Eight PM is a long time to still be out for a sheltered girl like me. I grew up in a gated home, no friends around the neighborhood, and mostly it was just me and my imagination.
When the weather was hot and the power was out, my sister would lift our mattress out of our bedroom window and onto the roof. It was always windy at that second-storey height and the sun felt good on my skin. Somehow it was always a thrill being that high up above the ground; it was like anything was possible. You could see the sky, maybe even touch it, shout out loud without giving a damn if anybody heard you, talk, laugh, sing, play.
My sisters would stay huddled up on the mattress, a safe distance away from the edge. But not me. I'd tease death and inch closer and closer to the drop the older I got. I wasn't especially brave when I was a kid, I never even learned how to climb trees or play with spiders and bugs. But again, being on that roof felt like you could do anything.
Wind whipping against your face, you could even fall.
But it was always better up there at night. Even if the power came back on, the mattress would stay on the roof until it was time for bed. At night, without fail, we always saw it. That faint mist of a cloud, small and pale against the night sky, circling our house at a fast pace. We didn't know what it was, but somehow we felt protected by it. Was it an angel? A magical barrier meant to keep evil out?
Those were the theories my childish mind came up with. But I guess it wasn't anything but a strange atmospheric phenomena, because even as it circled, it didn't stop everything from collapsing.
No, it wasn't the house that broke down. It was everything I ever knew. Our world shifted, our first earthquake, and I was too young to see the cracks it had left in me.
I never saw that cloud again. It didn't follow us where we moved. Maybe it's still up there. Maybe it's gone. Who knows? The new owners never put their mattresses on the roof.
