From the Thirteenth Floor
By Claire Dong
“Sorry again about the whole office situation.” The postdoc smiled awkwardly, the right side of his mouth jerking up further than the left. “They’re remodeling the east wing, so everyone got moved here. This was the only place we could fit you in.” He patted the desk next to him. The sound rang through the empty metal.
“Oh, it’s fine.” Iris wished he would stop apologizing. He had apologized ever since they’d first met in the courtyard by the math building; apologized for the harsh rattling of the jackhammers and for the construction fences that guarded the east wing. He had apologized about how suddenly she’d been asked in as a lecturer after Professor Dael’s surprise sabbatical. Iris even thought she heard him mutter a small “sorry” to the elevator button he pushed, a plastic bubble labeled “PL.” PL for professor’s lounge, he had explained as they shot up the tower, so fast her ears had popped. None of it was his fault, it was just the way things had lined up.
“The view is amazing from here,” she said politely. And it was. The lounge encompassed the entire square space. Floor-to-ceiling windows filled the walls between corner columns. Behind them, the campus was like a landscape painting, stillness disturbed only by the few figures that crawled across it. Her makeshift office of a desk, chair, and shelf hid in one corner, away from clusters of coffee tables and loveseats. Above the desk, an open casement window let in the sharp smells of summer dying into fall.
“Good! Good. Good thing you don’t have vertigo.” He huffed out a nervous chuckle, and Iris forced a laugh. “Do you need any help with setting up? Or navigating or anything?”
“I’m fine on my own.” She set the cardboard box in her arms down on the desk and hoped he’d go away. “I was an undergrad here for a while. I can find my way.”
She was in luck. The postdoc frowned at his watch. “Let me know if you need anything; I’m on the seventh floor. Sorry for leaving you.”
Iris waved as he disappeared back into the elevator. Then, she let herself fall into the chair, eyes closed. Her head had started aching, the way it often did when she was high off the ground. Thin needles of pain swam in and out of the back of her scalp and scratched messages against her skull. She rubbed two fingers over the spot until she could ignore it. Afterwards, she opened her eyes into the September sunlight from the open window above her, hazy and egg-yolk yellow. She turned in her chair and surveyed the place. She didn’t expect anyone to be here on a Sunday morning, and there really wasn’t anyone. The lounge was hers. For a moment, she forgot her doubts to smile with the childish happiness of ownership. She could unpack later; first, she would do some exploring.
She started at the closest wall of windows. From this height, all the buildings seemed to squish and stack on each other, the entire campus tilting up to offer itself to her. Her fingers traced graphs between places she remembered—the campus center, the library, her freshman dorm—and places that were new and shiny and strange. This was her first time back since the fall, the fall of her junior year, when all her glittering ambitions had risen up like an endless sheet of gold paper and then crashed over her, crushing her in its crease until she bent and folded.
Iris shut her eyes, but the memories were already back. Once more, she felt her hands clawing desperately at thick sheets strapped to her arms, trying to pinch loose folds into place, the electric thrill of magic jolting through her fingertips one last time before she hit the water and her mouth filled with lake weeds. At the back of her head, the needles of pain detonated into her flesh. Iris gasped. Then, she stumbled back to her corner. No more exploring for now.
At her desk, Iris peered into her box, checking for damage from the move. A gray paper cat glowered back, seeming annoyed, but unscathed. Iris balanced it on the desk. It was soon joined by a black griffin, a cream unicorn, and a brown knight. Iris fiddled nervously with the figures as she unpacked them. The latest wave of pain was fading, and she was soothed by the familiar paper fibers, soft under her fingertips. But her mind still chattered with a thousand small fears. Maybe it had been a mistake to return. Maybe every day would be like today, ache chasing ache. Maybe facing this place wouldn’t make her better. Maybe it would make her worse.
Iris shook her head against the thoughts. Her hand crept into the box, fumbled through a stack of folders and tugged out a bright green square. She smoothed it on the desk and began to fold. Her fingers flew over the simple pattern and the paper hissed as she dragged creases in it. It was so easy; had always been easy, even twenty-odd years ago as she copied her mother with tiny hands. The magic had been easy then, too.
Iris cupped the finished crane in her palms. She imagined it fluttering—willed each fold to push and pull against each other. One wing twitched. Then, the pain in her head writhed to life. As she squeezed her eyes against it, she saw her mother’s face again, pale and sad as she bent over Iris’ hospital bed. Iris had been crying; she’d cried a lot after the accident, cried because of pain and disappointment and the smothering stillness. But in this memory, her arms were free. Healed—but they didn’t work. Her mother’s paper butterfly had sat in her fingers, as silent and still as her mother herself. No matter how hard she tried, focusing until her vision swam, it stayed inert. She had cried then because she thought she had lost her magic forever.
Iris winced as she clambered on her desk, holding the crane by its tail. She reached up to the little window and pressed the glass further open. Over her shoulder, she checked that the lounge was still empty. Then she stuck her hand and the crane outside the window and focused again. She bit her tongue against the ache that had started clawing around her head. The crane’s wings began to stutter and flap, and she willed them to gain speed and strength until it could fly up against the wind, up towards—
“What the hell?!”
Iris lost her focus and the crane dropped from her fingers. It fell slowly and Iris didn’t bother to see where it landed. She pulled her arm back inside and turned around on the desk, irritated and embarrassed as her ears rang in pain. By the elevators, a woman stood with a hand clamped over her eyes.
“Are you down?” she asked curtly.
“What?” asked Iris.
“Are you down from the desk? Get off, you’re making me sick.”
Iris slid off the desk and walked to the woman. She took her hand away from her face and glared at Iris. She looked around Iris’ age, maybe in her late twenties. Her eyes were sharp and brown and rimmed with angry black lines. Black bangs cut a straight line over her forehead and two locks of hair hung over her ears, hiding any roundness from her face.
“Hi, I’m Iris Artino. I’m the new visiting professor.” Iris tried to keep her voice neutral as she stuck out a hand.
The woman shook it in a strong grasp. “Cecil. Assistant Professor. Stop sticking your head out the window. Someday you’re going to fall and I’m not catching you when you do.” Her voice was not neutral. It was low and scratchy and more than a little sarcastic, and Iris wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it again. She shrugged and then walked back to her desk, hoping that Cecil would leave her alone.
Instead, Cecil followed her and sat herself on one of the couches. She scowled outwards at the wall of windows. “Heights are horrible. What were you doing hanging out the building? You gave me a heart attack.”
Iris fished another paper square from her box and started folding again. “If you hate heights, why are you up here?” she asked, avoiding the question.
“Raymond made me check on you.”
“Raymond?” The name was vaguely familiar. “Oh, the apologetic guy.”
“It drives me crazy. ‘Sorry’ this, ‘sorry’ that.” Cecil wound a piece of hair around her finger.
Iris suddenly felt much warmer towards Raymond. She hummed and focused on her crane. The lounge was silent for a moment. Then, Cecil twisted to face Iris.
“You know why this level’s called PL?” She didn’t wait for Iris to answer. “Because it’s the thirteenth floor, but they didn’t want to call it that. Bad luck.”
Iris wondered if Cecil would go away if she ignored her. But Cecil seemed happy to make conversation with herself. She continued, “But it’s still the thirteenth. So, still bad.”
“Bad for who?”
Cecil shrugged. “Birds. Acrophobics. Me.”
“Birds?”
“Yeah, the little feathery idiots fly into the windows.” Cecil slapped one hand against the other to demonstrate. “Splat.”
Iris cringed. Cecil might have noticed, because she dropped her hands and went over to Iris’ desk. “What are you making?”
Iris pinched in a point, making a small triangle head, and held it up for Cecil to see. “A paper crane.”
Cecil inspected it and then bent over to look at the other figures crowded on the desk. Iris tried not to twitch as Cecil poked at the knight and touched the tip of the unicorn’s horn. “These are impressive,” she finally relented.
“Thanks. I’ve been making them since I was little.” She gave Cecil a moment and then climbed back on the desk.
Cecil backed away, her thin eyebrows tensed in skeptical arches. “Do you mind?”
“Don’t watch if you’re scared,” Iris shot back. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t worrying.” Iris checked that Cecil had covered her eyes again. Then, she stuck out the second crane and concentrated. Her ears began to buzz with unpleasant static, but the paper wiggled and then the crane took flight, its two wings beating at different tempos. It held up for a few feet and then followed its predecessor. Iris watched it fall for a moment, and then pulled her head back through the window. Cecil’s eyes were still safely covered.
“You can look now,” she said as she got off her desk. Cecil lowered her hand, and pursed her lips.
“What were you doing? Trying to drop pennies on people or something?”
“Not pennies; paper cranes. And not on people. I just like watching them fall,” Iris lied.
Cecil shot her an unimpressed look. “Fun hobby. I’ll leave you to it.” She walked back to the elevators and pressed the button. Then, as the door opened, she glanced back at Iris. “I’m on the fourth floor. If you ever want to drop things out the windows there or something stupid like that.” She glared one more time but with less vitriol, and Iris flashed her a half-smile. Then, Cecil vanished into the elevator.
***
The first semester went by in a jumble of classes and office hours and struggling to decipher her students’ handwritings. Through the windows, Iris watched the sky fade from rich, bright blues into snow-heavy grays. She learned and forgot and learned the names of the professors and grad students who filtered through the lounge, and sometimes congregated around the one large table in a grading frenzy. But she remembered Cecil, who visited often, sometimes with her own grading to do, and sometimes to make sarcastic remarks while she watched Iris fold origami. Iris was quietly surprised to find herself warming to Cecil. In her exposed office, Iris could hardly hide from her and she soon became used to Cecil’s sharp, curious face poking over her desk. Iris started to teach her, guiding her through simple frogs and mushrooms, then to cranes and tulips. She also tried to make Cecil get over her fear of heights. Once, she got Cecil to stand by a window wall and look out for an entire minute. Afterwards, she’d retreated with a sour look in her face and had goaded Iris into one of their silly, snappish arguments.
Between seminars and meetings, Iris made more cranes. When she was alone or with Cecil, who still wouldn’t look whenever Iris climbed on her desk, she sent them out of the window. After a few months, she could fly them all the way to the next building, while keeping her head at an uncomfortable prickle. With each little triumph, she felt old, ambitious hungers stir. Warily, she brought in giant rolls of paper from her apartment—thin, fibrous rectangles of muted greens and browns that completely covered her desk. In the evenings, alone in the largeness of the lounge, Iris folded patterns she hadn’t attempted in years. The figures crowded on her desk were joined by a spider, a lion, and an assortment of birds.
The start of the spring semester found her bent over a new pattern. It was late afternoon, and the sunset streamed in through the windows, glazing everything honey yellow. She was alone with Cecil, who was perched on a couch nearby, elbows balanced on knees. She watched as Iris pleated a wing on the figure she was making, squeezing a protruding triangle of beige paper into the shape of feathers.
“Why’d you drop out?” she asked suddenly.
“What?” Iris looked up, confused.
“You dropped out of here, didn’t you?”
Iris frowned. “How do you know that?”
Cecil twisted one of her hair strands between her fingers. “Raymond told me you went here, so I looked you up in the department’s records. You were in some intense classes.”
Iris shrugged awkwardly. “I was smart.”
“Okay, genius.” Cecil rolled her eyes. “So why weren’t you on the list of graduates?”
Iris put down her figure, and thought about how to word her reply. “I was in an accident my junior year,” she said carefully.
“What kind? Car? Plane? Thesis?”
Iris grimaced and said a bit sharply, “Hubris. I got overconfident and rushed into something stupid, and it didn’t turn out well.” She held up her thumb between her face and the window and twitched it back and forth, blocking the sun in and out of her eyes. “I ended up in the hospital for a while. So I just finished my undergrad at home.”
“You okay now?”
“What’s with all the questions today? Yeah, I’m fine. I just get headaches sometimes.”
“Is that why you make weird faces at people? Like talking to them is physically painful?” One red edge of Cecil’s mouth began to creep up.
Iris groaned, even as Cecil laughed her dry cough of a laugh. “I think that’s just with you,” she quipped. “Because talking to you is physically painful.”
Cecil sprang off the couch and crossed her arms, pretending to be offended. Iris ignored her, and went back to work on her figure.
“Why’d you come back?”
“Back where?”
“Here. To teach.”
A pleat in the paper came apart under Iris’ fingers. She tucked it back and replied lightly, “It’s a job.”
“But why here?” Cecil leaned over the desk. “It can’t be good luck, going back to somewhere you got hurt.”
“You’re sounding superstitious, you know. Or scared,” Iris tried not to snap. “There’s never too much to be scared of.”
Iris folded and flattened the paper in her hands. “Don’t you ever wish you could go back to somewhere from your past? Try to, I don’t know. Do it over again?”
“What, trying to relive the glory days of your youth or something?” Cecil asked, incredulous.
Iris was quiet. She didn’t want Cecil asking more questions. For once, Cecil seemed to notice that she’d gone a bit too far, and she sank back into her couch, silent for a few minutes. Then she waved at the almost-finished figure in Iris’ hands. “Nice angel.”
“Thanks, but it’s not an angel.” Iris held it up and pointed at the wingless arm sprouting from its left side. “It’s an Icarus.”
“Hmm. I always thought that was a silly myth. How did his wings melt off? ‘Cause it gets colder when you’re higher up, not warmer.”
Iris set down the Icarus, and beamed at Cecil, like she had just said something hilarious. “You’re right.” She laughed a little, and agreed, “it does get colder.”
***
Iris slammed the last packet onto her desk, knocking over a few origami dragons. She was overtaken with a savage happiness that could only come with finishing a miserable task far too late at night. A part of her wanted to throw the test on the floor and dance on it, but instead, she stacked it onto the precarious mountain of the other packets and fixed the dragons. Beside them, the clock glowed a red 2:39.
“Cecil! It’s not three yet,” she called at the figure lying on the sofa.
Cecil pulled herself up to flash Iris a scarlet grin. Her hair was loose in a mess of black waves around her shoulders. Even the two straight locks that framed her face were rumpled. “Okay, you win. Congrats or whatever.” Five hours ago, Cecil had bet that Iris wouldn’t finish her finals until 3:00. Three hours ago, she had started a nap. Her voice was raspy and slow with sleepiness, dulling her usual sarcasm. She yawned, and got up. “Let’s celebrate. I’ll go see if there’s something to nibble on.” She ambled towards the kitchenette on the other side of the lounge.
Iris got up from her desk, and stretched, feeling the bones in her back crack against each other. Outside, the spring night was velvety dark. Iris watched as a few trees swayed slowly in the moonlight. Tomorrow, she was going to turn in the stack of marked finals to the office downstairs. And after that, she would pack up her books and notes and all the origami on what had been her desk into the same box from last September. She heard Cecil open the fridge and rustle around inside. A minute later, she came back with a wide juice bottle, and two plastic champagne flutes. “Leftover from the New Year’s party,” she explained, as she placed them down on Iris’ desk.
“The juice?” asked Iris, somewhat horrified.
Cecil glared at her. “Yes,” she said with mock earnestness, “yes, genius, the juice.”
“Sorry,” muttered Iris. Cecil snorted, and began pouring out two pink servings. When she was done, she tossed the empty bottle and held up one of the glasses.
“A toast to the end.”
“To the end!” Iris agreed, and clinked her glass against Cecil’s with a dull, plastic sound “To the end of grading.”
“The end of grading!” Iris tapped Cecil’s glass again. She giggled. The warm yellow of the ceiling lights was starting to get to her head. She felt like a moth, drunk on the buzzing orange of sodium street lamps, and for a moment, she wanted to fly again—up into the ceiling lights, up into the sun.
“To the end of east wing construction, and to the end of—“ Cecil waved her hand at Iris’ desk, Iris’ origami, at Iris “—this.”
“Yeah.” They bumped glasses. Cecil glared at her again, and then her face softened slightly, making her look almost nice. She tossed back her neck, and downed the juice in one long gulp. Iris sipped at hers. It was so sweet that she felt her gums tense at the first taste, and she let small mouthfuls of it trickle down her throat, trying to make it last. Her head still felt loopy, like all the red-ink notes and numbers she had scribbled onto the tests were unwinding inside her brain. She rubbed at her temples, and the pain behind her head twitched for the first time in a while.
There was a soft thump, somewhere close, and Iris jumped. She set down her drink, and walked over to the window where she thought she heard the sound. The glass threw back a weak reflection of her and Cecil, and beyond it, the shadowy mass of campus with its few specks of light.
“What was that?” Cecil asked.
“I don’t know.” Iris stared out the window but the world seemed still. “I don’t see anything. Do you?” Iris looked back at Cecil, who had stayed where she was, her knuckles tight around the empty glass. She looked a bit queasy, the way she still did when anyone got too close to the windows. Then, she made a face, and pointed at Iris’ feet.
“Down,” she said.
Iris looked down, and gasped. There was a little stone ledge around the window, and on it, there was a small lump of soft gray.
“It must have flown into the glass. ‘Cause the lights,” Cecil explained. “It happens a lot here.” Iris was quiet, and knelt on the floor, closer to the body. “Uh, sorry.”
“It’s not dead.”
“What?”
“It’s not dead, Cecil, it’s still moving.” Iris stood quickly. “We need to get it in here.” She ran to the other side of the window where there was a skinny glass maintenance door and tugged on the handle. It rattled, but did not give.
“Are you crazy?” Cecil dropped her glass on the table. “You can’t go out there! We’re thirteen floors off the ground.” She leaned forward for a moment, as if she was going to go running after Iris, and then shivered and shrank back. “It’s probably dead anyways.”
“No, it’s not. It’s stunned, I think, but we can’t leave it out there. It’s going to fall, Cecil, and then it’s going to die. Who has the key?” Iris pulled on the handle again, growing increasingly desperate. “We need to call someone, get someone to open this.” But she already knew it would take too much time. She could almost feel the pain and the confusion of the bird, its skinny bones cracked and mangled, its head a blur of blankness, its nostrils filling with water and the smell of mud. She shook her head; she needed to snap out of it. She ran back to her desk, sweeping Cecil and her plastic cup out of the way.
She climbed onto her desk, scattering test packets, the way she had hundreds of times before. But this time, she stood on it rather than kneeling. She jerked the window handle. The glass swung outwards, the open frame level with her hips. Behind her, Cecil made a choking sound. Iris turned carefully, one hand balancing against the wall. Cecil had backed up to the couch area. Her face was pale, and already one hand was creeping up over her chin and mouth, up to cover her eyes. Iris met her petrified gaze. “Cecil, you have to pull me back in. Alright?” Cecil made another distressed sound. Iris prayed that she had heard her. Then, she hoisted one leg over the frame, and dropped outside.
The first thing she noticed was the wind. At this height, it was a real wind, a thing with substance and force, not the gentle breeze of ground-level. Iris clung to the window frame for a moment. She was balanced on the concrete ledge where the bird had fallen. There was a skinny silver railing between the ledge and the open air, but it was barely higher than her knees. Iris crouched down, and shuffled forward on the ledge, her sweaty hands tight on the metal. Somewhere below, a creature howled, and Iris made the mistake of glancing over. The miniature landscape beneath her looked very different without glass in between. The buildings seemed to ripple and squirm beneath her, and somehow gravity had become something stronger—an inexorable pull that whispered persuasively in her ear, telling her to surrender.
Iris breathed heavily, and then continued inching forward. The few feet to the bird felt like miles. She was gasping when she got to it, and gently picked it up in her left hand. It was as light as thistledown, and it barely struggled in her grasp. She had to get back to the open window now, but it was behind her. Iris could hear her heart pounding in her ears, a deafening whoosh of blood gushing up through her throat and her head. She crouched down further, and pivoted slowly on her toes. At one point, she faced out from the building. The entire campus—the entire world—laid out beneath her, so small and insignificant.
Inside the back of her head, the needles that rattled and waited there exploded, sending little white sparks shooting through her arms and her eyes. She gasped with pain and shock. And then she was back, back to eight years ago, the last time she had had the world at her feet. Once more, she soared upwards on an afternoon breeze, and saw the giant, angelic silhouette she casted upon the earth. Buildings, roads and humans were tiny below her, and she was not scared; she was never scared. She laughed at the ease of it; laughed as she twisted her arms and the folded, white wings bound to them turned and banked and sent her into graceful loops across the sky. From this high, anyone below would think she was a seagull. But she wanted to fly higher. She beat her wings and shot up through the clouds, up towards the dizzying light of the sun.
Iris did not remember when she first suspected that something was wrong. Perhaps it was when she came out through the clouds with the paper of her wings heavy and wet. Or when the air became thin and empty in her lungs. But she knew it when she felt shards of ice begin to grow over her wings and up her arms like cold, immobilizing scales. She hung in the air for a moment. And then she stared straight into the sun, a blinding, brilliant orb; white hot, freezing cold. Then she began to fall, her wings stiff and useless at her sides.
Spots of purple and green danced behind her eyes as she tumbled through the air. She could feel the magic in her wings falling apart with all the neat pleats, which melted and drooped as the world came rushing up towards her. Inside the mad rush of her mind, she somehow realized that she was hurtling towards herself, a pale reflection in brown water. She wrapped her arms and wings around her body, and right before she hit the lake, she let out all of her magic. She felt it course so eagerly through her neck and arms and into the paper she held, strengthening it as she slammed into her own reflection, shattering it into a million ripples.
On the ledge, Iris fell back into herself with a jolt. She was still crouched over, and the bird was still in her hand. Shakily, she began to crawl on her knees back to the window. When she got to it, she couldn’t get up. Her body felt both heavy and light, and she knew that if she stood, she would topple off the side of the tower. The bird was still in her hand. Dead? No—Iris closed her eyes, focused on it, felt it pulse with tiny, panicked breaths—not dead. With a terrible effort, she hoisted herself up. Over the edge, she saw Cecil, still frozen by the couches. “Cecil, get the bird!” she cried, and stuck her hand through the window.
She watched Cecil inch towards her, her steps painfully slow. Her eyes were wide and blank with fear. But she leaned over the desk and stretched up her arm and took the bird. Iris watched her shuffle mechanically away, setting it down onto one of the couches. Then she turned back around, and stood still.
“Come on, Cecil,” she shouted inside. Cecil didn’t move. “Cecil!” she screamed. Iris clung to the window frame, and closed her eyes. The wind had picked up, and was whipping around her arms and legs. Her shirt billowed out like a sail and she wondered if it would be enough to float her down to one of the roofs below, like one of her paper cranes. She felt nauseous. Visions of the drop beneath her shimmered against her eyelids, and she wondered if this was how Cecil always felt. Her fingers began to slip from the frame.
Strong hands grabbed her wrists, and pulled. Iris’ eyes shot open as she was wrenched upwards, her feet scrabbling against the concrete wall. She squeezed in through the frame, spilling onto and off her desk before collapsing on the floor. Cecil stood on the desk above her. Her face was pale and terrified, but she was unflinching, the moonlight from the window behind her forming a halo behind her loose hair.
Iris curled on the carpet and gasped for air. She must have stopped breathing at some point, because her lungs burned hungrily with each inhale. Above her, Cecil began to say something, angry and a bit hysterical. She watched Cecil’s mouth move in slow motion, and realized she had started to cry, muddy streams of black snaking out from the corners of her eyes.
Iris was silent. She turned her head and stared up into a ceiling light, round and bright and beautiful. In the corner of her vision, she could see the bird on the couch. Its gray feathers puffed up and down, up and down. It regarded her with a black, dewdrop eye that reflected back a tiny version of her and Cecil and the light above them. And Iris wondered if it was still stunned from flying into the sun.
Claire Dong
6/2/2023
Claire Dong is a resident of Redmond, WA and enjoys creating things with and on paper.
