The fall

"Shut up," he says, and I do. He looks behind us, eyes following the stairs all the way to the very tip-top. 

And I cannot stop the trembling of my hands, the concrete wavering feeling that we're not supposed to be here.

"Okay," he says. "Let's go."

We can go but for a moment we don't move. He's watching my reaction to nothing, because I'm scared when all we're doing isn't. Isn't anything at all apart from mundane. 

"Come on." He takes my wrist in his hand so I'll move, because I'm not moving at all. And up the stairs we go to the car park, to the edge of the building, to the fall---"back up," he says. "Back up" and I don't.