Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 14: Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

14
Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

=========MARY==========

The weather report called for an all-day rain. What a surprise. How very original of Gilmore Park. It always endlessly rained throughout the summer. And it was never that pour yourself a cup of tea and snuggle up with a good book kind of rain. It was that infrequently spitting drizzle making a disaster of your hair, leaving everything smelling humid and gross kind of rain. Whatevs. I'd given up on my hair a long time ago. And the downpour was still to come.

The cloud-covered light dimmed the colors of my room, and the damp-smelling draft tousled the blinds, clacking them side to side against the windowpane, blowing threads of hair under and across my neck.

Squeegee Boy called on his work break to tell me that once the rain started, he'd be let off and would come straight over to get me.

Flipping through the pages of Danny's sketchbook (that he really insisted I take home after the night I slept over), amused by the little-kid doodles he seemed to have left intentionally intact, I saw a picture he'd drawn of two boys. Under the drawing of the smaller looking one, written in magic-marker, was the word ME, and under the other boy, CONOR. An old kindergarten pal, I guess.

Discovering Danny through his notebooks was sorta fun. Like, I felt sorry and everything for all those girls he must have pined relentlessly and embarrassingly over to write all those cheesy lyrics about, but now (many broken hearts later, I'm sure) it entertained me. The greatest comedy is someone's shit luck. But as I wavered the pencil in my hand over a blank page, I couldn't help but think of those lyrics, the ones that I'd read in his notebook. The lyrics that started off with: I want to die.

A hefty gust of wind clashed the curtains against the windowpane. Dashing my startled hand across the page. Scratching the paper with the first pencil stroke that became my drawing.

My illustration started off as just a dress. Then it became a girl in a dress. Then, a few etches later, it became a girl in a dress, who I guess sort of looked like me, standing on a windy beach. Black tears, like running mascara, poured from her empty white eyes. And since I'm shit at drawing feet, I left her ankles as a single ghastly arrow. At first, I thought maybe she was a mermaid, but she turned out to be a ghost.

Then the phone rang. Danny.

"Froo Froo..." I answered, trying to be cute.

"Oh My Go—you know what? I'm not even going to say it. Because Gilmore Parkians? Are we Gilmore Parkians? Gilmorians? Whatever. Since the Gilmorians are all terrified of rain, they're driving slow as hell. Sorry for being late. I'll be there in five minutes, if Grandma Sue in front of me could drive the speed limit."

"Okay, sure. That's okay. Remember, Fisherman's—"

"Even though it's raining?"

"Yes."

"Okay, see you in like two minutes."

And he hung up before I even got a chance to tell him to say Hi to Grandma Sue for me. I started regretting my decision to hang out with Danny. I wanted to spend more time with my ghost girl. But he'd throw a fit if I ditched him again.

After actually playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo with myself to decide whether I was going to cancel my plans with him (I lost), I made the grand effort of removing myself from my warm, cozy bed. And just as I reached for my bedroom door, the wind wrapped its cold hands around my bare arms. Lifting the invisible hairs up my spine to my neck. Behind me, I heard the pages of the sketchbook ripple in the breeze left behind. When I turned around, I saw the sketchbook had blown open onto a blank page.