Violet Rain

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.