Those Things Beautiful.

It was raining out. My god, was it raining out. The sky was dark and everything was bleak. Nothing seemed to be alive that day, and nothing seemed like it wanted to be. Everything gave up, just like that, and let the rain pour on.

“Hailey,” Mom said, “wake up.”

But I was already awake, and everything seemed dark anyway. I could have been sleeping, the world was so dark. I opened up my eyes to glance out the window, peering through the rain-streaked glass. Today was supposed to be a good day, a day of new endeavors. Today wasn’t supposed to rain. Both of those statements were contradicted; the day was slower than anything, slower than any other day I’d had to live through before. I hated the drive to southern California, and I hated being away from my old home.

“We’re almost here,” my sister, Dana, exclaimed from beside me. She was starting to pack up her crayons and coloring books already, putting them back in their boxes so that she could continue coloring with them after we arrived at the new house.

The new house. Thinking about it made me sick; I didn’t want to live here, in Huntington Beach, California of all places. It was too hot, and humid, and-- today-- rainy. I was certain that if I was allowed to stay in Detroit where I had lived for nearly sixteen years, the weather would have been far from dismal. It was terrible, just the feeling of the city that my parents had forced me to drive along with them to. It was the last place in the world that I wanted to be.

“I hate this place,” I muttered sullenly. “Does it rain like this all the time here?”

“No,” Dad told me sternly, “and you’re being a bit of a drama queen, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Maybe I was being a drama queen, but I didn’t care what my Dad thought. All I wanted was for him to hear my opinion. I wanted him to know clearly that I did not want to be there, that I did not support his decision in moving our entire family after living in one place for so long. I would not make friends as easily as I had when I lived in Michigan. Parents don’t care about that kind of stuff though, because they’re so easily assured by their own minds that their kids will make friends. They’ve got to.

Well, whatever. I had two years left until I could move back to Michigan, or travel wherever the hell I wanted to around the whole country.

Dad drove through the city, passing street after street. When we did finally get to the house, the rain hadn’t let up in the slightest, and the moving truck was not there yet.

I stared out the window as Dad parked the car in the driveway with a heavy sigh. The rain was coming down in sheets, heavy drops falling from the thick gray clouds that took control over the sky.

“Damn it,” Mom cursed. “Dale, when did the moving truck asshole say that he was going to get here?”

“I don’t remember, Emily,” he said, calm as ever. Dad was good about not getting worked up over things like this that were just mildly annoying. Mom, on the other hand, was terrible at controlling her temper.

Dana regretted putting her coloring books away. I regretted letting my parents drag me all the way to California.