Poor Reflections

The phone alarm went off, and the sound of marching boots filled the storage shed. Rachel blindly flailed until she hit the snooze button, and her snores filled the room almost immediately.

Soon enough, the alarm rolled forth once again, and despite desperately wanting to ignore it, she got up with a groan to face the coming day. She hopped off her double-stacked mattresses and started to stretch away the kinks in her back as an industrial drumbeat joined the stomping combat boots and ominous bass line. When the electric guitar came in Rachel began her morning exercise routine, determined to kick the morning’s ass.

Rachel was properly warmed up by the time "Hell March" ended. She tied her hair back as best she could (her most recent attempt at giving herself a haircut made getting all of it somewhat difficult) and grabbed her earbuds for her morning run.

She stepped out of her storage shed, walked to the edge of the roof it sat upon, and leaned against the low stone wall that defined the roof’s perimeter. A slow smile crept across her face as she looked out over the city, the street lights still on as the pre-dawn glow barely kissed the eastern horizon. This was her favorite time of day, when the major decisions she had been forced to make over the last few years didn’t seem so bad.

Alone.

The word appeared unbidden in her mind, and with it, a familiar hollow ache in her heart. The city was lovely, but it was an empty experience without anyone to share it with.

Rachel gave an impatient snort – she didn't have time for this if she wanted to avoid being late on the first day of school. Nothing a little Paul Gilbert can't blast out of my head. She queued his playlist and hopped up on the stone wall. It was well over a foot wide, which was plenty as far as she was concerned. More importantly, her footsteps wouldn't resonate nearly as much as they would if she ran on the roof itself.

Still, it was always exhilarating when she first stood up tall on the edge each morning; it was a seven story drop if she misstepped. Jaw set, she started running.

By the time Paul had finished his set Rachel had worked up quite a sweat, so she hopped down from the wall to finish the routine with a few sets of crunches, push ups, and squats. Each set of muscles was important, and she tried to pay attention to as many of them as she could over the course of the week. Today was leg day, and unlike the other slackers at the gym, she never skipped it.

Another twenty minutes saw the sun finally start to crest the distant horizon, which signaled the end of Rachel’s workout. She didn’t have much time before the residents of the building below would start to get up for the day, and she needed to be in and out before they did. After a final few cool-down stretches to ease the tension from her gloriously aching muscles, she went back into her shed and grabbed her toiletries satchel, stuffing it and a change of clothes into her courier bag. She slid on her crocs, wrapped a towel around her shoulders, and jogged over to the south wall of the roof. Taking a deep breath, she vaulted over the edge.

She turned as she cleared the wall and grabbed the drain spout leading all the way to the ground from the edge of the roof. The thought struck her as she dangled there that most people would consider hanging on to a rusty pipe seventy feet from the ground to be nightmare fuel, but to her it was simply routine. She smiled, got her feet underneath herself, and climbed down to get even with the top level of the fire escape. She hopped over to the rusted metal scaffolding with enough grace to avoid making too much noise and slowly crept over to the third window.

She’d scouted out which rooms were taken over the course of the previous week, and fortunately this one would remain unoccupied – seven stories was a bit much for a dorm without an elevator, at least for most students, and Rachel’s luck had held over the past five semesters. Still, she checked again to make sure the room was empty before carefully sliding the window open and hopping inside.

She softly closed the window and tiptoed over to the door, which she always kept locked from the inside as a precaution. She looked through the peephole – no sign of movement. She didn’t really expect any at this hour on a Monday, but she’d had a few too many close calls over the years. She could say she was someone’s cousin from another floor only so many times before suspicions were raised, and she liked her current living situation too much to take any unnecessary risks.

She cautiously opened the door and poked her head out, checking both ways. The hallway was clear, so she quietly shut the door behind her and hurried to the shared bathroom for this half of the floor. She ducked inside, and seeing it, too, was empty, she finally allowed herself to relax.

A brisk shower and a quick brushing of teeth later saw her refreshed and ready for the day, and she paused in front of the mirror to check herself out. She was pleased to see the various dyes in her shoulder-length technicolor hair were still holding, and the sides, while shorter and uneven, gave her a shaggy rough-and-tumble look she kinda dug. She flexed, appreciating the definition present in her biceps and abs. She was by no means muscle-bound, but had a lean, wiry form of strength. She snapped her fingers and pointed at her mirror image with a wink.

Satisfied, she turned and moved to the door, easing it open to peek out. She immediately ducked back and shut it again with a wince as a trio of girls walked past, talking quietly among themselves. Rachel listened intently at the door. When she was sure they were well past her, she slowly opened it again to watch them. Judging from their clothes and shoes, they were getting ready for a morning jog. She stared at them through the crack in the doorway as they made their way to the far stairwell, appreciating the way their loose sleeveless shirts contrasted with the tightness of their shorts. Her eyebrows raised at the way their muscles shifted in their legs as they walked. Wow, they don’t skip leg day either. A sly grin slid across her face, even as she bit her lip. Damn, I love living here.

Alone. Rachel shut her eyes against the sudden urge to go join them.

She shook her head to clear the lingering thoughts of bike shorts and sports bras. Focus, Rachel. She watched the trio disappear down the stairs as she listened for any other early risers. Hearing none, she silently left the bathroom and headed back the way she came.

She had made it back to the fire escape and was just preparing to jump over to the drain pipe when the loudest explosion she had ever heard erupted from the south side of town. Jeezus, what– oops.

Startled, Rachel had tried to simultaneously jump and turn towards the noise, and these incongruous actions led her to lose her balance. Oh shit. She pinwheeled her arms in a desperate attempt to stay upright, but she realized that she wasn’t going to recover enough to avoid jumping, and she also was too far forward to properly jump. Purely on instinct, she stretched out as tall as she could as she started to fall and, miraculously, her fingers found purchase on the pipe as her heels braced against the railing of the fire escape.

A second passed, and Rachel realized that she had successfully stopped. After a nervous chuckle, she took a deep breath and assessed her situation. She stared straight down at the seven story drop that had just nearly killed her, vision partially obscured by the towel that was wrapped around her neck. Again, she was struck by how this sort of thing was proper nightmare fuel to most people.

She grinned.

Rachel tried to look over to the south towards the explosion, but she didn’t see anything like what she expected; no smoke, no fire, nothing. She was disappointed, but it didn’t matter; she was running late. It was a pretty fair hike to get to the high school from the university campus, and it took a while via skateboard.

She shifted her left hand, then her right to allow her fingers to get a better grip around the pipe, then slowly – and very carefully – started easing more and more of her weight onto her arms and off of her legs. She tightened her back and abdominal muscles to keep her body more or less level, and slowly lifted her right leg off of the railing. She eased the leg down and lined it up so that when she released the tension on her left leg she softly swung her lower body down and against the pipe. Once she was braced in her normal climbing position, it was trivial to clamber back up the drain, jump up to the edge of the roof’s perimeter wall, and haul herself over.

She laughed as she dropped back to the stability of the rooftop. “Hoo! Haha! No coffee for me, thanks!” She paused to enjoy the lingering adrenaline rush for the span of a few deep breaths, then went inside to check her phone. Upon seeing the time, she swore, stuffed a small pile of notebooks and other scholastic detritus into her courier bag, slid on her Vibrams, grabbed her skateboard, and bolted back to the south wall.

A thought nagged at her as she ran; in that split second before she realized she was about to fall, when she had looked towards the southern horizon, she could have sworn she saw a rainbow.