****
"Is it possible to go up into the torch?" Jake asked.
Hava looked up and saw him inching his way around the edge of the crown, his back pressed to the side so that he was unable to see through the windows. He was moving and not crying, however, so she decided to interpret that as progress.
"It used to be," she told him, "but no one has been allowed up there since 1916."
"Hey," Josh said, looking at her from his position against one of the windows, "Who's the tour guide around here?"
Hava opened her palm and gestured for him to continue.
"Be my guest. After all, you are the one who snuck us in here after hours and are putting your very job and future ability to support yourself at risk."
"Thank you for the acknowledgement. Anyway, technically people do still go up there. There is a 40-foot ladder that leads up into the torch, but only the maintenance workers who keep the floodlights up there going are allowed to use it."
"Why did they stop letting people go up?" Jake asked, "Not enough interest from insane people who would actually climb up even further than we are to teeter precariously above the river in a fake flame the thickness of two pennies?"
"I'm impressed that you know how thick the copper used to build the statue is," Josh started, "but the original torch wasn't actually made entirely out of copper. It had glass panels. People used to be allowed to go up in there just like we walked up into the crown, but the Black Tom Explosion in 1916 stopped that."
Jake promptly dropped to the floor to sit cross-legged with his back against the wall.
"What are you doing?" Hava asked.
"Starting my campout. I warned you about anything involving explosions."
"This was actually a real thing, though," Josh said, "It is considered one of the biggest acts of sabotage against the United States outside of Pearl Harbor. After the explosion, they closed off the torch and no tourists have been allowed to access it since. They replaced the original with the gold-plated copper one that is there now in 1984."
"Why did they replace the glass one with a gold-plated one?" Jake asked.
"Because…America."
"Fair enough. What happened to the original?"
"Did you see the huge torch in the lobby when we first came in?"
"Not really. I was too busy asking myself why in the hell I thought it would be a good idea to come climb a big giant woman in the middle of the night to notice any of the more subtle décor choices of the lobby."
"Well, that would be it. Do you want to see it?"
"Yes," Hava said.
"No," Jake said, his voice overlapping hers.
"I just dragged my sorry acrophobic ass up a thousand and eleven stairs to get up to this woman's crown and now you want me to turn around and go right back down?"
"Ooo, acrophobic," Hava said under her breath, "good Scrabble word."
"I know," Jake murmured back, "triple word score."
"It's only a little over 350 stairs, and at least you aren't tall," Josh said, "You could have had to walk the entire thing like this."
Josh ducked his head down and scrunched his shoulders over.
"I'm glad my genetic shortfalls came in handy for something."
"Come on," Hava said, taking Jake by the sleeve, "We were going to have to go back down at some point anyway, and I would think that you would be relieved to not be all the way up here anymore."
Jake let out a deep, dramatic sigh.
"I will be. I just don't want to go down the itty bitty staircase from hell again."
Hava stepped onto the first stair, taking care to keep her feet at the widest portion rather than the tapered side so that she didn't stumble. The steps were narrow and shallow, forcing them to walk in a straight line back down. She led the way, eager to get a closer look at the original torch. The Statue of Liberty had always been a special focus of her history studies. She knew its origin story, how it was built, and all about the various restoration and preservation projects undertaken over the years to keep it safe. Though it was only a small piece of history and something easily overlooked in its significance, the statue drew her in, like there was something more behind the anonymous woman's eyes as she gazed through blank stone out over the city that had changed so much in the hundreds of years since her construction.
When they finally made it back to the lobby, Hava crossed over to the metal bars that surrounded the original torch and gazed up at the impressive piece. It seemed larger than life, and yet smaller than it should be at the same time. She leaned forward on the bars and heard Josh make a scolding sound behind her.
"Miss, please step away from the bars," he said in his most professional tour guide voice.
"I’m not supposed to touch the bars?" Hava asked, leaning on them further.
"No."
"So, you wouldn't like it if I did this?"
Hava rested her stomach on the upper bar and pulled herself up so that she was balanced nearly horizontally across the metal.
"Stop it. Get down."
"You probably really wouldn't like it if I did this."
She leaned forward, causing her body to flip upside down so that she dangled on the opposite side of the bars and stared at the boys through the bars.
"Hava, you’re a grown woman, get ahold of yourself!"
Hava laughed and tried to right herself.
"See? You didn't think that through, did you? This is why twenty-something year old women do not dangle from bars like they are on the freaking playground."
Josh reached for her shirt to help right her, but the movement made her lose her balance even more and she slipped, tumbling to the floor on the opposite side of the bars.
"You can't be in there," Josh said, his voice reduced to a hiss, "That's why those bars are there."
Hava pulled herself up to her knees and started to stand.
"I know why the bars are there, Josh. And I'm perfectly fine, thank you for your concern."
She was nearly on her feet when something on the bottom of the torch caught her eye. She took a step toward it.
"No, Hava. That's the wrong direction. Come this way. This way is the way out of the forbidden area so that you don't get me fired."
"Hold on," she said, taking another step closer to the torch and crouching down to look at the bottom. "The torch is made of copper and glass, right?"
"Yes."
"And it contained electrical arcs for a while so that they could use the statue as a lighthouse?"
"Yes. Thank you for the trivia, we'll be sure to whip it out next time we are embroiled in a heated game of 'Jeopardy'. Please get out of there now."
"Would there be any reason for one of the glass panels to be open like a door?"
That question seemed to strike Josh as strange because he stopped gesturing for her to get out of the torch enclosure and stepped up a little closer to the metal bars.
"Open like a door?" he asked.
"Yeah. Open a little bit like it's on hinges. That's not how they would have maintained the electrical arcs is it?"
"I don't think so."
Hava eased forward until she was standing beneath the curve of the torch and narrowed her eyes to look more closely at the glass panels still several feet above her head. One looked like it was hanging open just slightly. Not thinking beyond the next moment, she grabbed onto the patina-covered metal base of the torch and pulled herself up so that she could climb closer to the glass and copper flame.
"Oh my god. You are going to fall and kill yourself and I'm going to have to explain it to your mother. Or worse, we're going to get caught and I'm going to have to explain it all to both of our mothers."
Hava ignored Josh and continued to climb until she was close to the glass panels. Her heart was pounding. She knew that what she was doing was not only highly illegal, but also dangerous. As she did it, though, she didn't care. She felt drawn to the torch in an intense, almost irresistible way and she needed to know why that panel seemed loose.
As she drew closer to the out-of-place looking panel she realized that it was not just one of the copper-outlined glass panels that appeared open, but two that were open in opposite directions like cabinet doors. Hava carefully balanced herself on the metal bar where she stood and reached up to touch the panels. One opened further at the touch of her fingers and she found herself staring up into the torch.