“There’s a way to do it.”

“It’s a game,” he said, mostly to himself. “It’s only a game, right? Like a room in my mind. It is a game.”

“If you say so. Believe what you want. No one ever said you couldn’t.”

“It has to be,” he said. “It’s some kind of game. A test. Part of the initiation.”

The wind brushed through his hair as he stood at the open window, looking down.

It was a hell of a long drop. He stood on the ledge at the top of the tower. He imagined dropping a water balloon and counting til ten before it hit the pavement. That’s what it would be like. He’d drop and then it would all be over.

“Every game has its rules. I just need to know what the rules of this one are,” he said, hoping the other boy would tell him something – anything – that would give away this game.

He kept feeling the tug of the earth – not gravity, but the need to be there, the need to leave the tower and return to the ground again. He couldn’t keep from looking down.

The more he looked at the distance between where he stood and the earth below, the more interesting it became. It didn’t seem like a fall, it seemed like he could just step over into it, as if…his eyes were playing tricks on him…but it was as if it wasn’t a long way down at all.

The other boy stood behind him and whispered, “It’s just like a corridor, isn’t it? You look down and see the drive and the stones and the fountain, but it changes when you watch it, the edge of your vision wraps around it, and it becomes a long corridor and it makes you feel as if you could just step out into it, and walk that long way to its end, to find out what waits there for you. You can’t go back because you know what waits for you there. You can’t stay where you are. You must go forward.”

“What’s there?” he asked.

“What you want. More than anything.”

“No,” he said.

“Go on. You’ll see. You can’t stay on the ledge, can you? You can’t go back. You know what’s there. You can only go on. You want to, I can tell.”

“What’s there?” he repeated his previous question.

But the boy behind him didn’t answer. He may have stepped away.

“It has to be a game,” he said. “This can’t be real. This can’t be.”

He stood alone at the top of the tower.

And then, he stepped off the ledge.

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