Where the Staircase Ends by Stacy A. Stokes

again, this time pounding and pounding until I was sure my fists would bleed from the force, but nothing happened. My hands were clean and blood-free, and the flower looked as if no one had ever touched it. It didn’t seem fair. How could it still sit there like that? How was it that my actions had no effect on it?
    As if that wasn’t strange enough, I realized that all the jumping and tugging and pounding wasn’t making me tired. I used every ounce of strength I had to try to smash the flower, but I hadn’t so much as broken a sweat. In fact, I didn’t think I’d felt winded since arriving on the stairs—not even when I ran to catch up to the source of the voice.
    The obvious answer to the riddle was probably that I was dead. It’s not like dead people needed to breathe or use their lungs. But I didn’t feel any different. To prove it, I tried sucking a breath in and out to see if I could, and sure enough, I breathed like I always did. So why wasn’t I getting tired?
    I kicked at the flower again and lost my balance, tumbling forward onto the steps so that the plant was locked behind me where I couldn’t reach.
    “God, if you’re up there, I want you to know that this sucks. Can you hear me? This place sucks!”
    I didn’t know why I bothered saying the words out loud. No one was listening.
    I stood and started to brush myself off until I realized there was nothing to brush off. Everything was as it had been, because nothing ever changed on this godforsaken staircase.
    Two hands touched my back, their fingers splaying out against my skin in a comforting gesture. They reached around my shoulders and neck until they were holding me in a tight hug, and I felt a warm cheek press against my back.
    A sigh escaped my lips. It felt nice to be held. It made me think of my mother’s warm arms, always willing to give me an encouraging embrace when I was younger. Somewhere along the way a rift had formed between us. I wasn’t even sure what started it, but one day I started to feel like she wanted me to be someone else, like I wasn’t good enough for her.
    I leaned into her arms, happy and sad all at the same time because I suddenly missed her so much; because I wanted a chance to close the distance between us and be the daughter she wanted me to be. I would study harder. I would be better. I would do whatever she needed me to do, if I could just get another chance.
    “Mom?” I looked down at the hands that were folded against my heart, hoping to see the familiar curve of her unpolished fingernails.
    Instead I saw Sunny’s signature French manicure.
    No .
    “Get off me,” I snapped, shaking myself free from her claws. Tears pricked at the corner of my eyes. I pressed my thumbs into my tear ducts, trying to keep the wetness from seeping out. She would not make me cry.
    Sunny launched herself in front of me to block my path. In her hand, she held the sunflower, its roots dropping clumps of dirt onto the ground in front of me. An amused grin split her face as she held it out to me, as if to say, “Look what I so easily pulled out of the ground. Jealous much?”
    God, she was such a bitch.
    “I don’t want it,” I said, trying to knock it from her hands and push my way past her. She stepped in front of me again and shoved her lower lip out into a pout.
    “Why are you wearing our gym uniform?” I asked her, scanning the navy blue shorts and gray-and-blue Morris High T-shirt. She shrugged and looked down at her ensemble, like she’d forgotten she was wearing it, then smiled and held up the flower again. Instead of offering it to me, she plucked one of the yellow petals and mouthed the words, he loves me . Then, he loves me not.
    “Stop it,” I said, as a pile of petals fell to her feet. She pulled them off one at a time, each one fluttering to the ground like a snowflake. “Stop, you’re ruining it!”
    When the flower was almost completely bare, she bent down and collected the pile of petals with a final,