Life.
"You actually have to climb up the stairs in order for you to get to the top, Jake," Hava called down the staircase.
Her voice traveled down the double helix of the stairwell and found Jake, who was leaned with his back against the wall and his eyes closed as he seemed to struggle to catch his breath.
"There are a lot more stairs than I thought there were going to be," he managed through his labored breaths.
"You do realize that the statue is more than 300 feet tall, right?"
Jake glared up at her.
"That is not helpful."
Hava grinned and skipped her way back down the stairs toward Jake. She reached out and grabbed his hand, tugging him gently.
"I promise that you are not going to die walking up that Statue of Liberty," she said as she guided him up the next few steps, "That almost never happens."
"Almost never?" Jake said in a tone that was nearly a shriek, stopping in his tracks and tugging her back toward him to force Hava to stop and turn back to him.
"I was kidding. With your ridiculous fear of heights, what possessed you to come with me on a tour of a 300-foot statue that requires walking up a tiny little spiral staircase?"
"Because you are my best friend and I want to be supportive and encouraging in your academic and professional ventures."
"Did you read that directly out of a manual or have you been formulating it for just the right situation when something like this would show up?"
"A little of both maybe," Jake said.
He sighed and started following her as she made her way back up the stairs, looking defeated as he took each step carefully and slowly. Hava felt the excitement building inside her as they continued to climb, each step bringing them further up into the iconic landmark she had been dreaming of seeing her entire life.
"Thank goodness," Josh said, straightening up from where he was leaning on the handrail as they approached, "I thought you had fallen and tumbled back down to the bottom. I hate when that happens."
Jake turned promptly and started back down the stairs, gripping the handrail like it was giving him life as he made his way away from her.
"He was kidding," Hava called after him, "Tell him you were kidding," she said, turning back to Josh.
"I was kidding," Josh called obediently.
Jake stopped, but didn't turn around to look at them. He still gripped the handrail, but his shoulders seemed to have relaxed a little since he had started his retreat.
"I swear if I hear one more thing about falling or tripping or explosions or any other general death-related things, I am going to just stop where I am and camp out for the rest of my life. I will live on pretzels, coffee, and the lost hopes and dreams that drift up from the city streets. You two will have to figure out how to integrate me into the tour."
"Oh, no. That is not my job," Hava said, grabbing Jake by the back of the shirt and pulling him back up the stairs toward her, "I am not the tour guide extraordinaire around here. I'm just the history buff."
"Nerd," Josh said.
"Buff," Hava retorted, "Besides, I don't have enough drama in me to be the tour guide."
Josh grinned at her and started up the rest of the spiral staircase toward the statue's crown. Even though when he first arrived in New York to act and had to take a position as a tour guide in order to survive when the roles weren't as plentiful as he would like them to be he complained, Hava could see that her cousin was thriving in his new position. Their tiny hometown had never been right for him, and they had spent many nights huddled up in their makeshift fort in the living room of their grandmother's home talking about his dreams of running away to New York so that he could be on Broadway.
The little off-Broadway theater that he had gotten his first role in wasn't exactly what he had had in mind, but Hava could see that Josh had absolutely made the right decision by breaking free and pursuing his dreams.
As these thoughts ran through her mind, Hava felt the smile on her face fade and a tightness form in her chest. She was still in that tiny hometown, wondering what she was supposed to be doing with her life.
Far removed from the dramatic and musical talents of her favorite cousin, Hava was more the quiet and studious type who more frequently lost herself in textbooks and old volumes about American history than went out and did the types of things that people her age did. Though she was passionate about her studies and knew that she wanted to pursue something that involved the history that she loved so much, but she didn't know what that was. So many people had suggested teaching, but Hava didn't feel like her heart was in being a teacher. She wanted to do something that would take her out of her comfort zone like Josh had done and put her in a position to make a truly lasting and significant impact in her own right rather than hoping that her teaching methods would touch someone who could go on to make a difference in the world.
Now as she climbed the final few stairs into the crown of the Statue of Liberty and looked out of the glass observation window at the city beyond, she felt like it had taken her so long to get out of the little bubble she had grown up in and into the city that she didn't think she could ever go back and be the same. It was like something was waiting for her just beyond the glass. She just had to figure out what it was and go after it.