Absolute

8

The storm had woken me from a dead sleep. I didn't even know where I was as the thunder shook the house shortly after the sky flashing white. I hadn't seen the lightning, only the light. So naturally, at first, I had thought a star had fallen from the skies. I was hopeful for a Lilo and Stitch situation, a cool little protector who could befriend Gabriel and I. Help us somehow.

But when I climbed out of bed and opened the window, I was not met with a blue colored alien with anger issues. The wind was loud enough that it rivaled the thunder, while the rain was near blinding; it fell in such heavy sheets. I had only opened the window halfway before deciding it was a bad idea, thinking it would wake up my family to let the storm noises freely into the house.

I didn't want to give my father a reason to disable the window altogether.

As I was switching gears to shut the glass a pair of voices drifted through the wind or cut over it I suppose. The voices were shouting, anger making the words that much louder. Recklessly, I climbed out the window and pushed it shut behind myself. The roof was wet, but my bare feet were able to keep me from slipping. I hadn't grabbed a jacket either.

Without caring about either of these things, I navigated towards the edge of the roof, closer to Gabriel's house as I caught a glimpse of his backyard. His room was dark, and I wasn't yet confident enough to approach his window.

Besides, the voices weren't coming from his room, but somewhere downstairs.

Lightning arched overhead and lit up the area. I was suddenly frightened someone would see me, but from where I was on the roof, no windows looked over me. I was also hidden from street view, but I still crouched lower, finding myself on my stomach as I inched to the edge of the roof.

My hair, which I'd taken the time after my shower the night before to brush out and make it mostly straight, had soaked up every drop of rain it could. Rain water, no, storm water, was running down the sides of my face and dripping onto the roof. My clothes had become heavy and clingy, but none of this mattered.

Over the edge of the roof, between the small space between our roofs, I could see into the side yard. The fence that divided our two properties, and the windows on the side of Gabriel's family's home. Only one window was lit up.

I adjusted how I was laying, pulling a hard object out from under my hip. Blinking past the water caught up in my eyelashes and dripping off my forehead, I was able to recognize the hard-metallic object as a small car. I knew Gabriel had a few, though he didn't like to play with them so much as customize their paintjobs.

This one, though, was rusted. I wondered how long it had been on the roof, where it had come from.

The shouting brought my attention back to the lit window, which I could only see the back of a couch through. The angle was bad, and on top of that, they seemed to have something blocking the window, like a blanket but it was several inches shy of covering the large window.

I thought about the windows of our house, which had come with blinds that father asked us to leave down in case we broke them. After Marie broke the ones in her room, he afforded curtains to the rooms being used and took down the blinds to store them.

The material covering the window swayed, and I saw a shadow fall across it.

I knew that the punishments that happened in Gabriel's home were different from the punishments that occurred in my own home. But to hear the punishments first hand, freezing on a roof as a storm punishes the earth around you...

Well, I was terrified.

It took me a moment to realize that the loud crack had not been lightning. That it had been the sound of glass splintering away from itself, separating like the land during Pandora. The car had flown from my hand thoughtlessly, and it bounced against the grass harmlessly. But it hit the glass perfectly. Right in the middle.