And I knew that no matter who or what Will was or wasn’t, I had to stop him from jumping. I had to reach him somehow. But how did one reach a character in a book? Impossible, I thought. At the same time, I knew that reaching Will was my mission, and if anyone had asked me then what my mission in life was, I would have answered unhesitantly, “To save Will’s life.”

As this thought came to me, I felt dizzy and off balance. I feared that I’d lost my footing, and would plunge (real body and all) over the railing onto the ground below. But instead, the apartment buildings blurred across the way and almost disappeared in a kind of white glare. Then they turned into the cliffs described in the book as the ones sought out by Will … and I saw him, standing on a rocky ledge, looking down.

So I—he—hadn’t jumped yet!

Scared to death, horrified, I suddenly realized that I was Will’s “other self” mentioned in the last passage of the narrative. I stood beside him—the observer. And he knew it! I mean, he felt an observer-self, though whether or not he realized then that I was real, I don’t know.

“Don’t jump,” I shouted.

“The wheel of life … round and round she goes,” Will said, and giggled, an awful sound. Then he threw his arms out dramatically and said in a mournful voice that clearly mocked itself, “This is where Willy-boy gets off, sweet daddy-o.”

As he said that, as Will, I felt a dizzy surge of irresponsible power and weird impulses: to let go, to jump, to choose nothing, to cheat mortality by courting death. Snapping back to myself, I said urgently, “You’ve got a future. You’re going to be a psychologist. You’ll forget all this, the drugs, the emotional bombastics.”

Will groaned; there he was, still divided, still arguing with himself. He said, “And the search for excellence in life? What a dumb deluded search that was!”

“Was? You’re still alive, aren’t you? You can’t commit suicide because I’m your future self and I exist,” I cried.

Will looked directly where I was standing, not seeing me, surely, yet sensing my presence as his other self and hearing my voice in his head.

“How like me,” he said. “Of two minds till the last. It’s enough to drive a man to suicide! Still witty, too. God, how I hate myself.”

I yelled, “Stop that! If you jump, you’ll kill me, too.” I shouted, frantic. But I was the real me: He was the storybook character; so how could his death possibly affect me? I didn’t know, but I knew it could. “You’re going to write a really strange book,” I cried, on impulse. “I know. I’ve seen it.”