Dreamers- Book 1

Chapter Thirty Three- Pippa

"Come on!" Pippa moaned, annoyed, down the phone.

"Nope. No way. Have you seen the rain? I mean, I'm expecting that weird dude from round the corner to start building an ark to rescue all the animals." Finchey replied, exasperated.

It wasn't as though she was asking him to swim through a gushing river during a storm... walk through one perhaps. She hadn't been able to see down the end of her street since early this morning when the clouds turned black and the rain came down faster and harder.

"I haven't seen anyone who isn't annoying for a whole day..." She replied. Her mum was being annoying. Her dad was being even more annoying. School had been canceled, so her mum was home from work, and that meant she was bugging dad.

A shout of warning from her dad from downstairs and the clatter of pots and pans falling from the new shelf her mum had put up moments ago was muffled by a long rumble of thunder, the sky lighting up as lightning flickered across the sky.

Pippa counted the gap between the lightning and thunder... Three. This morning it had been seven. The lightning was getting closer, and that would mean total and utter disaster. No electricity... and parents.

"Please?" She begged her friend again. "I will do anything!"

"Anything?" Finchey replied, suddenly sounding interested.

"Yes!"

"Walk round to mine instead then!" He snorted with laughter, as though the prospect of her leaving the house in the rain was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

"Fine." She replied, stubbornly. A little bit of rain had never hurt anyone... that she knew of anyway.

"What?" Finchey replied in disbelief.

"You heard me. I will be over at yours in.... ten minutes?" She couldn't quite believe what she had said herself, but now she had said it, it wasn't like she could take it back.

"You sure...?" Finchey said nervously "Because it would be nice to see you."

"Yep." Pippa replied, knowing her voice was strained.

"Great, see you in ten!" The phone clicked off and Pippa had an overwhelming desire to thrown her phone against the wall in annoyance. What a hypocrite! Finchey was quite happy to make her walk through the rain.

Shrugging on her rain coat, she wrapped her scarf tightly round her neck, throwing an extra one on just to make sure.

"Tell her she can't do this- she isn't listening to me at all." Her mother huffed, stood next to her at the front door.

"We can't tell her what to do, she is old enough to make her own decisions. It's just a bit of heavy rain, and she isn't going that far." Her father replied, handing over her gloves.

"Seriously? 'a bit of heavy rain?' there is thunder and lightning!"

"Mum, I'll be fine, it's just round the corner. Dad, stop winding mum up, it's the reason I'm leaving in the first place. I will text you when I get there, and when I set off home. Love you both!" She cracked open the front door, the wind slamming it open wide.

She ran out, the wind battering against her face. Thunder clashed above her head, the rain soaking through her water proof. She ran the shortest route she could, across gardens and side roads, the mud underneath her squelching, coming up to her ankles.

Reaching the red door of her friend's house, she hammered on the door, hoping he would be able to hear her over the storm.

The door swung open and she bundled herself into the hallway. The door slamming shut behind her.