Teardrops

Chapter 5: Rain Rain Go Away

Chapter 5

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Shelly's Point Of View

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

It was raining again. Have you ever seen one of those movies or read one of those books where the guy and the girl finally get each other and they kiss in the rain? I've read thousands. The rain has captured my attention for as long as I can remember. Traumatizing experiences help me to remember a lot, so it is actually saying something.

As a child, I loved the outdoors. (Before I learned how to be scared of everything.) Even before I could walk I crawled around picking up bugs and stuff. I was my brothers accomplice in everything, before he left. Years of being an only child ended in him having a little baby sister for an assistant, and he loved it.

I remember waking up as a 3 year old to see him jumping on my bed.

"Wanna go on a treasure hunt??"

I always did.

The rain put an end to that. I felt trapped, not allowed to go outside and play. At first, I hated it.

"Rain, rain, go away, come again another day!" except that I really didn't want the rain to come back at all.

After my sister was born, I asked my mom why she paid more attention to her and my brother than she did to me.

"You don't need me." She had said. But how would she know?? She didn't even talk to me hardly anymore!! I had expected denial, but all I heard was,

"You're not as important, Shelly. Your brother is the first born son! He's our only son and nothing can compare to that! And a baby? How can a whiny overgrown toddler compare with the innocence of a child like your sister?" The words were said as she cradled my sister, then 2 years old and no longer resembling anything that included my definition of cute.

What do you do when your mother tells you that?

I stared out the window at the rain. I remember crying the next day at school and the excuse it had given the girls to torment me even more than they had previously done. It rained later that day. That was when I first began to compare the rain to tears.

Is it a teardrop's fault that you are sad? Of course not!! And it wasn't the rain's fault I couldn't play, either. It was my mother's. The one who didn't love me.

A tear rolled down my cheek and I scooped it up with my finger, staring at it with wide eyes while the rain pounded against my window.

I began to love the rain. It's smell was clean, and fresh, and felt like freedom. I had never been allowed to go out into the rain, so that's all I wanted to do. In elementary school when it rained, we were cooped up inside a dark, smelly room and forced to watch random parts of a movie someone had picked and where we never got to see either the beginning or the end.

When I could, I loved to tilt my face back to the sky and let the raindrops caress my face like kisses I'd never had.

I guess you could say I'm kinda messed up.

I heard the door crack open a bit, and the teardrop on my finger wobbled and slid off onto the sheets where it sunk in and disappeared, like the invisible scars on my heart.

"Hey. Shelly you awake?" a whisper came through.

"Uh-huh."

I forced my body to roll over to face the door instead of the window. Lexi stumbled in with a few Target bags, but froze when she saw my face. She flung the bags into a chair and was by my side before I could make a sound.