Josh on a Ledge

Introduction...

Josh dates back to my high school days when I challenged myself to create a story out of a seemingly normal and non eventful subject. It started in my head much as the final copy has; only it ended after only a few lines and was dropped for several decades.

Here in Langdon (the small Hamlet where I am privileged to live) we have a local paper which I approached to write for. I was thinking I’d ramble on and on over the many things my life has given me the opportunity to speak about, (if you want to read more about that go to Ramblings from a Writer), then I thought of Josh and I knew I could make a short story series of it. So I ran with both.

Josh is an exercise in creativity, so enjoy Smile

As they appeared in the Langdon Leader:

· Josh on a Ledge I - July 2009

· Josh on a Ledge II - Unpublished

Josh on a Ledge I

The first thing that Josh noticed as his consciousness pulled away from one of his more fascinating dreams was that the air around him felt all too open. A light breeze was playing with his cropped hair and tickling his bare arms. The air also carried that feel of moisture and the scent of fresh flowing water.

Not quite sure if he was fully awake or if these things were still part of his subconscious, Josh took a moment longer to open his eyes. Instead he shifted slightly so that he could roll from his stomach to his side, like he did most mornings as he woke up. Only the feeling under his arm was a foreign one - tiny pieces of sand against something smooth and cold like marble. The scratchy sensation registered just as his arm fell over the side of his bed – only it wasn’t a bed at all.

His arm dangled only for a second before Josh’s eyes flew open and he scrambled up into a sitting position with his back to a sheer cliff face and his feet mere inches from the edge of an unfathomable drop.

Many ideas raced through Josh’s head, none of them quite believable. The only logical one didn’t even make sense. He wanted to believe that he was still dreaming, but the scrapes on his arm still stung dispelling that hope. So if it was true and he really was here on this two foot by seven foot ledge, what now?

He stuck his head over the edge for a fraction of a second before he pulled it back snug against the rough cliff side. In that moment he’d seen enough to know exactly where he was. Almost half way down – he’d recognized the small stream that ribboned past the rather non-substantial mountain; Fuller’s Peak. Non-substantial, that is, unless you found yourself half way up it without a parachute or climbing equipment. Meaning he was really stuck!

He had woken just before the sun’s first rays had hit the cliff where he was. As the sun began to climb, it dried the dew that had covered the grass by the river bank far below. Soon Josh found himself surrounded by a thick mist. This was now the time he’d normally be waking to get ready for school.

School for Josh had not been an anticipated experience. In his mind there was only one reason to go: a girl. Soopy was her name and though Josh was aware that many of the other kids made fun of such an oddball name Josh loved the sound of it; Soopy...Soopy...SOOPY!

For eight years he had endured the experience of school just to have the opportunity to get a glance at her, but only a glance because as popular as Josh found himself he was rather a shy boy. Shy and a lot more odd than anyone seemed to notice. Or perhaps it wasn’t him who was odd but for sure strange things did seem to happen around him.

Take this cliff thing for instance, he thought, as the misty air gave him a light chill, but he dared not shiver because in the mist his situation seemed far more precarious. There was the time when he’d had a rough morning making him miss his bus and he had run as fast as he could to school only to find that he was an hour early. It had been easy enough to accept that he’d misjudged the time on the home clock, but when he called home he heard his own voice answer, “This is Josh.” Of course he hung up and as he did he remembered that just that morning he’d received a call from school but when he answered they’d just hung up on him...

There was also the time when Jan’s cat had fallen down the laundry chute and everyone was sure it had broken it’s paw but when Josh picked it up it stopped it’s mournful mewing and jumped down to the floor to shake itself out and go on its merry way.

Josh could recount more, so many more, but most were explained away with a trick of the light or a misjudged moment. Even the time when the whole community had a power outage and Jan – who was terrified of the dark, - had screamed so loud that just for something to do Josh had flicked the light switch and the lights had come back on. He’d been the only one in the house to notice that theirs was the only house with power. Everyone thought he was mistaken when he explained this fact after.

He was seven years old that year. In fact that’s the first time something strange happened. And now ten years later he found himself on a cliff wondering how he’d gotten himself here...

This artical was published in the April Langdon Leader.

 

Josh on a Ledge II

That same morning Soopy awoke in a far better condition; in her own bed, in her own room, with her soft down quilt tucked tightly about her – just the way she liked it.  However she awoke with a jolt as if someone had called her name, not once but three times like a chant.

She slowly scanned her room to be sure no one was there because the voice felt like it had come from very close by her.  When she saw no one she strained her ears but her house was quiet and still like it was every morning because her single mother had to leave early for work most days.

Soopy rolled over with a faint groan, her morning might have been normal and mostly peaceful but now that her brain was waking up it took very little time to remind the poor girl of the previous nights events.  Instead of denying that such a strange and unheard of evening could have ever happened, or daring to hope it had all been a nightmare, Soopy contented herself with the fact that, yet again, this time things that could have gone far worse had ended up turning out fairly well.

You see, Soopy’s name wasn’t the only odd thing about her.  She, like Josh, had many strange and unexplainable things happen around her.  Living as an only child of a single mother she spent countless hours home alone where these oddities seemed most frequently to happen.

Her first time was around the same time as Josh’s, only for her the experiences weren’t remembered fondly. At any age a bill collector showing up at your door can be intimidating, and when he demanded the nearly five hundred her mother owed, Soopy didn’t know what to do.  And he refused to leave until he received his payment.  So she did the only thing she could think of – she left him standing in her open doorway and went to look for anything she could find.  She was then surprised to find the exact amount needed squished inside a stack of unpaid bills.  That was the first time that had happened, but not the last, in fact it became such a regular occurrence that she barely thought of it any more.

As well as that, she could remember several times when she’d put something in a specific place only to have it turn up in another at the exact moment when she needed it.  And once or twice she picked up something only to realize that what she held in her hand was another thing completely different, but just what she needed for the moment.  The best of her memories were those times when she was sure they had run out of food only to find that there was a little of something left, and as it ended up it was her favourite thing to eat.

Yet with each strange event she’d been through, Soopy could recount something wonderful, or even something good at least.  Now as her memories of the previous night crisped she had a hard time seeing this as anything but negative.  To find herself sitting on the sofa at Shane Watt’s house had seemed anything but good, not to mention that it was the middle of one of his massive parties...  The ones where she’d heard from rumours that kids like her were mercilessly picked on. 

The Watt’s being the fifth richest family in the community and their only son, Shane, being the most popular kid in all three school districts, it only seemed fitting that the castle size house was filled with hundreds of Shane’s closest friends.  Soopy watched them pass her by, just waiting for the moment when one was going to strike.  Not a comfortable feeling in the least.

To be fair, Shane wasn’t really a bully himself, but most of those hundreds of closest friends were.  They liked to prey on the weak and meek, possibly to prove their status or maybe to impress Shane himself (for he wasn’t quiet about his pleasure in watching other people suffer), or perhaps this generation of teens were just into that sort of thing.  The reason didn’t really matter to Soopy, the end result would be the same: pain, embarrassment and a general fear for her life.

So there she sat blinking, and a bit confused as to how she ended up there in the first place, and just waiting for the first person to notice her so they would get on with whatever they had planned.  As the moments dragged on she thought that this must be part of it, the mounting expectation being the hardest part to handle. 

Surely someone would address her soon? She was sitting in the middle of the chaos in her night clothes!  She bravely took her eyes off the scene of the kids about her to glance at her tattered green sweat pants and stretched off-pink top.  Everyone else wore designer jeans and tops that probably cost more than all the ones she owned put together.  When she felt the sofa being shifted as someone sat next to her she was sure the tortures were about to begin.  How was she to know she looked up into the only friendly face at the whole party?

Josh had been in on the planning of Shane’s second party this month: Beer, hard liquor, pot and other drugs...  Not much to plan really.  In fact he had spent the entire time daydreaming about giving Soopy an invite and the miracle of having her actually show up.  He had tried to picture her on Shane’s new leather sofa.  He’d wondered what she’d wear, how she’d sit, what her hair would look like...  and then what he’d say to her if she actually showed up.  If she did manage to make it, he’d have to get over his nerves and finally talk to her.

Now he sat, transfixed, wanting to believe what he was seeing even though it was hard to do.

Soopy was the first to speak, “You know those moments in life when you really hope you’re just having some crazy dream – yet it’s futile to hope such a thing because no matter how crazy it feels you just know it’s real?”

Josh felt his admiration growing for the girl – a feat he didn’t think possible because he already had such an infinite liking for her.  Yet that she could act so casual about showing up in the middle of the enemy’s den wearing nothing but what looked like tattered PJ’s – not that he found her any less appealing in them.

“I guess it’s time for the hazing to begin.” Soopy said looking around the room apprehensively and not really registering that everyone still seemed oblivious to her presence.

Again, I’d like to take a moment to point out that Josh was quite popular even though he had never figured out how it had happened.  Mostly it was because Shane liked him, so much so that he considered Josh his very best friend and he didn’t do much without him.  And Shane would do anything for Josh.  A truth no that no one had to put to the test because as the party droned on, no one noticed Soopy at all.  A few greeted Josh from time to time, occupying him in bits of the conversation, but none said a word to the girl who was so out of place there.

I won’t lie; Soopy never really calmed down, never got over her fear that at any moment the mob would turn and attack her.  For all she knew Josh was part of the game.  But as the evening dragged on she engaged in a casual conversation with the boy who (in her memory) had never given her a second glance.  She did this more out of boredom than any other reason.

For Josh this evening was the pinnacle of his existence.  He hung on every word and drank in the beauty of this shy and slightly scared creature.  He slowly got over his intimidation and became bolder in his conversation.

“No, I saw you jump from Fuller’s Peak,” Soopy was saying, “I was quite impressed with your performance that day.”

I guess I should explain, that at Josh and Soopy’s school they had dispelled with all team sports, they’d found them to lead to far too many confrontations.  So instead they’d developed individualized sports – ones that would test personal skill levels.  Among those sports were the swimming, track and cliff diving leagues.  Josh had excelled at cliff diving, he’d been doing it since he was eight and up to this moment he had thought there was no greater rush than when he threw his body off the mountain and allowed gravity to pull him towards the earth far below.

He smiled at her compliment, “It was really nothing.” He shrugged, “Fuller’s Peek is really a toddler’s course.”

She smiled politely at his boast, “Bet it wouldn’t feel like nothing if you did it without your chute.”

He found her jest funny and laughed for what felt like the first time in his life, “I’m gonna have to remember that one.”

As the evening had drawn to a close, Josh had tried to express how much he’d enjoyed Soopy’s company for the evening, with stumbling words and long pauses in his sentences, it was no wonder he didn’t get his point across. 

Soopy had ended up back home, safe and sound and completely unharmed, though she wasn’t entirely sure how.

Josh had left Shane’s house at three in the morning. As he walked towards his home he looked up at Fuller’s Peek looming in the distance; the night had gone so well for him that he already felt like he was free falling ~ No flying!

~ I am told that this article will be published in the September Langdon Leader.