Page 105 of Jesse

“When what’s over?” Jesse asks. “Who’s up there?”

But Johnny is already walking away.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - JESSE

“Fuck it,” I say, after watching Johnny walk away. I look at Joey. Then Zach. Then finally, Emma. “Are we doing this or what?”

“We’re doing it,” Joey says. “I’m fucking sick of this shit. I don’t care what’s waiting for us up there. I’m getting answers.”

Joey turns back to the stairs and starts climbing.

“Zach?” I say, looking at him.

He shrugs. “Up to you, man. You’re the boss.”

“Emma?” I say, turning to her next. “You can leave. This has nothing to do with you.”

She scowls at me. Points her finger in my face. “Did you just not hear me? I love you. I have always loved you. Since the first time I laid eyes on you. I was in then and I’m in now. You’ll have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming to make me leave now.”

“OK.” I sigh. “Then follow me.”

We quietly enter the stairwell and climb. I stop at the door, looking back over my shoulder at Zach and Emma like, Last chance.

But Emma pushes me on the shoulder and whispers, “Open it.”

So I do. There’s an immediate murmur. Like somewhere ahead there’s a large crowd of people.

But I’m distracted when I glance up and see the glass spire above us.

This is the top of the building. We are seventy-five stories above the city right now.

And I feel every bit of that distance. I feel like I just walked into another world.

“Over here,” Joey whispers, peeking his head out from the edge of a hallway. “They’re down there.”

The three of us walk towards him like a team and I have a flash of memory.

I have been up here before.

Once.

Joey and Johnny were there too. I don’t know how old I was. Very young. And now that I think back this might even be my first memory.

This spire. My brothers. The murmur of a crowd down below us.

And once we turn the corner it becomes very clear that this spire isn’t a floor like the rest of them. It’s more like a catwalk around the interior of the penthouse below us. Like a choir loft in a church.

Floor-to-ceiling beams are evenly spaced around the catwalk. Joey gets down on his hands and knees and crawls across the catwalk, stopping behind each beam to peek down below, then continues on until he finally stops at the fourth beam and motions for us to follow him.

Emma drops to her knees and immediately begins to crawl. I follow, then Zach follows me.

She stops to hide behind the beam closest to Joey, I continue forward and join her, and Zach ends up at the beam behind me.

Down below is a fancy dining room. Like you’d see in a banquet hall. Maybe three dozen tables. I count the place settings at each table and do a quick count. A little over two hundred men and women below us. All dressed up in black suits and white ties, like Johnny. But unlike Johnny, these men do not have the white epaulettes on the shoulders.

The women are all wearing white dresses and small white hats with a short veil that covers their faces.

For a second I think it looks like a wedding.