Before It Rains

The weeks that followed were practically a replay of homecoming, and something that I had hoped I wouldn’t have to go through again. But, quite frankly, when had hoping anything ever worked for me? Austin and I did out best to avoid each other, but seeing as we lived in the same dorm on the same floor, and had the same friends, avoiding conversation was the most we could do. And I was pretty damn miserable. I had been trying hard to avoid comparing my two suitors, but now that it had been brought up, I couldn’t help thinking about it. All the time.

I spent a lot of time in class, a lot of time at rehearsals, and a lot of time hanging out wherever Austin wasn’t. Rehearsals were strictly acting and singing for me because of my shoulder. Mr. Samuels would pace in front of the stage as we went through the blocking and ran lines, saying things like, “Come on, you two, feel the love!” Yeah, I wasn’t feeling it.

One day after a rehearsal, I turned to go back to my dorm and sulk some more when someone grabbed my good arm. I turned around and saw Jeremy. At least he hadn’t grabbed the other arm. It still had another week to go in its sling. I tilted my head back and sighed.

“What do you want?” I asked, huffily.

“We’re going to eat,” he said, dragging me in the direction of the cafeteria. “It’s seven o’clock and I’m hungry.”

“Well what if I’m not hungry?” I protested.

“Do I look like I give a damn?” An excellent point. I let him pull me over to the cafeteria and we found a table, which I noted was about twenty feet away from the one at which Austin, Will, and Kai were sitting. I waved and Kai and Will waved back. Kai smacked Austin in the shoulder and he put his hand up in a lame greeting. Will pointed to an empty seat, but I pointed to Jeremy and sat down with him.

“Alright, what do you actually want?” I asked.

“Your acting sucks,” he said bluntly, raising his eyebrows at me and shoving a forkful of pasta into his mouth.

“You seriously almost give me a concussion, drop me off the stage, and then think you have the authority to tell me how well I can or cannot act? That’s just low!” I said, giving him dagger eyes.

“Hey, you didn’t let me finish. Your acting sucks since this,” he said, pointing his finger over his shoulder towards my friends’ table, to me, and back again without giving them a glance. I looked down at my plate. So he was going to bring that up, was he?

“That’s soooo none of your business,” I muttered loud enough so he could here.

“Yeah, that’s where you’re wrong. It actually is. Because whatever happened there left you without the heart to do anything remotely close to acting, and if you suck, we both do.” So it was his ego. I should have known. “Mr. Samuels asked me to talk to you.” Okay… or not. I hadn’t realized I was that bad.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? But there isn’t anything I can do about it. I’ll try harder tomorrow, I promise.”

“You’ve got to fix it, Sam. Talk to him,” he demanded.

I looked up at him. “You really don’t get it, do you? I can’t talk to him. He doesn’t want to be friends with me. He hates me.”

Jeremy stared me down for what felt like an hour. “I think you’re the one who doesn’t get it. One. If he hated you, he wouldn’t have asked you out in the first place. Two. Just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean that he has any reason to hate you. He’s embarrassed, and he thinks that you hate him. Three. He still wants to be friends with you, but he’ll seem desperate if he talks to you first, so he won’t.” He took another bite of food. “So talk to him, please, and save all of us.”

I shook my head. I was being stubborn now. But he had made points that had actually seemed valid to me. I’d have to think this over, but for now, I wasn’t giving in.

He sighed and stood up, grabbing his tray off the table. “Whatever,” he said as he left me sitting there. “You’re seriously making a mistake.”

Any other time I would have felt like a loser sitting by myself, but I just wasn’t in the mood. I slowly finished my food, and was just taking the final sips of my milk when Will came over to my table. I looked quickly behind him, saw that Austin and Kai were no longer in the cafeteria, and relaxed a little bit.

“Would you care to be escorted back to your room?” he asked in an entirely fake but somewhat convincing English accent.

I sucked through my straw until I could hear the noise that let me know I had drunk every last drop of milk and then I stood up. “But of course,” I said smiling. “Only if you give me a piggy back, though.” He rolled his eyes and hoisted me up onto his back, grabbing my tray off the table as he headed for the door.

“So, how’s Jeremy?” he asked as he trekked back across the campus.

“Fine. We were just talking about play stuff.” Close enough.

“You didn’t seem very happy,” he noted.

“Yeah, well… it was just a long rehearsal. I wasn’t in a very good mood.” True again.

He seemed to accept that for an answer and we were silent as we walked through the dark. It was October still, and the amount of daylight was dwindling fast as November quickly approached.

“I think Ruben’s chilling in our room tonight,” Will told me as he dropped me at the door to my room. “You can come on over too for as long as you’re allowed… or longer… whatever.”

I shook my head. “You know I won’t accept that invitation, right? Besides, I’m exhauster. And there’s no way in hell I’ll get any sleep over there,” I said, pointing across the hall.

Will shrugged and walked over to his room. “Worth a try. ‘Night.”

“’Night,” I replied, opening the door to my room as he vanished into his. I flicked on the lights, and then, on second though, I turned them back off and changed into long pajama pants and a sweatshirt. If I had thought it was cold in September, late October was a completely different story. I grabbed my laptop off the dresser where I’d left it and, crawling under my covers, powered it up. The blue glow was eerie in the dark.

I decided to log onto Facebook, which I hadn’t been on since before coming here. Strangely, I hadn’t found myself checking it at all. It opened up to my page, and I looked to the corner with the notifications. 94 notifications and 47 friend requests. Completely insane.

I went through the friend requests first, pretty much all of whom I knew. Among them were Will, Kai, Shane, Asia, Max, Elise, Shannon, and Austin. I thought for a couple seconds about the last one, and then gave in and hit accept. I then went through the notifications, many of which were pictures Hanna had taken over the summer. The rest were pretty much all comments asking about my whereabouts, how I was, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I responded to some of them, but figured Hanna and Layla had spread the news in the past two months.

A little icon popped up on the bottom of my screen.

Max: heyo! you accepted my friend request!
Sam: I haven’t been on
Max: well it’s about timeeee
Sam: lol
Max: why aren’t you at the crazy party over here?
Sam: didn’t feel like it. I g2g to bed soon anyway… soooo tired.
Max: …
Max: ok
Max: night, then
Sam: see you

I closed out of Facebook, and, feeling nice, sent my mom an email letting her know we were still alive, after which I closed down my computer and tried to fall asleep.

“Samanthaaa!” someone sang in an opera-esque falsetto. I sat up in bed, squinting in the bright sunlit room.

“What the hell? I blinked a couple of times. Shane and Max were standing at the foot of my bed. Or, at least, Max was. Shane was standing on the couch. There was not a doubt in my mind that he was the one who…

“Samanthaaa! Wake up!” he sang.

I glared at him. “I’m up. What are you doing in here?” By this time he was bouncing up and down on the couch. I turned to Max instead.

“We’re signing out and taking the bus to the mall. You’re coming,” he said, answering my questioning look.

“Who’s going?” I asked.

“Not that it matters, you’re still coming anyways, but you, me, him, Will, Kai, Ruben, Austin, Asia, and Elise.” I gave him a stubborn look which he returned mockingly and then threw some clothes at me. “Let’s go.”

I reluctantly got out of bed and headed to the bathroom, locking the door behind me. With Shane in the room, you couldn’t be too careful.

I put of the dark wash jeans and long-sleeved green shirt, slid on the black flats I had left in the bathroom a couple nights previous, and pulled my hair back into a black headband. I wasn’t in the mood for makeup, so I put on a little mascara and eyeliner to keep from looking completely dead and splashed my face with cold water.

I stepped out of the bathroom, took my bag and coat off the couch, and grabbed Shane’s leg, pulling him off the furniture. We left, taking the elevator down, and found the rest of the crew standing outside waiting for us. I immediately went to Asia and Elise, who gave me a hug.

We took the city bus. I ended up sitting next to Max, which was completely fine with me. When we reached the mall, the guys all headed for the arcade, and the three of us followed. We’d never really played video games at home, but it seemed that Ruben had practiced in the two months we’d been at school. I however, was hopeless and Elise and I watched Shane and Will battle it out in some zombie game for ten minutes until we got bored. We then took Asia away from Ruben, who was trying to teach her how to play some game with apparently deadly bunnies (I didn’t feel so bad, she was hopeless too) and headed out into the rest of the mall, telling the guys we’d meet them at the Disney store in two hours.

We went and browsed around at two different stores. Elise tried on few things, one of which was an eggplant colored skirt that hit her just above the knees. She looked fabulous in it and bought a purple and silver scarf to match.

Around eleven o’clock I started getting hungry, and it was then I realized I hadn’t actually eaten breakfast. We went to the food court and got ice cream (nutritious, I know, right?). We hit a couple more stores before our two hours were up, and both Asia and Elise insisted that I find a hat and gloves. I came from Florida and hadn’t really thought it was necessary, but I was quickly finding that I was indeed going to need them. We found some that went with the colors in my jacket. I modeled them for Elise and Asia in the store, and they clapped. Then, out of nowhere, there was a wolf whistle. We turned around to see two guys (and hot ones at that), sitting on the bench at the end of the aisle laughing.

I walked down the aisle pretending I was a model, runway walk and all, and stopped in front of them. They looked me up and down and then looked at each other. I took a seat on the lap of the one on the left. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and square glasses.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Hot,” he said.

“Definitely,” said his friend.

“Excellent,” I said standing up. “I think I’ll get them.” I walked away from them then, back towards Asia and Elise at the other end, who were completely losing it. I swung my hips, turned my head around and flipped my hair, blew the guys a kiss, and then we dashed for the checkout. By the time we made it out of the store, we were all practically in tears.

“Sam, I can’t… I can’t believe you ju-just did that!” Asia said gasping for breath.

“Did what?” We turned around and saw Will, followed by the rest of the guys coming up behind us. We were headed for our meeting destination, and apparently they were too.

“Never mind,” I said, still giggling. “You had to be there.”

We continued to walk as a group towards the Disney store, just being that cool. All the kids in there were under ten, and were there with their parents. We just waltzed right it. Two Mickey Mouse lollipops (Shane, of course) and one hour later, we were ready to catch the bus back. We congregated at the front of the store.

“Everyone accounted for?” Shane asked. Wait…

“Nope,” I called. “Austin isn’t here… or Ruben…. or Asia…” I listed. “I’ll go look for them, you guys go wait for the bus.”

I started at the back of the store, deciding I’d make my way towards the front. I checked in the stuffed animal corner, and at the mini merry-go-round, and found nobody. I then walked over to the area with a couple of couches with Mickey and Minnie’s heads sewn onto the cushions. I found them there, alright. Well, I still had no clue where Austin was. Asia and my brother, however, were sitting on the couch… making out.

“PDA! PDA! This is a CHILDREN'S store!” I yelled, covering my eyes. They moved apart and looked over at me. I do believe I received dirty looks from both of them.

“Sammy… really?” Ruben said, looking half embarrassed and half annoyed.

“Well, I’m just going to pretend I didn’t see that, and tell you that we’re leaving,” I announced walking towards the bookshelves. I should’ve seen that one coming, but I didn’t. I’d been so absorbed in… other matters… that I’d completely missed it.

I found Austin sitting on a stool reading ‘The Little Mermaid’. Wow.

I approached him slowly. “Hey.” He didn’t look up. “Hey, Aus, we’re leaving now.” He closed the book without looking at me, put it back on the shelf, and followed me out. We got to the bus stop, and it was empty. I checked the schedule and sighed.

“The bus left at two thirty. It’s two thirty five,” I said, mostly to myself, but also so he could hear. I plopped down on the bench. The next bus came at three. Austin stood there and studied the bus schedule for another million years, although it couldn’t have taken him that long to read it. He sat at the exact opposite end of the bench.

“So… how was ‘The Little Mermaid’?” I asked him, trying to be nice. He just glanced at me. It was going to be a very long half hour.