Virgin Sins | Harry Styles

George Summers

The rain fell like it meant to wash her away. Like it had means to keep hammering upon her pale skin until she smudged with the rest of the world like a Monet masterpiece. She loved rain. Her love for it was birthed from an early age, longing for the next time she would be reunited with it.

Dornwhich usually only had one type of weather, which consisted of dusty, hot air. If it wasn't that, it had maybe a slight drizzle of rain.

But this rainfall was different. It was consistent. It was heavy.

The whispering hum as fall of precipitation plummeted to the water-forsaken ground and the often unanticipated flashes of lightning or the rolls of ominous thunder, sounded to her ears.

Nina would have loved it all. Those facts were what truly created, in her opinion, a perfect rainy atmosphere. But today it mocked her. There is an intense anxiety to the rain, as if between the tumbling cloud and the earth, the rain is fearful of never reaching its destination.

She was walking unusually slowly, almost robotically, as if her brain was struggling to tell each foot to take the next step.

Nina had been wearing the same shoes for the past two weeks as the sky seemed to crash down upon Dornwhich's floors. They were an old pair, a pair she didn't mind getting ruined but never-less still loved. Once white they are now an off grey and the soles are worn as a thick layer of soil clung to it. The laces trail on the ground, over-long as they are and frayed.

With each step Nina watches, as the laces flop in its random pattern. Random but predictable at the same time.

Her blue raincoat she bought three years ago but had never worn, had now become almost a uniform. The hood extended over her head but still, strands of her hair poked out from under it to be drenched entirely.

Nina had left soon after she was brought back to class. She couldn't stay there acting as if she was fine, like there wasn't a gaping hole in her chest. She had never known the feeling of mourning.

Sure, she had lost the mother she had never met, but still then, she had never known. You cannot mourn what was never there.

She welcomed the feeling, thinking it would arrive the day her grandmother would leave the world. But, today it had shown up too early.

Her stomach felt sick and empty, like she had been forcefully punched the day before. There is an ache in her heart that comes and goes, seeming as though it returns with every breath she takes.

Her mind also wonders and if she stops to dwell for even a fraction of a second her face turns wet with tears. They roll silently passed her cracked lips, salty and cold, falling and morphing with the puddles that sloshed around her steps. Still then, walking along the glistening cement in the cold, winter-like air, she questioned whether this was what mourning felt like. Because, Ben wasn't dead.

He was just missing.

She couldn't even fathom the fact that a murder had taken place in Dornwhich, the last time that happened was seventeen years ago.

Nina walked home quietly in her footsteps unlike the thunderous thud to her ears that came from the instrument of her heart. She didn't want to ask her Grandmother to pick her up, she knew she would be out doing anything she could. It wasn't like Grandmother Mary to ever want to be home alone.

Nina didn't need to paranoid her already mentally-unstable guardian by telling her the events of today. So, she decides she will keep it to herself.

The sound of tires on wet pavement sounded from behind her and Nina didn't turn when the neon lights of it reflected beside her. What eventually caught her attention was the sound of a cheery, male voice.