Edge

Eyes closed, arms by her side, she pushed herself up onto her toes, leaned slightly over the edge of the cliff, breathed in, and. . .froze.  She opened her eyes, and looked down, quickly stumbling backwards.

“Dammit,” she muttered, sitting down hard on the rocky ground.  “Almost made it this time.  Maybe in a minute. . .”

“SHAE!”

The girl turned her head, as pieces of rock came spilling down around her, and stood up quickly.  Coming down the short slope towards her was a tow-headed teenage boy, tan toes hanging over the edge of his sandals, arms flailing as he struggled to keep his balance, sunglasses sliding down his rather large, very Italian nose. He stopped just in front of her, grinning crookedly, a mischievous sparkle in his emerald eyes.

“C’mon, Shae, you weren’t going to jump without me, were you?  You know this is my favorite spot; what kind of sister does that?”

Shae rolled her eyes at her younger brother, impatiently swiped her blond hair away from her face, and sat down again, hanging her brown legs over the cliff.  Looking back down at the water was like having ten million pairs of her own blue-grey eyes looking back at her, watching, waiting, wondering why she couldn’t do it.  She only wished she knew.

“Whatever, Sam.  You knew I wasn’t going to.  You didn’t have to come all the way up here to tease me about it.”

Sam plopped down next to her, shrugging his broad shoulders.

“I was really just going to offer some encouragement.  I figured since you only have a couple more days left at home, you might need an extra push – possibly a literal one.”

He nudged her as he said this, in case there were any doubts about his seriousness.  Shae shoved him backwards.

“I don’t need any help from you, thanks.   And it’s not like I have to do this anyways.  I’m leaving on Friday, and if I don’t do it before then, this stupid cliff will still be here when I get back.”

“If you come back,” Sam mumbled, looking down.

Surprised by the sudden loneliness in his voice, Shae glanced sharply at her brother.

“What do you mean, if?  Of course I’ll come back!  It’s just college, not a convent.”

“Yeah, college on the other side of the country!  What does the stupid East Coast have that’s better than this?” he replied, waving his hand towards the open ocean.

She had to admit, it was a pretty spectacular view.  The sun was just setting, tinting the sky purple and pink over the rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean.  The seagulls were flying low, calling to each other as they swooped down to snatch some unlucky fish.  She could see a few boats further out, probably hauling in the end of the day’s catch.  The breeze coming off the water carried the perfect salty scent, making her want to go for an evening swim.

But there was ocean on the East Coast, right?  It wasn’t called a coast for nothing!

She said as much to Sam, and he scoffed, standing up again. 

“Well, maybe you’ll find something better to do and somebody better to hang out with there.  I’ll see you at home.”

Before she could reply, he pulled his shirt off, dropped it in her lap, and jumped.  She gasped, holding her breath as she watched him falling straight down, a few feet from the cliff face, certain as always that he was going to fall back against the wall, or hit the rocks, or land wrong, or suffer any of several other horrible fates.  However, he sliced smoothly through the water thirty feet below, and resurfaced, as always.  He waved once, and started to swim towards the shore.

Shae let out her breath as she turned and climbed back up the slope, then began walking down the rocky path home.  What was Sam getting at?  It sounded like he thought she was running away.  But she was going to the University for the engineering program, for the scholarship, and for the great opportunities she had heard about – right?  Suddenly, she was having trouble convincing herself.

Dinner was waiting when the siblings got home, brother right after sister.  Shae was silent through the meal, as her parents and Sam chatted around her.  They acted like nothing was changing.  All she could think about was her flight in two days, and the factors that had led to her final decision for school.  Everything was changing.  This was it.  This was going to determine the rest of her life.  What if she had made the wrong choice?  What if there was something else that she had overlooked?  The “what if’s” flooded her thoughts, weighing her down for the rest of the night, distracting her from the after-dinner movie and keeping her up late into the nighttime. 

When she finally found sleep, it was a slumber full of nightmares about falling down cliffs of textbooks, into oceans of term papers, with her brother’s voice in the background: “C’mon Shae, just jump!  Can you do it?  Can you?”

The next morning, Shae ate her breakfast quickly, and was out of the house before Sam even came downstairs.  She jogged up the familiar path on the side of the hill, and then slowed to get down to the ledge where she had spent so much time this summer.  She looked out at the ocean, thinking again about her future, just one day away.  She knew that she would miss home, but she was sure now that there was so much more out there – once she finished what she needed to do here.

The next step was finally clear.  She sat down and closed her eyes, waiting.

Shae didn’t have to wait long. Fifteen minutes later, she heard the stumbling steps of her brother, and opened her eyes to see him sliding in her direction.  She moved over, and smiled slightly as he raised an eyebrow.

“Really, Shae?  You’re going to waste your last day at home staring off of a cliff?”

“No,” she replied, “I’m going to jump off of a cliff.”

Sam looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“You’ve been trying to do it all summer.  What makes you think that you can do it now?  And besides, I was just kidding yesterday.  If you don’t want to, it’s okay.  Seriously.”

She motioned to the space next to her, and he sat down, still looking suspicious.

“Well?”

“I really thought about it.  And in some ways, you’re right.  I want to go somewhere with new things to do and new people to meet.  I want to get out of here.”

He started to smirk, and opened his mouth to talk, but she cut him off.

“Hang on!  I said some ways.  In other ways, you’re wrong.  I’m not running away.  I picked a school where I could get a good education.  And going someplace new is just as much of a risk for me as jumping off of a cliff for the first time was for you.  You didn’t do it right away; I watched you the first few times that you climbed up here, just like you watch me.”

Sam looked sheepish, and Shae had to smile again as she put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed.

“The point is, to jump in somewhere, you have to jump from somewhere.  I haven’t done that yet, and I didn’t realize that I needed to, until somebody offered to push me.”

She stopped, and looked at him.  He stared back, surprise reflected in his eyes.

“So,” Shae said, “I guess what I’m saying is, will you do this with me?  I’m off to a new start, but you’ll be starting something new, too, once I leave.  You need this jump as much as I do, even though you do it all the time.”

Sam thought about it.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll have to find somebody else to go camping with, and go swimming with, and watch action movies with.  Maybe even somebody who likes to play video games.”

He perked up at that idea, and Shae laughed.

“Alright,” he said.  “And it’s not the same this time, if you really do it with me.  So. . .let’s go!”

They stood up, and stripped down to their swimsuits.  Standing on the very edge of the cliff, Shae looked at her brother, and grinned.

“To the future, and new chances.”

“To future chances,” Sam agreed.

Once again, Shae found herself with her eyes closed, her arms by her sides, balancing on her toes, leaning over the edge.  But this time, she opened her eyes, and jumped.

And suddenly, she was ready for everything.  With one jump, her doubts fell away, and the future opened up for her.  She hit the water, and sank down, then pushed her way back up.  Breaking the surface, she breathed in, and laughed out loud.  She’d done it.  And she knew she would be back.  It was okay to go now; coming back would be just like swimming to shore.  And there would always be somebody here if she lost her way again.