Blue Rain | Short Story Ver. | ✔️

Part One | Before.

She sat with her back against the traffic light pole, the dark of it warming her as it absorbed the hot, yellow sun. Her hair sat in ringlets, reflecting the sun in blueish rays. They bounced around as her left hand scurried away on the sketch pad that rested on her knees. Scarred black jeans strangled her legs and her pale knees jutting out through the rips. Ebony converse wrapped around her feet with the murky color of the once brilliant white laces glaring at you. A maroon sweater rested on her hunched shoulders, displaying only the determination an artist would have. People walked past her, back and forth, like a clock that will never stop ticking. While no one stopped to even glance at her, I watched intently from the coffee shop window, hoping she would look up just once. She was like a scarf in the wind, once she's in your reach she'll laugh and float away again. Always fleeting, never knowing.

In the time before we ever knew each other, I watched from afar. She was mesmerizing, yet isolating. All one could want was to know her, to be acknowledged by her. Like the light at the end of a tunnel, she soared into my life just as I started my junior year of high school. I first saw her a week before school started. She walked into the obscure coffee shop that I worked at with a lighthearted smile. Her blue hair was straightened and it reflected the soft overhead lights. It swung around her like a waterfall, with two thick pieces of her hair pulled back, allowing for minuscule strands of blue to frame her heart-shaped face. She ended up ordering a hot chocolate, but all I could do was stutter. She was the last person to come in, and all I did was watch her as she stared out the window with the layers of the crimson sunset resting on her face. She would occasionally glance down at her sketch pad to aggressively scribble something down. I would later find out that she was trying, and failing, to sketch the arch of my cheekbones.

The second time I talked to her, I was trying to hand her a brochure for the annual raffle, again, I couldn't string any two words into a sentence to talk to strangers, let alone talk to her. The ocean blue of her hair was fading at the roots, revealing just a crack of dark blonde, and was entwined with a loose French braid. She gave me the same lighthearted smile that she gave everyone, as if she could care less about anything. Her eyes were clouded and unreadable as always, but that couldn't deter me. The air was hot and sweaty from the students of the high school, but I remember not wanting to be anywhere else.

Two months into the school year, I had forgotten her. Of course we saw each other in the halls but I took no notice. This led to our first real interaction. I was in the bathroom, trying to go as slow as possible, dragging out the time until I had to go back to class. As I left the stall, I saw her. She was hovering over the sink, her hair hanging in waves around her face. Her back was arched, shaking with terror causing small beads of sweat to run down her bare arms. As I tiptoed closer I saw her face clearly in the mirror. Through the strands of blue that hung in her face, her normally warm eyes were bloodshot, her face blotched from tears, and her chapped lips quivering. I stood in shock, racking my brain to decide what to do. I nearly jumped from surprise as her eyes flickered to me through the mirror.

"What are you looking at," she growled at me with her shaking voice. My eyes widened and I sprinted back to class. The second my shoes left the cold tile of that rancid bathroom I regretted leaving. I ignored the conflict in my head and went back to my class.

The next day I walked the halls with a sense of guilt. I walked around with her petrified expression imprinted on the back of my eyelids. The second I saw her, I ran up to her, my stomach doing somersaults. Her eyes widened when she saw me. I leaned against the locker next to her while the cold metal sent shudders through my body.

"Are you okay?" A sense of surprise danced across her eyes. "I felt bad for just leaving yesterday and you seemed pretty terrified." The guilt in my stomach lurched twice as much when I saw the look on her face as her head tilted to stare at the floor. I waited for her to curse me out, to tell me how much of an idiot I was, but she never did. She glanced back up at me and gave me a smile that meant more than the faux ones she gave to everyone else.

That was the start of memories.