CHAPTER THREE

As it turned out, the elevator was not an elevator but a hand-drawn shaft, which used a hand-powered pulley system to go up and down. Heli found this out when she put a hand on the lever, jerked it free out of curiosity, and felt the elevator go up an inch - just an inch - although yanking free the elevator at all had made her feel like she had climbed up a mountain. 

The ticket she had found, but to use the ticket she had to reach the building first. 

Heli tried again, her skinny fingers and bare-bone arms pushing down the lever. 

It went down one-fourth of the way. 

Heli's dead, grey eyes studied it carefully. 

Maybe she couldn't do it. 

Then all the hope in her heart vanished like a summer breeze. It was gone. Heli sat down on the elevator shaft, crossed her hands over eachother, tucked her knees in, and rested her head on the crossed arms. Then she stared at the lever. Even her burned eye, which had been previously closed, opened to stare at the lever. 

Then she spoke for the first time in the year.

"I don't want to die, but sometimes I wish I had never been born at all."

Then, a few minutes ticked by. The silence was deafening. It was so loud, pounding in Heli's ears, begging, whispering, to be broken. But Heli was tired. her throat, left unused for weeks, didn't want to speak. 

Slowly, she uncrossed her hands, lifted her head, and studied her palms.

Then, she looked at the lever. 

She reached out her hands

Grabbed the lever

And began to push it down. 

Even when her hands started screaming. 

Even after large red welts seared across her hand. 

Even after the first few cuts emerged.

Even after the lever eventually became red with blood. 

Even after the voices of her hands died out. 

Until inch by inch, she emerged, past the black layer, black as tar, black as coals, black as ink, past the grey layer, grey as thunderclouds, grey as flint, grey as lead, and up to the white layer, white as snow, white as ivory, white as bone. 

The elevator, flecked with white paint, blended in perfectly. Heli did too - with the people, who wore white, white like cobwebs, lace, and bakery boxes. After all, the white had covered up her scar. Up here, everything was so shining and beautiful, so Heli just put her hands at her side, hiding them in the folds of white, since they were the only things that weren't. Somehow, it felt wrong to have anyone else see the crimson that was dripping down her fingers. 

As if, they'd shun her too. 

As if, nothing had changed. 

Heli looked down at her bare feet. Then she looked up at the sky, which was also white. Then, she turned and walked down the path of white, white like snow and smoke and mist, and disappeared into it.

She was glad to be like everyone else.