Inside Rachel's bag, Hector's name flashes silently on her phone's screen before going dark.
Rachel flips her hair over to the other shoulder and looks out the window of the jeep. She had learned Atacama is one of the driest desert in the world, but the cold air feels pleasant against her face.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Ricky says from next to her.
Rachel smiles.
The sun hasn't set yet, but the stars have appeared. The heaven is a gradient, from top down, of a dark night sky and a dusty bright haze.
Apart from in the sky, there are no other lights around. No building. No trees.
But they soon enough see the white domes — observatories enclosing some of the largest terrestrial telescopes in the world.
Yesterday they saw the second largest one here. Today they will visit the largest one.
After the breathtakingly beautiful sights of the stars and the planets Rachel saw yesterday, she can't wait to see them again.
AFTER THEIR TIME at the observatory, Rachel and Ricky take a walk along a thin foot path under the stars. They sit down on the ground a little farther from the buildings.
Looking up at the Milky Way galaxy, Rachel thinks her friend, Annie, who's into photography, would've loved to be here now. Rachel takes out her phone from inside her backpack to try to take a picture of the sky.
When she unlocks the screen, Rachel sees the missed call from Hector.
"Hector?" Ricky says, who happened to notice the name, "Hector Sabith?"
"Yes," Rachel says, feeling a little flustered, although she doesn't know why.
"I didn't know you knew him. Is he a friend?" Ricky says.
"I tutored him and his friends on their coach's order," Rachel says.
"Oh, so that was them. You're tutoring him now, too?" Ricky says.
"No," Rachel says and brings up her phone to the sky and takes a picture. She sends it to her friends.
"Send it to me too," Ricky says.
"You can take one for yourself," Rachel says.
"No. I like yours," Ricky says.
Rachel shakes her head grinning and forwards the picture to Ricky.
When the wind turns too cold, the two of them return to their cabins.
Rachel tucks into her bed and pulls up the phone over to her face. She's too tired to call anyone, and besides it's late, she thinks. But she doesn't want to leave Hector without a response.
Rachel sends him the photo with a message — "Sorry I was in the observatory. Just now noticed your missed call. If it's nothing urgent, I'll call you tomorrow. Good night :)"
After tapping on the arrow to send, Rachel puts down the phone and falls asleep almost instantly.
HECTOR HEARS HIS phone ping. Lying in his bed he picks it up from the nightstand and looks. A message from Rachel. He reads it and smiles.
Then a pop up notification appears on his screen for Instagram. Hector clicks on it. His smile disappears. Rachel is tagged in a photo posted by Ricky — the same photo Rachel sent him — with the comment "Had the most amazing evening. Goodnight."
YOU ARE READING
RAINSTORM
RomanceEverything changes the day she sees him in the rain. Teenager Rachel's life takes a turn one night when she catches her school's bad boy Hector under the rain in an act that no one would ever believe he did if she told them about it. As if that's n...
