Room Service

Chapter Five

IS THIS REAL LIFE? AM I ACTUALLY UPDATING ROOM SERVICE? YES, FOLKS. A MIRACLE HAS HAPPENED.

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            “Jesus Christ, how much further is this place?”

            Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Leon lagging behind, puffing and panting as he struggled to shorten the two-metre gap that currently stood between us. Though the signature black sunglasses covered his eyes, and consequently most of this face, I still noticed the sheen of perspiration across his skin, his lips pursed in concentration as the sun beat down on our backs.

            “Stop whining,” I ordered. “I thought you were supposed to be fit?”

            “I am,” he said. “Sort of. This is in a whole other league. Come on, I’m a singer, not an athlete. What do you expect?”

            “Do I look like an athlete either?” I asked, unable to stop the amused smirk creeping onto my face. “I’m managing just fine.”

            “That’s so not fair. You live here. You’ve probably climbed this bloody hill a hundred times.”

            “Only a hundred?” I rolled my eyes. “Pfft, you’re overestimating the amount of things there are to do in Walden. It’s got to be way more than that.”

            “Exactly!” he cried. “This isn’t a fair competition.”

            I had to laugh. His put-out expression, appearing in sporadic bursts between gasps for breath, was funnier than it should’ve been. Admittedly, the path we were trailing up was the steepest slope in Walden, but that still didn’t make it Mount Everest. I knew what we’d find at the top would make the walk worth it, yet it was proving considerably more difficult to convince Leon of this.

            The Viewpoint was a notorious spot in Walden, and it had been for generations. Even my parents, who’d both lived in town since they were kids, couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t local knowledge. For us, it was turf as common as the boardwalk, but surprisingly few tourists managed to stumble across it each year. Maybe it was the huge hill that put them off; after all, it was certainly having that effect on Leon. The thing was, once you got to the top of the trailing dirt path, the view had a funny way of overshadowing how much your muscles were aching.

            “Will it be worth my legs dropping off?” he’d asked, the first time I pointed this out. “Because right now they feel like they’re about to.”

            Thankfully, though, we were advancing on the top of the hill, the gradient levelling off enough to give our legs a well-deserved rest. The sea was now coming into view, the vast stretch reaching right out toward the horizon, where the tips of the waves met the line of the sky.

            “See, we made it!” I declared. Leon’s footsteps, I heard behind me, landed on flat ground a few moments later. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

            The retort came quickly, as punctual as ever. “I don’t know about—”

            When his speech trailed off, I turned on the spot. Leon was now rooted in position, all remnants of the previous complaint wiped from his face. His eyes were dragged away by the view around us, darting from place to place as if it was impossible to take it in fast enough. Any minute now, it looked like his mouth was about to drop open. “Whoa.”

            This, in particular, had a smile slipping onto my face. It was an accomplishment, if nothing else, to render him speechless, since he wouldn’t shut up any other time of day. My gaze wandered to follow his, landing amongst the view that had us surrounded on all sides. Waves from miles away crashed at the foot of the cliff, salty spray flying way up into the air, the sun shining bright overhead. From up here, the entire town was visible, reduced to an even more miniature form than usual from such a distance.