What differentiates flying from falling

You’re eighteen years old. College freshman. Volunteering at the old folks’ home that your grandpa died at, dead in his own sick, wearing mustard yellow socks.

You’re standing on the roof of a building downtown. It’s not the one you wanted to be on, but the staircase was unlocked and it’s tall enough. You can see the balcony of the mental hospital you stayed at in sophomore year of high school, where you rolled on the pebbled ground and ate ice cream that tasted like protein powder and played table tennis until you didn’t want to kill yourself anymore, until you figured you were already dead.

You stand on the lip of the roof. There’s a rock in your shoe. It doesn’t matter at all.

It’s windy on the roof. There’s rain on the wind, bitter and salty. You lick it off your lips.

It’s not hopelessness you feel. Just numbness. Maybe death will be different. And if it’s not, maybe it’ll be quick.

You jump. You brace for the shattering of your bones like so much broken china against the pavement.

And then.

You’re buoyant. You’re airborne. You’re flying, like some sort of Neverland. Like pixie dust, like magic, like something different.

You fly over the balcony of the hospital, with the glass walling off the railing and the table tennis. You spit on the table tennis table.

***

You tell Mr. McCreedy. His kids dropped him off at the old folks’ home two months ago. He reminds you of your grandpa, even though Mr. McCreedy wears blue socks.

“I can fly,” you say.

Mr. McCreedy considers this.

“This one,” Mr. McCreedy says, handing you a record. You put it on. The sleeve has a drawing of Frank Sinatra in a jaunty hat. You put on the first track, and Come Fly With Me crackles on.

“Very funny,” you say. You spoon-feed Mr. McCreedy pudding. He doesn’t need to be spoon-fed, he can do it himself, but you do it for him anyway.

“Show me, then,” he says. His voice is rough, like gravel against sandpaper, like it’s on the verge of rubbing down to nothing.

“Yeah?”

“Show me how you fly.”

***

You sleep that night, and dream of falling.

Clouds streak past you. Your stomach claws into your throat. You feel wind howl against your skin. Sinatra plays from somewhere, sings about the air being “rarefied.”

Rarefied doesn’t not mean rare, or unique. It means thin. Unbreathable.

It also means distant from the lives and concerns of ordinary people. The synonyms don’t catch on that same meaning: esoteric, exclusive, select, private, etc. They don’t really convey the same thing. Rarefied.

You feel your lungs fight you, and then you wake up.

***

You take Mr. McCreedy to the same roof you went to the last time. It is a process, you have to sign him out of the facility, you have to wheel him through downtown. He wears a knit wool sweater the color of mustard, and it reminds you of your grandfather. He feeds himself pudding as you push him through the streets.

You find an elevator in the building. Mr. McCreedy pushes the button for the highest floor with the back of his spoon.

You’re on the roof. You point out your old hospital, and Mr. McCreedy spits pudding on to the lip of the roof because he can’t spit on the table tennis table like you did.

“Do you believe me?” you ask. “About flying?”

“Why should it matter what one old man believes?” grunts Mr. McCreedy. He’s finished his pudding, but he’s still trying to scrape chocolate from the divots in the plastic.

You nod. You kiss Mr. McCreedy on the top of his bald head, and he swats you away with his spoon, grumbling.

“Get on with it,” he says. You see that he’s wearing mustard yellow socks.

You climb on to the lip of the roof. It feels like you are on the precipice of something, the mouth of it, like you’ll be swan-diving down God’s gullet.

You jump.

With the wind so loud around you, even you can’t tell if you’re flying or falling at first.