I Drew You Once in Art Class

Twenty-Four

It rained that night.

Hard.

Frank lay on his bed, his hands behind his back, watching the clear droplets outlined in black trickle down the windowpane, sometimes connecting with another to become a single, larger drop, sometimes staying on its own until it hit the windowsill, dissipating and presumably dripping down into the green garden below.

Frank was one of the solo raindrops, he was pretty sure.

He and his mom had just gotten out of a screaming match, where she had yelled at him for his grades and told him that he'd go nowhere in life and if he was so independent why didn't he pay the mortgage, and he had responded by saying it wasn't his responsibility because that's what parents are supposed to do, which had led to more screaming back and forth, which involved Frank being called stupid, helpess, stupid, and stupid.
Great.
He pulled himself off his back to look out the window. Frank loved the location of his room. It was in the back corner of his blue house, and from his window he could look into the driveway on the side of the house, where the small garden was, circled in brick. The driveway was asphalt, cracked and faded, a strip of grass growing in a line down the middle. He could see his garage further back at the end of the driveway, and if he crossed his room and looked over his wooden dresser he'd be able to see the backyard, the grass patchy but green, fairy lights adorning the edges of the pointed wooden fence posts. Even if Frank didn't have the best home life, he really did love his house. It was tall and pastel-blue, with black shingles and a covered front porch like most of the houses in Woodbury. Frank had been born in this house, tumbled around as a toddler in this house, and holed away in his room, glued to his guitar in this house. Millie, who sat in a faded tan dog bed at the end of his bed, fast asleep and snoring gently, had stumbled around as a little puppy here too. Her little back foot kicked a little. She was dreaming. Frank leaned his cheek against the window, the cold glass a shock to his pale skin, watching the water drip down the pane, dribble over the sill, and fall into the flora below.