To read the next story...   “This is so stupid,” I told myself. “You can’t really do this. You’re going to die!” But I smiled all the way down.      TALL TALE By Scott M. Sparling     The theater’s back wall at my old high school was something of a memorial. It easily stood ninety feet wide and just over thirty feet tall, far taller than the curtain proscenium, and was etched with the names of a few decades’ worth of actors who had worked under the theater hot lamps and anxious audiences.             Names and graduation dates. Some were written in blue ink, permanent marker, and even latex paint.             I used to go there during lunch hour or after school. Sometimes during class hour too, because I knew the trick of signing my own mother’s name and giving myself notes of excuse from classes. Even if a teacher had suspected something in the notes, they never questioned the notes anyway. My father had died that year and as a form of pity, the faculty let me get away with whatever I wanted. It was a silent, unspoken privilege they gave me, and it came along with sympathetic smiles and sorrow filled gazes that I guess I took advantage of.             I loved the smell of that theater, dusty old clothes and chalkboards and ancient make-up. Cheap tricks and wizardry.             I used to stand there, facing the wall with my back to the empty audience and pace the wall’s entire length, reading the names and touching them gently. I wondered who each person was and what they might be doing at that moment. Perhaps working in an office or selling a used car or managing a department store.             When I touched the cracked writing with reverence, did they suddenly shiver from some inward draft? Did they even remember writing their names on the great wall?             You had to stand on a chair to read the names at the top, and a few of the names were fifteen feet up because some student in a long ago time had decided to use the theater’s ladder and get his or her name higher than anyone else’s. At that time, a Bobby Braden from the class of ’88 was the highest on the wall about halfway to the ceiling, and there was a multitude of signatures just under his as if everyone else had known they couldn’t get any higher, and were content just to have their names next to Bobby’s as a symbol of respect.             I often wondered if Bobby Braden had come up here alone. Did he close his eyes for hours on end and just breathe in the magic of this place? Did he feel alone as I did? A person who could get his name up that high could not have been alone. Not with all the signatures circling under his. I imagined what he looked like, balance precariously on the top step of the theater’s ladder, red marker in hand and reaching as high as he could while his friends watched on from below with breathless anticipation.             “Where are you know, Bobby?” I asked aloud in the dusty silence.             “He’s out of here,” I answer myself. “Bobby Braden is long gone.”             Long gone.             I don’t know how long I sat there staring at his name that day, but I remember hearing the lunch bell ring twice, opening and closing that mad frenzy of conversation, greasy pizza and traded ding dongs. Maybe an hour? Two?             And I snapped out of it so suddenly I would have been surprised on any other day, but that day had some sort of enchanted fog wrapped around it. A flavor of fate.             I walked back behind the loft stairs and grabbed a bucket of black paint and a brush. I went back to Bobby Braden and looked up at him, wondering how I could get there too. Higher even.             I pulled over the large dining room table that had graced so many of our plays over the past two years. I set it up against the wall under Bobby’s name, and went for the ladder.             With the ladder up on the table, I could reach well above Bobby, but it seemed a cheap slight to beat him by mere inches, so I climbed back down and got the kitchen table from the right wings. With this place on the dining room table and the ladder on top, I could write my name about five or six feet over Bobby’s.             I looked down. The ladder wobbled. It didn’t seem so high up from down below, but from my position over the two tables I was nauseatingly aware that I could break a leg, arm, or neck with one slip. I carefully climbed back down.             Backing away, I looked up at the white brick I had reached from my last position on the ladder. It was pretty high, and I suppose if I wrote my name there, it would remain the tallest champion for years to come.             But what of the years after that?             I took the ladder down again. Now I was sweating and my back ached with all the twisting and lifting. This time I put two prop boxes on the table, then put two chairs on either end of the prop boxes. Even without the ladder, the entire ensemble was too rickety. I tied a rope between the chair legs so that they wouldn’t slide out away from each other. And used the remaining rope to tie the prop boxes together as well.             Down the hallowed halls, a bell rang, signifying the end of fourth period? Maybe fifth? Hopefully not the end of the school day.             I managed the ladder up onto the chairs, trying not to notice the way the tables swayed to and fro as I stood on them. When I got the ladder set up, I went for one more box, a small prop box about two feet high, and I carried it and placed it on the top step of the ladder.             “This is so stupid,” I told myself. “You can’t really do this. You’re going to die!” But I smiled all the way down. I laughed as I brought the paint up, brush in my back pocket. “Just hope you don’t die until after,” I warned myself. “Get this painted first!”             The hardest part (though not the scariest, that comes later) was getting onto the box on the ladder, and bending back down on my knees to get the paint bucket from the second to last ladder step. It took me several minutes to gently lift my feet under me and to stand to my full height, one hand against the cold wall, the other holding the paint bucket.             The ceiling was about six inches from my head. I shook so violently that the entire assembly rattled beneath me. I forced a deep breath. Then another.             I pried open the paint can, having to remove one hand from the wall. The lid came up easy, with a little “pop” that splurged paint over my t-shirt and jeans. I laughed.             I started painting, huge letters thicker than my hand in width, until I had my entire name up there, plus the cool little apostrophe with my graduating year’s numbers behind it. Another bell rang.             “Vat are you doing up der?”             I whipped around and leaned against the wall. It was Marina, the foreign exchange student from Romania that all the guys were hot after. She was so tiny below me, nose tilted up and face in strained terror.             “You’re goink to fall!” she warned.             I smiled and winked at her, then turned to put the last coat of paint over my name. When I turned around again, she was gone. I slowly lowered myself on the prop box, and fished one leg about to gain purchase on the ladder below.             That’s when the whole thing tilted. I felt the ladder going (my bladder almost went too, if I’m to be honest) and I opened my mouth. It’s funny how you remember little details like that when you’re about to die. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. In a last ditch effort, I pushed away from the ladder, back toward the wall. The entire ladder flew downward, and landed with a crash right where Marina had been a few minutes before. The chairs and prop boxes had fallen over as well, making a huge clatter in the empty theater, and I managed to land on my feet on the kitchen table. I heard a kerslop! And looked at the paint bucket still clutched in my right hand. The paint had sloped about a bit, but I hadn’t spilled a drop.             I jumped down from both tables, and ran to put the paint away. Someone had to have heard the crash from the choir room, or maybe the cafeteria, and who knows if Marina went to tell somebody.             I ran back and slid the prop boxes back into place, and put the ladder away. At this point, I could hear voices from the theater front door. I ran the kitchen table back and was just sliding the larger table into place when the curtains opened and the entire drama class walked in, followed by Mister Fiddler, the drama coach.             “What is going on?” he asked, hands already on hips for his “I’m going to give a lecture” stance he used when most upset.             Marina pointed up. “Look. See?”             Everyone craned their necks until they saw my name. They sat there, like a crowd at a movie theater, staring with wonder.             “How in the hell . . .” But Mister Fiddler didn’t even have the words to go on. He stood with the rest of them, mouth agape and eyes wide.             Someone in the class started clapping and it spread fast. Everyone kept looking up at my name and clapping. I even started clapping too, as silly as that sounds.             I didn’t receive that lecture, and though my antics were widely repeated throughout the school, the story never followed me into college. After high school, I never heard of it again.             But I did recently go to vote for my county two years ago, and the votes were held in the theater of my old high school. The curtains were open when we all walked in, and there was my name fifteen years later but every bit as startling as the day it was painted. Sure, there were plenty of daredevils that had gotten close to my name, even a few just up under it, but no one had dared to go as far as I.             Is there some kid who hangs out in the theater now, rubbing the ancient names that litter the wall, wondering where the people are who wrote them and what they might be doing?             I’m sure there is. I can tell you right now that I know many of those names. They are office workers and store managers and used car salesmen.             I’m here kid. We all are.     © Copyright, Scott M. Sparling   Click here to read Scott M. Sparling’s Brief Bio.   To read the next story...