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The thing is, Dani’s room looked a lot closer to the ground when she was standing outside looking up at it.
The cement windowsill is hard and cold underneath her thighs, and the abrasive material tugs at her skirt and tights whenever she moves. At her back, her dorm room is sweltering, the result of a furnace issue that was supposed to be fixed a week ago and has only gotten worse as the days have gone on. Outside, there’s a slight breeze brushing her legs and stirring her hair, and the temperature is much more bearable, still holding onto the mild warmth of the day, even though the sun went down an hour ago.
Outside is exactly where she wants to be, and in an ideal world, she would walk down the hall that she lives on, skip over the malfunctioning elevator in favor of the stairs, and stroll out the front door. Sadly, that currently isn’t an option. Due to an influx in partying that has led to an increase in vandalism, property damage and littering, her campus is on a curfew, and students are expected to remain in their dorms after nine o’clock, unless they have a good reason for being out and about.
Truth be told, Dani doesn’t have a good reason. She doesn’t have to run to a late night cram session at the library or go to an off-campus job. She doesn’t have family to visit or a practice to attend.
She just wants some breathing room.
While she doesn’t regret opting for a single room as opposed to a shared, being cooped up in a space that is scarcely larger than a broom closet (and crammed with furniture and possessions, even though she’s tried to keep it minimalistic) has already started to lose its novelty a mere three weeks into the school year. Combine the sheer lack of space with the overwhelming heat, and even though she’s tried to distract herself with books and schoolwork and listening to music, the walls feel like they’re closing in.
She needs to escape, even if it’s only for a few hours. She wants to explore the campus and the surrounding town. She wants to stroll down paths that she hasn’t been able to check out yet because she’s been too busy. She wants to look for some of the local businesses she’s heard about, like the tiny flower shop that is only a few blocks away, and a feminist bookstore that apparently has amazing coffee. She doesn’t expect any of the stores to be open at this time of night, but she just wants to know that they exist. She wants to know that they’re actually out there, that she can visit them whenever she finds a scrap of free time.
Mainly though, she just wants to breathe.
Sadly, since she doesn’t think claustrophobia counts as a good reason for being out of the dorm after hours, rather than leaving through the front door, she has to move to plan B.
She’s only on the second floor, and when the idea had occurred to her earlier in the evening, she hadn’t thought that it would involve much hassle. There’s a plush bush directly underneath her window, and she had planned on lowering herself out of the window and dropping down into the shrubbery. Easy as can be.
(Getting back into the dorm might prove to be a bit more difficult, but she could only hope that her upper body strength wouldn’t fail her when that time came.)
The problem is that, while she knows she’s only a few feet off the ground and, even if she fell from this height, she probably wouldn’t end up with anything more serious than a sprained ankle, now that she’s actually looking down at the bush underneath her, surrounded by an amber glow from the light pouring from the building’s windows, the ground looks like it’s at the end of a very, very long tunnel.
If it wasn’t for the oppressive heat continuing to lick at her back, she would go back inside and pretend that this whole thing never happened. As is, she knows that, even if she does go back inside, she’s not going to be able to concentrate on either her schoolwork or the volume of poetry she’s currently working her way through – she’s just going to keep staring at the window until she falls into a fitful sleep.
She needs to make a decision quickly. It’s pure luck that no one has passed by on the lawn below and noticed her. All it would take is for one person to see and alert security, and they’d probably do something like bar her window shut, in which case, she would likely succumb to heat exhaustion within the hour.
She continues to internally debate herself for what feels like ten minutes, at which point she hears someone laughing loudly on a nearby footpath, and some part of her brain, the primal part, makes a decision for her.
She pushes off the ledge.
She doesn’t have any time to process the fact that she’s falling – one second, she’s on the ledge, and the next, she’s in the bush. Thankfully, other than some scratches on her hands, she hasn’t been injured – the bush lessened the impact on her feet, and while they might feel differently tomorrow, for now, they’re completely fine. With a grateful laugh, she glances up at her window.
She did it. She actually did it.
Before she can feel too proud of herself, a voice comes wafting out of the darkness.
“You alright, Poppins?”
Dani whips her head around, looking for the source of the voice, and finds it in the form of a young woman emerging from a nearby copse of trees. She’s wearing olive green overalls, and there’s a tool belt cinched around her waist, from which is dangling a pair of hedge clippers. There’s a head lamp wrapped around her head, and on either side of the elastic strap, curls spiral into the air in every which direction. She looks young, maybe only a few years older than Dani, and she also looks thoroughly amused, if the smile on her thin lips and the quirk of her eyebrow as she approaches Dani are any indication.
“What?” Dani asks, so thrown off by the woman’s appearance that the actual words she said have totally slipped her mind. Abruptly, she realizes that she is still in the bush, and she jumps to her feet and starts brushing stray leaves and twigs off of herself.
“Poppins,” the young woman repeats. Based on her accent, she’s from somewhere in the UK, although Dani couldn’t possibly guess which part. “Y’know, like the movie. You fell from the sky. Figured that you must have lost your umbrella somewhere.”
“Oh!” Now that it’s been explained to her in full, Dani feels foolish for not getting the reference at first bite but, in her defense, the sheer mortification of being caught had muffled her cognition. “Right. Nope, no umbrella. Just… me.” She winces at how ridiculous she sounds. “Just wanted to go for a walk.”
“Ah.” The young woman nods solemnly, and the headlamp slips down her forehead slightly. Adjusting it automatically, she continues. “Take it they haven’t fixed the furnace yet, then?”
“No. It’s horrible in there.”
“I hear you. Y’think the second floor is bad, you should come on up to the fifth. Just the thought of it is making me sweat.”
“You live here too?” Dani asks, glancing back at the dorm. To be fair, it’s one of the larger dorms on campus, eight stories with approximately twenty rooms on each floor, so it’s not completely surprising that she hasn’t seen the other woman around. Still, as soon as the question is out of her mouth, she feels embarrassed. Before she can apologize, the other woman nods.
“Sure do. Room 504.” Wiping her hand off on her overalls, she sticks it out for Dani to shake, which she does, noticing that there are rough bands of callous crossing the woman’s palm. “I’m Jamie.”
“I’m Dani. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I spend a lot of time in my room, so I don’t really know that many people.”
“Don’t feel bad. I’m in the horticulture building till midnight most days, so I’m barely ever here. Only reason I’m out this early is I forgot to eat dinner and I’m bloody starving. Was hoping that maybe they’d finally fixed the fucking furnace, but no such luck, I guess.”
“Not yet. Maybe by the end of the semester, if we’re lucky.”
Jamie snorts and rolls her eyes. “If they don’t fix the damn thing in the next week, I’ll break into the boiler room and do it myself.”
Even though Dani has only known her for a handful of minutes, she doesn’t doubt that Jamie would do just that, or at least try. Maybe it’s the presence of the hedge clippers at her waist or the callouses on her hand or the swell of her biceps where her t-shirt cuts off. Maybe it’s all of the above.
Before she can help herself, Dani’s cheeks flush with warmth, and she’s inordinately grateful that she decided to launch her escape attempt at night. Hopefully, it’ll be too dark for Jamie to notice.
“I’m not great at fixing things, but if you need someone to hold a flashlight, I’ll join,” Dani says. She’s pretty sure this counts as flirting, and she’s also pretty sure that she should be trying harder to hold herself in check, but the darkness of the night, the heat spreading through her chest, and the smile curling at the edges of Jamie’s lips, makes it difficult for her to have any regrets.
“Alright. Sounds like a plan.” Putting her hands on her hips, Jamie takes a step back and peers upward in the direction of Dani’s window. “How were you planning on getting back up?”
Dani glances over her own shoulder, following Jamie’s gaze. “Figured I’d step up on the ledge on the first floor and haul myself in.” The longer she looks up at her window, the more she starts to think that it might not be as easy as she initially thought, and if she fails, she’s going to have to spend the night walking around campus until curfew is over.
“Hmm. If you aren’t careful, that cement is gonna scrape your stomach to bits.” Jamie stays in place for a moment, frowning up at the window, before she looks back at Dani and grins. “Got an idea. Kill two birds with one stone. There’s a great diner a few blocks away that’s open all night. If you wanna come with me, you’ll get your walk in, and if I tell the security guard you were helping me with a project, no one will say shit. How about it?”
More heat rushes into Dani’s cheeks. Jamie’s proposition not only sounds like the most ideal way for her to spend her evening, but it also sounds like a bona fide date, and there’s no way that, after she’s spent her entire semester thus far trying to figure out how to flirt with girls, one as gorgeous as Jamie would simply stroll up and ask her out.
Maybe she’s already succumbed to heat exhaustion. Maybe this whole encounter has been nothing more than a wild fever dream.
Fever dream or not, Jamie is clearly waiting for an answer so Dani responds, “You don’t have to do that for me.”
Jamie shrugs. “I know. But it’d be pretty bad form if a beautiful girl fell from the sky right in front of me and I didn’t make a move. Feel free to say no, if that’s not your-”
Before Jamie can go any further, Dani nods rapidly. Even if this goes nowhere, even if she comes out of the evening with nothing more than a fun story and the ability to get back into her dorm without getting questioned, if she passes up on the opportunity, she’ll never forgive herself.
“I’m in.” On cue, her stomach rumbles, and she asks, “Does the diner have milkshakes?”
Jamie mock-gasps. “Of course it has milkshakes. What kind of girl do you think I am?” Holding out her hand slowly, tentatively, she continues, “C’mon, Poppins. Let’s go on an adventure.”
Dani gladly takes Jamie’s hand.
“Lead the way.”