Wishing on Rain

Wishing on Rain ~ Swimming in Sunshine

I was 6 years old when we moved to August Beach. We moved at the peak of summer, when in Chicago, it was almost 90 degrees out, frying the concrete sidewalks. The day before we moved my friend Zinny and I had trying frying eggs on the sidewalk in front of her sweet suburban house.

I always loved Zinny's house. I always called her lucky, that she was just far enough from the city that she didn't always smell the exhaust from the cars, and that she was just close enough to the city that she could gaze in wonder at city lights. Where as I lived in a small apartment on the 22nd floor of a building, where the best view was from the bathroom window. It over-looked the Sears (But now Willis) Tower, and some nights I sat on the toilet seat just to become calm, watching the lights flicker on and off, like fireflies, something only Zinny got to see at her house.

Zinny's house was a small bungalow, with windows over-looking the street. Inside, it was like a true home. With the dark, oak floors and warm walls, with pictures of her and her family in various places, various stags of emotion. Serious, happy, excited, and calm. In my apartment there was no such thing as pictures on the wall, my father had removed them due to the termites that sometimes at through the wooden frames. Zinny had her own room, which was roomy and just like how I wanted it, flower vines painted growing all over her room, with a canopy bed, all her stuffed animals lined up on it's own shelf. Having anything have it's own shelf was like a forgein concept to me, for my room could barely sustain a bed and a dresser. Most of my clothes I had to actually put in the drawers under my bed because sometimes my extremely small 2 drawer dresser just couldn't hold all my socks or pajama's.

As I was packing my family's embarrassing old van (Where as Vinny had the newest car on the market), Vinny was standing beside me saying "You'll like it August Beach! I've been there once. The homes are just like mine, but you know, mine is better of course." All I could manage was just to smile and nod. It wasn't that I was going to leave Vinny behind to go start a new life all the way across the continent, but that I was afraid that something I just wasn't going to get in August Beach was always being able to teach tourists that Uncle Joe's Hot Dog Cart that was always going up and down Lake Street was the only place you actually choose if you wanted the classic Chicago hot dog or not, or that Navy Pier's fireworks were best on Saturdays. Or maybe that I wouldn't see tourists at all. After a while of living in August Beach, I'll know everyone and nothing new will ever happen. Even if I was going to be living only a long car ride's away from Hollywood, only a car ride's away from San Fransisco, places that later I had always wanted to visit. Even the lure of a beach couldn't stop me from wondering if anything was ever going to really happen in the small town of August Beach.

~..........~

"Did you hear that the mayor of August Beach decided that we need more funding for the Art's Programs, and so we're holding an "annual" Augusta Fair?" Valerie brought up casually while we lying down in the bright 100 degree sun on a regular Tuesday.

I rolled over, my mouth agape. "We are?!" I almost got up and started to do a happy dance. This could lead to my rain wish coming true! I was bouncing with the happiness, and Timmy could tell. He lied his hand on my waist and whispered so only he and I could hear, "Calm down, cowgirl."

"I guess it could be exciting. I've been here all my life, unlike you 2, and we've tried to have fairs before. It always ended horribly, like the last time we actually had a hurricane warning, which sounds ridiculous now." Valerie said, clearly unexcited. She sighed and went back to her book. Maybe the only reason she told me that was just so I could be all riled up. Sometimes I think she does that, so she can build me up and then shoot me down, for enjoyment maybe.

Full of confidence, I said "I think it could be fun. I've never been to a fair, if you don't include the countless times I've been to Navy Pier. Nothing really ever happens here. Day in and day out we're doing the same routine."