Tower Climber
Jakob Tanner
Contents
Newsletter
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
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Author’s Note
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Dedicated:
To my mom and dad, who have encouraged and supported me in everything that I’ve done.
Special Thanks to:
Angela Marshall for assistance in so many things.
Markus Liik for legal advice.
Rein Naylor for medical insights.
Andrew Smith for sage wisdom.
Thanks to my beta readers and their amazing feedback:
Ben Graff
Jo Hoffacker
Valentine Obasuyi
Carol Sherman
Erik Tanner
This book wouldn’t be what it is today without you guys!
1
Max watched the clock as the hour hand struck three. The school bell rang and students pushed their seats out from their desks. Idle chatter surrounded him, but he ignored it all. It was time to leave and he didn’t have a second to waste.
He lifted his wrists off the armrests of his wheelchair and slowly moved himself out from his desk. Even the simple gesture of rolling his wheels to move backwards was enough to make him wince with pain.
The other students in the classroom paid no attention to him. Some were gossiping in the corner, while others were enquiring about extra credit assignments with the teacher.
Max was grateful for their lack of concern. As a person with a disability, people generally only interacted with him in one of two ways: he was either willfully ignored or pitied. He’d take being invisible over pitied any day of the week.
Max exited into the hall. He looked cautiously up and down the corridor. It was flooded with students, gathering their stuff and hanging out by the lockers. He saw no sign of Seth and his pals.
Maybe today’s my lucky day, he thought.
Max’s own locker was only around the corner, but he knew to take the long way round.
He pushed himself forward, rolling the wheels of his chair. He winced with every push. The bruises on his arm ached every time he moved them.
He turned the corner into a near empty hall, when a voice snarled behind him.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Max shuddered.
It was Seth.
“Where you going Maxie-pad? Your locker is the other way.”
The other students in the hall quickly gathered their stuff. They knew just as much as Max did: Seth was trouble.
He had been suspended more times than anyone else in the history of the school and the only reason he wasn’t expelled was because his dad worked for the mayor’s office.
Even still, some of the nearby students hesitated. They didn’t want to pick a fight with Seth, but it was clear on their faces that they thought bullying a kid in a wheelchair was perhaps a step too far.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Max, mustering a smile for the nearby students. “You can leave. It’s all fine here.”
They weren’t going to be able to help him, Max figured, so he’d rather them walk away scot-free than let them get a target on their back like he had.
The students nodded and hurried away.
Max still hadn’t even turned around to face Seth.
Maybe if I ignore him, he’ll leave me alone, Max thought.
He pushed himself forward down the hall.
Two shadows emerged. Two of Seth’s goons stepped into the hall at the other end.
“What? You thought you could just ignore me, Max? Run away? Oh that’s right—you can’t, can you?”
Seth’s goons snickered at the dumb joke.
Max looked around the hall. There wasn’t a teacher in sight. Even if there was—they’d be no help to him. They’d ignore them, not wanting to get in trouble with a powerful man like Seth’s father.
Max took a second to assess the situation. He knew the best form of self-defense for a wheelchair user was to get the heck out of there. To not fight at all.
Escape was no longer an option though.
He’d try negotiation.
Max spun around on his wheelchair to face Seth.
The tall boy stood with his arms crossed and a patronizing smirk stretched across his face.
“What do you want?” said Max, keeping his voice calm.
“What do I want?” snickered Seth, taking a step towards him. “What—are you some kind of hostage nego
tiator now, Max?”
The boy took another step towards him, the clap of his shoes echoing across the hall.
“You know exactly what I want,” snarled the boy. “I want to see you cry and whimper on the ground like the little bitch that you are.”
“Tell him, Seth,” said the goons behind Max.
He could tell by their voices that they were coming towards him now as well.
Negotiation was out the window then.
With all his strength, he angled and swerved his wheelchair to maneuver around Seth, but the boy just jumped in front of him.
“There’s no getting away from your daily treatment,” snickered Seth. “Maybe it will help you walk again.”
The boy grabbed Max by his shaggy red hair and yanked him off of his wheelchair and threw his body to the ground.
They kicked him and stomped on him as he lay there helplessly on the ground.
“Take your treatment,” they laughed.
Max closed his tear-strewn eyes and let the beating take over.
They wouldn’t stop until they thought he couldn’t take any more. The best thing he could do now was let them have their sick sadistic fun and hopefully it would all be over a little bit sooner.
Then something different happened.
The kicks stopped.
A hand caressed his leg, slipping inside the right pocket of his jeans.
They’d never done this before. What were they doing?
The hand pulled out Max’s wallet.
“We’ll be taking this as a souvenir,” said Seth.
Max’s shoulders straightened at those words. He was no longer passively taking the beating, but very much alert.
They can’t take my wallet, he thought.
Elle’s note is in there.
The bullies walked away, leaving Max on the floor with his aching bruised body and tears.
“Should we go shoot some pool?” said one of the goons.
“Maybe the arcade?”
Their malicious beating of Max from mere seconds ago was already a far away memory to them.
“Agh—what the—”
Max clutched onto Seth’s leg and dug his nails into his calf.
“Give...me...my...wallet...back...” said Max.
Max had dragged his pained body across the hall to catch up with Seth and his gang. He wouldn’t let go until he got his wallet back. Until he made sure his letter from Elle was safe and secure.
“Ugh,” said Seth, repulsed, trying to shake Max off his leg. “What are you doing? Get off me you psycho cripple!”
Max didn’t let go.
“GIVE ME MY WALLET BACK!”
Seth looked down at the boy with drool and blood leaking out of his mouth. He pulled the wallet out of his own pocket, drained it of the few measly bucks that were in there, and then tossed it down the hall.
“There you go, psycho cripple,” said Seth. “It’s all yours.”
Max let go of Seth’s leg, only for the boy to give him another walloping kick to the gut. Pain coursed through his whole body.
“Next time,” said Seth. “Stay down.”
The bullies walked away.
Max slowly dragged himself across the empty school hallway.
He pulled himself towards his black leather wallet on the ground and clasped it with relief.
The late afternoon sun shone through a nearby window. The city and its skyscrapers stood stoic and apathetic to the life that swirled around them. So too did the tower at the center of the city, shooting out beyond the clouds and as far as the eye could see.
The tower.
How was it possible that something so wondrous existed within a world full of such cruelty?
Max opened up his wallet and pulled out a piece of worn parchment paper.
He looked over the words. The penmanship. The flourish of each letter.
This note—which he had mysteriously received a year ago—was the only thing in his life that gave him hope.
He read the words once more.
Max,
Don’t forget your promise. Find me in the tower.
Elle
2
Max had already gotten back on his wheelchair and was wiping the blood off his face, when Sarah rushed into the hallway.
The girl had black hair that she kept in a long braided ponytail and large rimless glasses.
“Max!” she cried. “What happened? I was waiting at our meeting spot?”
Sarah and Max lived together at the same group home for orphans and so walked home together every day after school.
The girl was fourteen, two years younger than Max. She would have been his sister’s age if she was still around.
Max appreciated Sarah’s kindness towards him, but he knew that her association with him was causing her trouble within the social circles of her year. For someone kind like Sarah to suffer because of him was the last thing he wanted. So he devised the meeting spot: a corner a few blocks from the school where they’d meet after school, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the student body.
“I got held up,” said Max.
Sarah’s eyes watered. “Seth again?”
“It’s no big deal,” he said.
He lifted his arms to roll himself forward. A sharp pain ached across his whole body. Max grimaced from the hurting bruises all over his body.
“Here let me get that,” said Sarah, going around him and taking the handles behind Max’s wheelchair to push him forward. “And before you protest, all the other students have gone home now. So you can’t worry about me.”
She beamed a smile down towards him and Max craned his neck back with a groan.
“Fine,” said Max. “You win today, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to make this a regular thing.”
“You realize your wheelchair has these handles for a reason, right?”
“A design flaw, if you ask me,” Max joked as they left the school.
It was a sunny day, so they took the long way home along the canal.
The city of Zestiris lay before them: the tall skyscrapers, the giant wall that separated the outer-rim and the tower-zone, and, of course, the always looming mysterious tower at the center of it all.
“I just don’t understand why you chased after them,” said Sarah after Max had relayed the whole story of the incident with Seth. “Like, you didn’t have that much money on you. You don’t have a credit card or something hard to replace. Would it have been so bad to lose your wallet, save yourself from that final blow to the stomach?”
Sarah had a point. It had been stupid to fight back, but then he thought of Elle’s note. It was the only thing that connected the two of them. The only proof of her existence.
Until that note had randomly appeared in his locker twelve months earlier, Max had assumed his sister had died in the same car crash from ten years ago that had killed his parents and left him with two immobile legs.
“I couldn’t leave Elle’s note behind,” said Max.
“Oh,” said Sarah.
Sarah’s realization hung between them, anchoring the conversation into silence.
She was the only one Max had ever told about the note. The only person he remotely trusted out of everyone he knew. Even still, he could tell Sarah struggled to believe him. She wanted to believe him, but she struggled to.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said. “But how do you know that note wasn’t a prank?”
“I don’t,” said Max, staring at the looming tower beyond the wall. “But here are the facts. Our lockers don’t have any slits in them. So the only way someone could sneak a note into one of them was if they had my lock combination—which, as far as I know, nobody does—or they snuck it in when I had it opened, but surely I would’ve noticed in that case?”
“So how did it end up there then?” asked Sarah. “Magic?”
“Why is it so hard to believe a note magically appeared in my locker,” said Max. “When every day we’re confronted by a
freaking tower that appeared out of nowhere?”
This was the curious and frustrating question that every citizen of Zestiris who lived in the outer-rim had to confront day after day. How did one go about their daily life—full of all of its mundane activities—while unexplainable magic loomed over them and stared them right in the face in the form of a tower that had appeared out of thin air?