults sitting at the kitchen booth. Kyle said a quiet, “Hey,” grabbed the salami and cheese, hoping it hadn’t been sitting there for more than a day, and limped out hurriedly, heading to her room.
Her room was the only clean room in the house, and also one of the smallest. She thought she should get the master bedroom, since she would take better care of it than her parents do.
Her 10-year-old pink bed sheets were messy from the morning, and her pajamas were still on the floor. The rest of her clothes were in a minuscule closet in the corner. A fold-down desk with a dead succulent and a sad-looking betta fish on it was across from the bed. The blank walls were a bland sort of blue, with a wall-to-wall brown rug on the floor. Kyle sat her backpack down and pulled out her laptop to start her homework. A thought floated across her mind about Mason on the stretcher. I hope he’s okay.
The next day, a Tuesday, there was no other abnormal action on the elevator. However, everyone was asking Mason’s best friend, Elias, how he was.
“What’s broken?”
“Is he dying?”
“Is he paralyzed?”
“Does he have to get surgery?”
Clearly, people were getting a little to worked up with the “paralyzed” and “dying”. Kyle saw that Elias was loving his time in the spotlight, and was informing anyone who would listen that, “Everyone; calm down. He broke his femur, and he’s going to need a huge cast all the way from his foot to his hip. Don’t worry, he wants everyone to sign his cast.”
It wasn’t until that night after microwaving a freezer burrito for dinner that Kyle realized she would have a new kid in the elevator for the first time. Wow, was that gonna be awkward. What were they supposed to do? Attempt a conversation? Stand there, feeling uncomfortable because he was the popular boy and she was the pitied cripple? Her stomach started to hurt, like whenever it did when she got worked up. Kyle had a bite of her burrito, and almost gagged. She didn’t want to go back into the kitchen with her parents, so she choked it down as fast as she could and took a swig from her water bottle.
Her alarm on her laptop went off. “Bang! Bang! Maxwell’s silver hammer came down on her head. Bang! Bang! Made sure that she was dead…” the Beatles slammed into her head, reminding her of the incoming school day. She panicked for a second: Did I do my homework? LA, check, Math, Social Studies, check...wait, Science? Oh yeah, I didn’t have any… she chuckled at herself as she got dressed and grabbed an apple from the fridge.
Her parents had either already left for work or were passed out on the couch, late for work.
She sometimes wondered how she ended up like this: an A+ student, kept her room clean, sometimes made dinner...how was she not like them? Probably from Grandma, she thought. Her Grandma was her best friend over 40. Sometimes Kyle stayed with her over the weekend. She showed her how to do her own laundry, remove stains, make eggs for breakfast, and how to get ready as fast as you can so you can sleep in as much as possible. Some traits skip a generation, as they say.
Kyle normally sat in the middle of the bus; not cool enough to sit in the back (also, who can stand their disgusting conversations?!), but not so young she had to sit in the front. She read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe quietly for the fourth time this year. The library at the school was pretty small, and they didn’t have many books at home. She was so into it that she barely heard everyone shift so they could crane their necks into the aisle. She looked out the window to see that it was Mason’s stop. She to slid to the end of her seat and peaked into the aisle. He had a huge green cast from toe to hip on his leg. And crutches. So, she would have company in her second home, the elevator. He made his way down the aisle, towards his friends in the back. She heard his boy friends clapping him on the back, and the girls asking what happened, does he need surgery, etc. Her train of thought running out, she ducked back into her book.
First stop. Locker. Third floor. Second stop. Math. Fifth floor. LA. Also fifth floor. Kyle ran her classes over in her head as her classmates filed out of the bus and into the school. As everyone else walked towards the stairs, she headed towards the elevator in the other direction. She heard crutches plus some footsteps behind her: Mason. Along with the normal excessive high-pitched chatter that surrounded his friends. Panic flooded her mind as the voices turned down the hallway until only Mason limp remained. Why did she have to get so nervous over something as stupid as talking? She sighed through her nose and walked through the thick metal doors. He probably wouldn’t want to talk to her anyway. On the spectrum of social dynamics at school, she was on the opposite end from him. Well, we’ll see, she thought as she pressed the glowing button for her next class.
This was the first time she had gotten a good look at him since the bus. Because of the spring weather, he had normal baggy shorts on, basic blue T-shirt with some soccer team on it. Dark skin, black hair, with a strong build and some height. As he pushed the button for the third floor, she racked her brain for a conversational question. Was it even worth the attempt? Did she even--
“So...anything special to know about this old thing?” asked Mason, tapping his crutch against the elevator wall.
What??? Aggggg what do I say next? Should I just go off instinct, okay sounds good?
“Not really. Except that it’s the slowest elevator I’ve ever ridden, and I’ve ridden a lot of elevators.” The elevator jolted upwards, then stopped, as if deciding whether it really wanted to get them to class or not. “Yeah, it’s a little rickety. Nothing serious has ever happened though.”
“Cool. This drawing is really good.” Mason pointed to a scribbled sharpie drawing of an eye near the fire alarm button.
“Someone must have been stuck in here for a long time. There are eyes all over the elevator, and some in bathrooms.” Through the sea of scribbles, it was hard to find them, but three years in the same metal box helps you out. Mason started to respond, but the doors slid open as they exchanged “See ya later”s and went to their lockers.
Mason awkwardly lurched down the hall to his second first class. After getting rid of his backpack at his locker, walking was much easier. He was behind his normal group of friends. He watched them forlornly as he tried to catch up, even though he knew it was impossible. He understood; he’d done it to people before. His best friend Elias was at the center of it all; probably proudly announcing what he knew of Mason’s condition. They had been texting last night after he regained consciousness, waking up in a hospital bed wearing a large and unwieldy cast. Learning that he wouldn’t be able to play soccer, let alone run, for the next six months had also knocked the wind out of him. He thought he would get restless, but right now he was tired and overwhelmed by everything. He had received a temporary break from the hectic morning in the elevator with the mousy brown-haired girl. They had a nice, relatively normal conversation. I guess I’ll be having a lot more of those, he thought as he braced himself for the incoming bombardment of questions and comments from his classmates.
Math and LA were hard; the teachers were grumpy, and everyone wanted to ask him the same questions he had been being asked all morning. As he got into the elevator with the brown-haired-girl, he took a recovering breath and thought about things to talk about. Other than his leg. He should probably figure out her name. Better to awkwardly ask now than later.
“How was Math with scary Ms. Cadwell?”
Less scary than normal.”
“Good. Also, what’s your name?” he asked hesitantly.
“Kyle. Long story short...there’s nothing interesting about me.”
“That’s probably not true,” he answered. “My names Mason, by the way.”
“Everyone knows your name, Mason.” He chuckled, and she smiled. The smile didn’t quite reach her eyes for some reason. But the tension disappeared when Kyle asked him, “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Well, I had a soccer game, but it doesn’t look like I’ll do very well. You?” he said.
“I’m going to my grandma’s house. My parents are kind of messed up, so while they’re working, she picks me up.”
“What? You said you weren’t interesting,” he said.
Her eyes glinted as the corners of her mouth lifted slightly.
“Well, I’ll probably be catching up on all the homework I didn’t do,” Mason joked with a sheepish smile. They both looked up as the doors forced themselves open, displaying the bustling lobby, reminding Mason of a small town square. Again, they exchanged goodbyes, and headed their separate ways.
Kyle rolled her eyes as she headed towards her next class.
“My name’s Mason, by the way.”
Mason was...Mason. She supposed it would have been worse if he’d assumed she’d known his name. Tsk tsk.
As always, Kyle hurriedly grabbed her lunch to head up to the school library. Rectangular tables were pulled to line up to the long tables, and chairs were dragged, adding more scratches to the disgusting floor. Kyle dodged people, chair legs, and flying food to get to the door. Someone barreled in front of her. Luckily she stopped just in time.
In the midst of her pause, she glanced to her left, to the longest, busiest table in the lunchroom. Mason was at the center, with Elias at his side. People stood around the table or shared a chair if they couldn’t find seating. Mason looked back at her, smiled, and waved. She raised her hand to wave back, but their eye contact was broken by screaming children barely swerving to avoid Kyle. By the time the kids were gone, Mason was facing his friends again. Kyle finally fought her way to the door to the library. She entered the peace and quiet with a breath of relief.
Kyle met Mason in the elevator. She had Music on the third floor. From the glowing buttons, he had a class on the fourth floor.
“Where do you eat lunch?” he asked as she limped into the familiar space.
“The library. I’m working on the last Harry Potter right now.”
“Oh! I’ve finished that series. It’s some of the only books I’ve ever read. But it was so good. I think Hermione was my favorite character.”
“Me too. Though I like Luna, too. She’s so confident and quirky; it’s admirable. But Hermione is so smart and is always saving Harry and Ron,” Kyle chirped, excitedly connecting.
“Ok… how far are you in the seventh? I don’t want to spoil anything,” asked Mason.
“I’m about halfway through,” said Kyle, and their conversation continued throughout the rest of the elevator rides that day.
Over the next few weeks, Mason became the closest Kyle had ever come to a best friend. They had even started waving to each other in the halls. Their conversations were real and interesting; though sometimes when the metal doors slid open, people would peer through, confused, because they were both buckled over, laughing to tears. Wiping their eyes, they would go opposite directions with
brilliant smiles on their faces. Kyle was happier than she’d ever been at school;
Mason was happy in a different kind of way. All his regular friends had never seemed as real to him as Kyle did. They seemed like old silent movies: black and white, and strangely 2-D. She stood out against the stark background of the elevator in vibrant color.
After a long morning of core classes, Mason didn’t want to go to the cafeteria. His friends seemed to become duller and duller. Their conversations were redundant and grey. He was beginning to grow bored of the constant spotlight, all the talking, he wouldn’t call it acting but… always being enthusiastic. Never having valid conversations about things that are important. It was weird; he’d been friends with the same people for years, played the same sport for years, sat at the same table for years. Why change now? Mason was surprised by it, but the more he’d thought about it, the more sense it made. Sometimes change is all you need to get the dominoes to start falling. So, after getting his lunch, instead of going to his normal table, he caught up with Kyle.
“Hey...I’ve had a long day. I can’t handle this noise today. Can I eat lunch in the library with you?”
“Of course. I’ll show you where all the good books are.”
“Sounds good. I haven’t read in so long.” Kyle shook her head, exasperated.
Lunch was a success. Both Mason and Kyle walked out with books. But as soon as they walked out, Mason’s smile disappeared, and Kyle started blushing. Outside the door, waiting expectantly, were Mason’s friends. They stood: the blonde-haired blue-eyed girls glaring at Kyle; the boys with crossed arms and raised eyebrows.
“Where were you?” asked Elias. “I thought lunch was for us, not your cripple girlfriend.”
Mason’s eyes widened, and his foot started tapping rapidly against the floor. How did he go from talking about books with his friend to being surrounded by what appeared to be friends gone rotten?
“I--sorry, I was just, um…” Mason stuttered out. Thinkfastthinkfastthinkfast
“Um...she’s not my friend.” Mason tasted the bitterness of his words as soon as they came out.
“I needed to write my short story...you know the one that was due last month?” Mason smiled, trying to get them to chuckle. “I couldn’t write a whole story in half an hour with the noise of the lunchroom.” He walked towards them.
“Let’s get to class; see if the teacher will still accept my story.” He grinned again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. All his friends chuckled, drinking in the lie with relief.
Kyle heard his friends exhale in relief when he said, “She’s not my friend.” Thank god, they must have thought, he’s not friends with that ugly retard. She hoped Mason could feel the fire from her eyes burning into her back. He lumbered off, laughing and talking. Making up the time lost from lunch. Lunch for them. Not her.
Mason sure could feel her eyes stabbing daggers into her back. He had to keep looking away and recover from the instinct of tears. But he didn’t look back; how could he look at her?
Kyle made a simple Venn diagram in her brain. One circle was her, one was Mason. In the middle were similarities. The differences on the sides began stacking on top of each other, building walls no one could pass. There were so many differences, they ran out of room in their own circle and stormed into the similarities. She turned away. How could something like this happen in a split second? She thought she knew where his motivation was; clearly, she was wrong.
After his last class of the day, he walked towards the elevator. Mason had the speech he had written in his head ready to go. It was an apology speech, of course. Those words he’d said… bleh. They made him gag. He got in the ugly metal box, and held his crutch through the doors so they wouldn't close. He waited a few minutes. People stared, puzzled, as he stood there, with his crutch awkwardly outstretched. Well, her class must have ran late. He took one last look between the double doors, and hit the lobby button. The silence eroded his spirit, until the only thing that seemed to be left was some water. And that was reserved for tears once he got off the bus. Right. The bus. She was on his bus. Should he sit with her? He felt the familiar stab of nervous pain in his chest as he re-lived his stinging words.
Ten minutes before her last class ended, Kyle asked to go to the bathroom. The overwhelmed teacher just gestured towards the door. Not bothering to ask if that was a yes or a no, she walked out the door without a pass. She got in the elevator, standing up straight and defiant. Her eyes were unreadable as she entered her locker combination and grabbed her bag. She limped past the closed classroom doors. She was not going to take the elevator down with Mason after he got his bag from his locker on the third floor. For the first time, Kyle headed to the stairs.
On the third floor, Mason didn’t see Kyle at her locker either. Where was she? He hurriedly grabbed his bag, didn’t wait for his friends to catch up, and slipped into the elevator.
By the time he got out, he still didn’t see her. His stomach already had butterflies flying around in it; he didn’t need it tying itself up into knots too. To stall and see if she came down later, he went to the bathroom. When he came out, she still wasn’t in the bustling crowd streaming towards the doors.
Mason finally got on the bus. He struggled to wield his crutches through all the limbs in the aisle. He got mid-way through the bus: no Kyle. Got to Elias’s friends. His friends? … Anyway, no Kyle. He checked the very last seat on the whole bus. Not a clue. He turned around. He wouldn’t be able to get through the train of people behind him. He saw Elias beckoning and patting the seat next to him. He quickly turned his head, pretending not to see. He looked over the seats like it was an empty desert. He saw no mousy brown-haired heads. Well, she was too short to have her head poke out anyway.
Kyle hoped Mason had sat down. She had recognized his familiar uneven gait as he got on the bus. She was cowering all the way against the window, her back beginning to cramp from slouching, and her eyes tired from pretending to read.
Mason passed back by Elias.
“Mason! Where are you going?” he heard Elias shout over the tireless noise of the bus.
“I forgot something!” Mason responded to quickly. He squeezed himself sideways against the seats; allowing others to pass with their bulky backpacks slapping against him. He slowly inched forward, finally getting closer to the door. He still didn’t see Kyle. Where the heck was she?! She wouldn’t have asked her parents to pick her up. Plus she said they had problems anyway. He entered the fifthies section, the air filling with words like “poop” and a really, really bad word: crap. Oh no! He said crap! He chuckled slightly, but it instantly disappeared when he spotted Kyle. She had camouflaged so well into the seat that now it looked like she was trying to melt into it.
He finally made it to her seat right behind the bus driver and plunked down. He didn’t care if his friends saw at this point. He knew how much more Kyle was worth to him than Elias’s posse, previously his. Aw well. Times change.
“Kyle--I’m really sorry. It was so sudden, I just didn’t know what to say. But I’ve spent all of the afternoon thinking about it. And I hope you’ll forgive me, because riding the elevator alone sucks as much as watching you cause yourself pain as you climb the stairs to avoid me. I’m really sorry.” She turned to him. Her eyes were still unreadable. “That was a pretty cheesy line.” There was just an uncomfortable silence. He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly noticing all of his friends whispering in the back. His shoulders tensed.
“Look--what you did was hurtful. I thought you would do better than that.” More uncomfortable silence. “So you better not do it again,” said Kyle with a sigh. Hesitation. “But it’s okay. I never wanna climb the stairs again either.” She turned to him and smiled.
Mason forgot about Elias’s whispers from the back as he relaxed.
“Oh my god. Thanks, I was really worried there for a second,” Mason gushed, crashing into the back of the seat.
“Yeah. You shoulda been,” she said with a smirk as she leaned back. There was silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It had settled around them pleasantly. The bus lurched to a stop in front of Kyle’s house.
“Bye, Mason. See you on the elevator tomorrow?” she asked with a friendly smile.
“Where else?” he responded, sliding closer to the window. Kyle turned towards the door, mumbled a “Thank you” to the bus driver, and limped down the stairs. The bus reluctantly staggered forwards, and her house and disappeared from view, followed by the familiar blur of the trees. Mason didn’t move back to his friends in the back at the next stop. He didn’t need any more friends than he already had.