Violet Rain

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Sat beneath the weeping willow, I realised that I'd never have another summer like the one when I was sixteen.

But does anyone? I mean can you ever recapture those carefree youthful days?

Before school was even out, I pretty much had my whole summer break planned. But things don't always go to plan; I guess some things are just totally out of our control, and then there are the things that we have complete control over, like the choices we make. Back then in the summer of my sixteenth year of life, I had no idea just how much one decision could change everything.

"What shall we do this summer?" Rain, my best friend had asked me on the last day of school.

"Probably the same as we do every year," I'd answered him.

I guess that maybe you're wondering what it was that we did every year that was so great, what was so appealing that we wanted to repeat it year after year. We didn't really do anything special or spectacular; the truth is that we didn't really do anything. The first few days of that summer were no different; they had passed by as almost every summer that had come before. I was in my room, and Rain was in his room, in the house next door, communicating through headsets as we played some stupid computer game against each other.

Then in the early afternoon of maybe the fourth or fifth day my mum breezed into my room, "c'mon, Vi, turn that computer off," she'd said as she opened the curtains. "It's a lovely day. Why don't you go outside?"

I didn't want to go outside. In fact, I found it quite incredulous that she would even come into my room unannounced and suggest such a thing. I didn't like going outside all that much. I didn't care for the 'great outdoors' as Mr Turner, my biology teacher, liked to call it.

"Well, Violet," she'd said with her hand on her hip and using my full name to try and assert some authority. "Things are going to change around here. Now get off that bed and get yourself down to the shop and get me some milk. You've got a reason to go outside now," she'd said with a smug smile firmly in place.

I didn't need a reason to go outside. I just didn't want to, and that should have been reason enough. Despite the look on my mum's face daring me to argue with her, I knew better. I knew that on that day, no matter how hard I tried, I would not win the argument.

"Well, go on then," she said when I hadn't even attempted to move.

Begrudgingly, I got off my bed snatched the change from my mum's hand and scuffed my feet all the way down the street. Rain, who'd heard the little exchange with my mum through the stupid headset, was hot on my heels until we'd reached 'Perry's General Stor.' Yeah, 'stor' because the missing 'e' had disappeared, maybe a dozen times in the last two years. Eventually, they gave up replacing it. I never did work out why someone would want to take it; why they had such a grudge against the word store that they would want to keep stealing its letters.

Before going into the shop, I remembered to take a deep breath of fresh air; the last time that my mum sent me, I'd almost died, and that's no exaggeration. Walking into that shop is like walking into a furnace the tin roof and oppressive summer heat certainly didn't help the situation. The air was stifling, and the effects were obviously too much for the cashier, he was virtually passed out with his chubby face resting on the old melamine counter top. Ignoring him and the stench of stale sweat that lingered in the air, I made my way round the shop. Just as I turned the corner that led to the old and dilapidated refrigerators, I bumped into Rain, and he nearly dropped whatever it was that he was trying to hide under his shirt.

We'd stood looking at each other for a few seconds, neither of us saying anything. Each of us gave the other a look of defiance, almost daring one of us to speak up first. Needless to say, neither of us did. Rain turned his back on me, and I ignored him, grabbed the milk, left the change on the counter for the buck-toothed cashier for when he woke up from his heat-induced slumber and left as quickly as I could.

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"Hey, wait up," I'd heard Rain calling from behind me.

"What the hell do you think you were doing?" I'd challenged him. "You could've got caught, and then we both would've been in trouble."

"I would never have gotten caught."

Of course, he was right; he wouldn't have got caught. The cashier had been sleeping on the job, and there was no place for security cameras in a shop like Perry's.

"So . . . What did you take?" I'd asked him and then watched as took a bottle of something called Lavender Fields, out from underneath his shirt, it was a sparkling wine, whatever that meant. "And what are you going to do with that?"

"Well . . . I thought that maybe we'd share it," he'd said, looking down at his feet while scuffing the toe of his shoe in the dust.

I couldn't help but laugh at him as if he thought that we were going to share a bottle of wine. Firstly my mum would've killed me, had she ever found out. And secondly, the logistics of the situation caused a huge problem. "And where do you suppose we'll go and drink this wine?" I had questioned him.

"I know a place . . . but first, let's take that milk back to your mum, because well you know what she's like."

We had walked together through the almost deserted streets of Abbottsville; most people had more sense and stayed indoors during the unforgiving afternoon heat that our little town in the South had to offer. We headed through a wooded area beyond the edge of town and towards a clearing on the banks of the river where there stood a single willow tree. It wasn't a place that I could ever remember going to or even hearing about before.

"We're here," Rain had said as he sat down in the shade of the willow tree. "Well, are you going to sit down or not?" he'd asked when I continued to stand there like an idiot.

I took a seat on the soft grass beside him. "How do you know about this place?" I'd asked him as I'd watched him unscrew the cap off the bottle.

"I just do . . ." he'd said as if that simple answer was enough.

And it was.

From the moment, my first taste of alcohol passed my lip right up until the last; the simple things were enough to make me feel like I was on top of the world. Like I was living a dream that would never end. We'd sat underneath the branches of the willow tree for hours, long after the sun had gone down, passing the bottle of Lavender Fields between us and occasionally talking to each other. I'd sat watching the way the moon reflected on the water's surface and illuminated the branches of the willow tree, the shadows dancing on the water's edge. I remember thinking how glad I was that my mum had come into my room, what had seemed like a lifetime ago and practically evicted me. It was hard to believe that it had only been a few hours ago on that afternoon.

That was when I knew it would be a summer that I would never forget.

After that first time, we found ourselves looting Perry's on an almost daily basis. I know it was wrong of us, but at the time, we saw it as us being young and carefree, just doing whatever we wanted to; having the time of our lives and the best summer ever. Eventually, as the days passed one after the other we found ourselves out of luck, somehow we had managed to clear the entire stock of Lavender Fields that Perry's had to offer.

We used to take that bottle of sparkling wine and head down to the willow tree by the river; I suppose it became our favourite place to go. When we were down there, we could do whatever we wanted there was no one to keep an eye on us or tell us what to do. Days down by the river were for living without any inhibitions.

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I have to say this story is really beautiful. Touching and well written. 💜

4y ago

I'm speechless. The way this ends... Wow. This is so beautifully written. 💛

7y ago

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