Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
L uckily for me, I had asked Mitch for his number, and within half an hour of calling him, he was outside Sunshine Lodge ready to take me to my death. I was happy to listen to more Bloody Nora stories to take my mind off what I had agreed to do, although I don’t think I’d actually agreed to anything.
I asked Mitch as many questions as I could about him and Nora, and when we arrived in Rotorua, I can hand-on-heart say that I didn’t want him to stop talking about her. I’d have listened to a whole day of Bloody Nora if it meant not getting out of that car.
I saw the crane straight away – it was painted bright purple but looked as though it should have been on a building site, not in the middle of a beautiful landscape (and it was beautiful by the way, the landscape, so green and lush and everything that you might imagine New Zealand to be). Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off the crane.
I said my goodbyes to Mitch and it felt like I was saying goodbye to my dad – not because I was close to Mitch (how could I be?) but because I didn’t want to get out of his taxi, I didn’t want to leave him and venture into the unknown.
But I did. I got out and the smell in the air hit me straight away. It smelt like eggs and farts, and I’d never felt so dirty just from standing outside. Mitch must have seen my expression because he unwound the window and said something about bubbling mud pools that erupted numerous times a day and sulphur gas.
‘Welcome to Rotorua,’ he said out of his window. Then he closed it, gave me a shrug, and drove off.
A girl with a purple cap that matched the crane appeared beside me, as if she’d been lurking, waiting to pounce – like one of those charity fundraisers on the street who make a beeline for you as you walk by with your head down.
‘Hey, how’s it going? Fancy a bungee?’ she said without a breath.
‘Oh, I don’t like heights.’ I shook my head politely.
‘That means you’ll love it even more!’ Her smile widened. ‘It’s always the ones with the fear who love it the most.’
‘I’m not sure I can afford it,’ I lied.
‘I’m sure we can do you a deal – is it your first time here?’
I nodded.
‘How about half price? Twenty-five dollars?’
I nodded again, and I didn’t know why I did that, the shock maybe.
‘Great! Let’s get you suited and booted,’ she said.
I was aware of getting my card out of my wallet, of swiping it across a card machine and a receipt being pushed into my hand. Then someone’s feet (my feet) followed her to the side of the crane and to my horror a cage. Then she waved goodbye with the same wide smile she greeted me with, and I was left there next to a man holding a harness.
‘OK then,’ the man said as he held the harness up in front of me. ‘I’m Kit. I’ll run through a few safety checks with you and then get you suited and booted. Is this your first jump?’
I nodded again. I didn’t know where my bloody voice had gone but I literally couldn’t speak.
‘It’s all good. You’ll be strapped in around your waist and the bungee will be around your ankles. When we get to the top, you stand facing forwards with your arms out like this.’ He stood like Jesus Christ, which was just what I didn’t need. ‘And then you jump, OK?’
The nod came again.
‘It’s all good,’ he repeated, and of course it bloody was for him because he wasn’t going to be hung upside down by a rope attached to his feet hundreds of feet in the air.
Kit guided me into the cage and then bent down and fastened the bungee to my ankles (I don’t know how because I couldn’t look). He tugged it a few times (which must have been the safety checks he’d talked about) and then he attached a harness around my waist (which again must have been a safety precaution in case the bungee snapped?)
‘We’re good to go,’ he said at the same time as he pressed a button and the cage I was in (I was in a bloody cage for Christ’s sake) started to move upwards towards the sky.
‘Trees, trees trees,’ I said to myself.
‘Say what?’ Kit shouted over the noise of the cage moving upwards.
‘Trees, trees, trees.’ I kept my breathing slow, my eyes pinched shut.
‘Yeah, they’re beauties aren’t they. Like broccoli, aye?’
What the fuck was he saying to me, this man shouting over my thoughts about broccoli?
‘You’ll see a lot more of them in a minute!’
He was talking at me, I knew that, but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying. My legs were shaking and no part of me could control them, my head was light and yet it felt heavy at the same time, like it might roll off my neck at any moment.
I could hear Mairéad in my head . Breathe, relieve, relax , river, raft, trees. Don’t get on the bus… But it was too late, I was on the bloody bus. I was on the bus to my death.
I looked up at the clouds to remind myself I wasn’t trapped – just like Mairéad had told me to do at the airport – but all that did was make me feel dizzy because I was up in them. I was up in the flippin’ clouds.
I felt the jolt of the cage stopping, and knew instantly what that meant. It meant it had reached the top. It meant it was my turn to jump out. Jump? How the hell was I going to jump? I couldn’t do that. What was I thinking? I didn’t need to do this. I didn’t need to be doing any of it. I let myself slide down the side of the cage to the safety of the metal floor; my fingers gripped into it. Kit’s face appeared in front of mine.
One, two, three, four , I breathed in deeply. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight , I held my breath. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight , nine , I breathed out.
‘You all right, girl?’ he asked with one hand on my shoulder.
‘I can’t do this, I’m sorry,’ I said through the chatter of my own teeth. It wasn’t cold. It was quite warm, actually, but I was shaking like I was in the arctic.
‘Let’s get you back down,’ Kit said. And I must have looked bad because otherwise surely he’d have tried to persuade me to jump.
It was then, as I went to stand up that it caught my eye, shimmering in the sunlight, attached to my shorts. The woodlouse keyring Niall had given me. The words glistened as if they were speaking directly to me – There’s no place like home .
Something stirred inside me then. It was like one of those moments when everything becomes clear.
Home. Home was where I was safe, home was where I could do what I do and get away with it. But home was also where I kept myself trapped, like a little bird too afraid to spread its wings and fly. Too afraid to live my life and venture outside into the world, into the unknown. And now I was trapped in this cage, the same little bird, letting the same fear get the better of me.
I’d come all the way to the other side of the world, and for what? To go all the way home again? Una was right; I would live and die in Drangan. I would end up in the very graveyard I hung out in. I would die a hermit.
I peered down through the small gaps in the cage. The ground was an eternity away. I would die instantly. But at least I would die proving everybody (and myself) wrong.
‘I want to do it,’ I said as I looked up at Kit. ‘I want to jump.’
‘You sure?’ he asked, but there was a sparkle in his eye that made me get back up on my feet.
‘I’m sure.’ (I wasn’t bloody sure).
‘All right then,’ he said with a wink. ‘Let’s do this. Quick photo?’
And I was glad he asked because I’d forgotten that this was part of a challenge and I’d promised Niall a picture. Kit took out a phone from his pocket, then stood up before I could give it all too much thought because there was always the chance I would change my mind again. I smiled through my trembling lips.
‘Just think of something that makes you happy,’ Kit said in my ear as he guided me towards the edge. ‘You’ll have a blast. Remember, arms out, lean forwards, and let go.’
I nodded because I couldn’t speak at that point. Jesus, if I could have been home in three heel clicks, I would have been. I felt like I was dancing without actually dancing, my legs were moving, shaking and wobbling about like I’d lost all ability to control myself. And I couldn’t think of anything nice, for all my trying. I couldn’t think of anything at all, actually, apart from that I was about to probably die, and nobody would know for ages.
And there I was, on the edge, with my arms spread out like Jesus, leaning forwards, my head turned fixated on Kit like my life depended on it (because it did). I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. He raised his hand and put his fingers into an OK symbol. Then proceeded to countdown with them.
‘Five, four, three, two…’
And in that very same second, just as Kit paused before he shouted one, I saw it. I saw it there, trapped against the cage, flapping about in the wind, caught up in a spider’s web, unable to free itself – a beautiful butterfly – and I knew what I had to do.
‘One!’ He cheered and I took my moment.
I reached out and grabbed it with my outstretched fingers. I grabbed the butterfly from forever being stuck, and I set it free.
And then I fell, I fell and all I could see were the broccoli trees.
They say, don’t they, that it only takes one moment to change your life, one event, one experience. One second. I never thought that my second would be falling through the air on the other side of the world, on my own, with a rope around my ankles. But it was. That was my moment and it was hard to explain because there weren’t any words to describe it – a moment between life and death, a millisecond where nothing really mattered.
I wondered if that was what death was – a place where there was no fear. Maybe I had died? Maybe that was what had happened? But as I jumped – in that one-second moment – it struck me that I hadn’t been really living at all.
I hadn’t, until I freed the butterfly.