Taking A Fall

[Nyyark]

I dashed up the sunlit stairwell towards my fourth floor quarters. I was a dependent AKA military brat living in Germany. The tiling and stairs had a multitude of colors, but from any distance, such as my 5’7” height, it all became an indistinct gray. Legs pumping, I smiled at a flash of blue and yellow: the sky and opposing building through a wall of rippled glass tiles. Only one more flight of stairs and I was there. I gripped and turned the knob. Grunting, I pushed at the heavy wooden door. I hated the thickness of that door, for it was the hardest part of entering the house. It was so thick I used to joke that a burglar would have an easier time breaking in through the wall.

 

Inside, I grabbed the key from the holder, just past the closet on my right. This key would grant me access to the basement storage, which meant access to my bike. Yet again I found myself rushing through flights of stairs, but this time I had gravity on my side. I descended one more flight of stairs than I had climbed, and entered the long dark underground storage passage that revealed the building’s history. It was all too reminiscent of a jail or Nazi barracks, which it had been. Like a lesson in perspective painting, the hallway stretched before me, a darkly lit endless repetition of doors, bleak white paint, and cracked gray concrete.

 

The light splayed down onto the floor near the first set of doors. Passing through the light I almost welcomed the darkness that shrouded the second set of doors. Light normally made feel safe, but being under those lights left me feeling vulnerable and exposed. I turned to my right and stuck the key into the lock of the shadowy door before me. I twisted the key until I heard the lock pop, then twisted the key back and jiggled it until it came out. I turn the knob and through my weight against the door. For some reason all the doors in this building felt like they were made of lead.

 

I half-opened the door, which was the best I could do, as the junk of many moves lay scattered on the floor and piled on the walls. I entered the tiny storage room, trying not to look at the spider webs, not to mention the spiders, on the roof. The room was tinged blue with light from the small rectangular window on the wall near the ceiling I was trying so hard not to look at. This caused the mass of junk to become nothing but heaps of black shadows in the cell-like storage room. My bike was against the far wall. Stepping carefully across the floor I grabbed it by the handlebars, and tried to lead it out of the room as quickly as possible without damaging anything. I somehow caught one of the pedals on a trash bag holding cloths. In my efforts to free the bike it tore, but knowing the state of the room I didn’t think anyone would notice.

 

Quickly I wheeled my bike to the stairwell and carried it up the bottom flight of stairs. I threw out the kickstand and let it sit inside the stairwell, then I found my self running, yet again, up a flight of stairs. I pushed at the door’s massive inertia, panting heavily from the run up the stairs. Once inside I returned the key to its peg. I then began another descent down the stairs, but this time I decided to walk, because I didn’t have a death wish. I found my bike waiting for me at the bottom of the stairwell right where I left it. I wheeled it through the stairwell door, and out into the great outdoors. Well I suppose maybe it was the urban, German, military base, outdoors, but to me it was all the same.

I didn’t have wait long for my best friend, Joseph Hernandez, to arrive. He wheeled up, and then hopped off of his bike. He was shorter than I, but he made up the difference with width. His Hispanic heritage gave him crow-black hair and a perpetual tan, but I wouldn’t dare blame either of his parents for the peculiar sense of humor that brought us together, or for the sense of mischief that brought us here today.

 

“You ready?” Joe asked me.

 

“Yeah, Wario’s Stadium, right?” I replied.

 

“Wario’s Stadium” He repeated in a voice a little too high-pitched to be sane.

 

Joe sped off around the building, and I rushed to catch up with him. Wario’s Stadium was what we called the trail-like packed dirt mound that surrounded a playground behind the elementary school. Its rapid rises and falls, as well as its dirt surface, were reminiscent of the course Wario’s Stadium in Mario Kart. Being video game nerds we had to name it as such.

 

We rounded the building, and then cruised along the sidewalk by a white metal fence to a crosswalk on a street I had never seen traffic on. Across the street was the elementary school. Joe and I rode atop the wide cobble path on the school’s side. It led us around to the back of the school. Before us was Wario’s Stadium.

The dirt was smooth and worn, like an old trail in a fantasy movie. Its path-like top followed its crests and troughs, all along its square-like shape. The fourth side, facing the building, descended all the way to ground level, and then back up again. It was here at the bottom that the smooth path was the thinnest, as the sand from the playground oozed into it, like the ocean trying to reclaim lost ground. All of this was in the shade of massive nearby trees, which even in summer dropped little, yellow, tear-shaped leaves.

 

Joe and I made our way onto the packed dirt. We went around in circles picking up speed. I could no longer see Joe because he sped up so much he was behind me. What sounded like mad laughter was my only warning. I swerved left just in time to avoid Joe, who had decided to ‘race’ me.

 

“Racing” is what we called it, but it was hardly a race. There was no start or finish, and the track was too narrow to do any passing well without crashing. The only way for Joe or I to get ahead was to pull a dangerous swoop off the track onto the hillside, or be insane enough to try and ram the other biker in the rear tire. I glared at Joe’s back and shifted my bike to a higher gear.

 

We both began driving like demons. I shot straight at Joe, but at the last minute swerved onto the grassy hill, then back up onto the packed dirt, passing him before I lost too much speed on the grass. Joe got ahead of me on the next corner, by pulling an insane stunt that involved cutting the corner of the hill. Sweat was pouring down my face. I sped even faster. Joe and I circled our stadium. Joe was nearing a corner when he looked back to see how close I was. His vision returned to the road a little too late, and he went shooting of the hillside. Immediately I clenched my handbrakes.

 

I jumped off my bike and ran down the hillside. Joe was sprawled across the ground. He had just missed hitting a tree.

 

“Joe, are you okay!” I shouted.

 

“Yeah…” he said groggily, “Everything’s fine.”

 

I gave him a hand up. He winced as he stood, limping on his left leg.

 

“Joe, I think we should go home.” I advised.

 

“No way.” He said, “We can’t stop the race now. C’mon, lets go.” He grabbed his bike and limped up the hill.

 

Later that night I rode with Joe to his house. The June bugs were out in force, one pelting my helmet every once and a while. We stopped in front of Joe’s building.

 

“Wow Joe, I had lots of fun today.” I said. “How did you go on after that fall?”

 

“Well, sometimes you just got to suck it up Oliver,” replied Joe. “Learning to take falls gets you through

life. Well, see you tomorrow Ollie.”

 

“See ya.” I said.