When It Rains Read online

CHAPTER TWO - The red sunrise.

  I was still sleeping in my bed when Ryan woke me up at 3am via throwing small rocks and pebbles against my bedroom window. Irritated, I rolled out of bed and landed with a loud thump on the carpet before picking my limbs up off the floor. It was honestly still dark out, but I could hear his voice – enthusiastic as ever – chirping outside.

  Stumbling across my room, I made my way to the door of my mini balcony before opening the door and stepping outside. Ryan’s voice hit me before the cool night breeze did. “Good morning!” He yelled, looking a little bit better than gorgeous with the moonlight lighting up his presence and his usual smile spread out across his face.

  “It’s still night,” I groaned. “Go back to bed.” I left the balcony door open, but went back to snuggle underneath my blankets.

  I could hear him screaming outside for me to get my butt up and I was pretty sure he was eventually going to wake up the neighbourhood if I didn’t stop him. “Get up!” He shouted. “It’s going to be a beautiful day today! Let’s go see the sunrise!”

  “Five more minutes!” I begged, burying my head in my pillow. “Please!”

  Ryan laughed, but continued to pester me. “C’mon or Romeo is going to keep throwing rocks at your window until one actually hits you.”

  A chuckle tumbled out of my mouth as I made my way back out to the balcony. Elbows resting against the metal railing, and face resting on the palm of my hands, I peered down at Ryan with amusement. “Romeo? Really?” I teased. “Where? Because all I see is a Juliet.”

  Even in the dim lighting, I could make out the face Ryan gave me which made me laugh because he looked even more like a girl with that kind of displeased, pouty expression. “Alright. Alright.” I muttered. “Just let me throw on some clothes and I’ll meet you down there in five.”

  Quickly, I threw on my older brother’s hand-me-downs and before five minutes even passed, I was flying out the front door.

  After we talked to each other that day, Ryan and I met up to eat lunch for the last few days of school. It’s been two weeks since the start of summer vacation and he was still buzzing around me like a bee.

  In a way, he was like a puppy with its butt set on fire, always yipping about until he forced me to become his new friend, until he invited himself over to my house, until he invaded my room because he wanted to see what it looked like.

  “What does your room look like?” He had chirped.

  “A room,” I had replied, but the boy doesn’t seem to be able to take ‘no’ for an answer.

  It seemed like he wanted me to join him on his summer adventures too, and although some of it does sounded really cool, I was a little less than thrilled for waking up so early for a mere sunrise.

  Ryan laughed when he saw me. “Did a bird build a nest out of your hair?” He said of my bed-head. “Do you have eggs in there?”

  “Oh shut up!” I said and hopped inside his beat up convertible his dad brought him when he turned sixteen two months ago.

  “I can’t.” He replied as he started his car engine. “I promised myself I was going to give honest opinions from now on, remember?”

  He did tell me.

  That was also the reason that his friends shunned him. It turned out that one of Ryan’s new found reasons for life was to live a life that wasn’t a lie, so he wrote up what he really thought about every one of his friends and told them to stick it. Apparently he sent the e-mails to them all at once and within hours was cut off contact.

  I was surprised the guys he offended didn’t gather to beat him up when he confessed to me the real reason nobody would talk to him, but I suppose they felt the same way I did about Ryan.

  He was just too pretty.

  Beating him up would feel like beating up a girl – sort of unfair.

  I sighed and turned away from Ryan as I felt the wind blowing through my hair. It was the first time I ever rode in a convertible and it was nothing like the movies made it up to be. The early morning wind was blowing the wrong way and my shoulder length, black hair was forming a steep mountain on my face. Ryan laughed and called me a gorilla all the way to Crescent View Hill, a cliff that stood at the edge of our town.

  By the time we got there it was almost 4am and Ryan sat talking about writing a song for the mid-summer talent contest that took place down by City Park every year. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the sky had lightened to a soft, hazy black. Ryan got out of the car and brought out his guitar from the trunk. We sat outside on the hood of his car as he played a few notes for me to hear.

  “Not bad. I didn’t know you can play.”

  “Yeah?” He smiled. “I want to join the talent contest if I can. I’ve never played the guitar or sung before in front of any of my old friends.”

  “Why? You’re not the best, but you’re pretty darn good.”

  He shrugged. “Because I’m not the best, exactly as you said it. I’m not ashamed of not being the best, but I don’t want people to see me trying. It’s embarrassing. I mean, it’s not exactly cool if you have to try hard at something to be good at it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Trying your best to achieve something is the best feeling right after succeeding after giving your best.”

  “I know,” he said. Smiling, he stretched his legs in front of him. “That’s why I’m going to do it this summer at the talent show. I’ve got major stage fright issues – because I’m constantly worried how people might think of me – but I want to overcome it. I want to play it on stage even if people start booing.”

  “You’re being melodramatic,” I said with an eye roll before smiling up at him. “You know I’ll be there to cheer you on no matter what.”

  His special smile blossomed like a sunflower on his face and I knew by that look – the look where his eyes were nearly the size of the moon – that he got a weird idea in his head. “Want me to teach you?” He asked, holding up his guitar.

  “No, it’s really okay.”

  “Want me to teach you?”

  “I said, it’s fine.”

  “Want me to teach you?”

  This was exactly what I was talking about before. Ryan had a tendency to annoy the hell out of you until you finally gave him what he wanted. “Yes, I’d love to learn Ryan,” I said depressingly.

  He quickly showed me all the guitar strings and taught me how to play a simple song which I completely blew. I couldn’t even hold the guitar properly. “Here, sit here instead. It’s hard to teach you the proper way to hold it and play it if you sit like that.” He spread out his legs and motioned me to sit in between them.

  I shook my head. That would be awkward. Usually it would be fine – I felt more comfortable being around guys than I did with girls anyway, but that wasn’t always the case with Ryan. It’s not like I wasn’t at ease when I was with him, he was fun to be with, but there was something else.

  All I knew was I would have sat there without a second thought if it was any other guy, but not Ryan. Ryan was different.

  I got weird butterflies when I was around him.

  He frowned, took the guitar from my hands and stood it next to his car. Then he wrapped his arms around my stomach and pulled me over one of his legs and I found myself exactly where he wanted me to sit, in between his legs. He picked his guitar up and parked it on my lap. With both his hands placed on top of mine, we played the Itsy Bitsy Spider together.

  When he finally freed me from his arms, the sun was peeking at us through a vivid rainbow of yellow, pink, baby blue, and violet. Ryan sighed. “I really can’t wait for the talent contest, but the problem is that I have to write an original song for the show. They won’t let me sing just any song. What can I write about?”

  “Life?” I suggested with mild interest. “Why don’t you write about your new found glory of life?”

  He laughed. “Don’t tease me just because you’ve always known what makes you happy. I just needed a little time to understand myself, that’s all.” He looked up at the
sky. The colors were changing now, slowly forming a painting in the horizon. “I don’t even know how to write a good essay, I can’t write a song.”

  “Just let the words form in your head,” I suggested. “Forget what the song is going to be about. Just play the melody written in your heart and the words will follow them.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  The sunrise was in full bloom now, with its sudden orange-red warmth enveloping me. The baby birds were awake and were chirping away as the mother birds looked for food. A soft, fresh breeze flew by me, brushing my tangled and still un-brushed hair back. Ryan and I sat there for a long time just looking at the sunrise without any exchange of words.

  “The melody in my heart,” he said abruptly, with his guitar still tucked nicely in his lap. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, opened them and started playing a nostalgic melody. Then he began to sing, his voice like an angel’s.

  I wouldn’t ask you a single thing

  If you just grabbed my hand and ran

  Let out just a single word

  I’ll do whatever I can

  Oh because I’d do anything

  Jump off a cliff if it’s for you

  Baby, I’d do anything

  Anything, if it’s for you