You've Become the Rain

When I got up the next morning, my mother was gone. Three empty wine bottles sat beside the couch, but my mother’s aged, tired body was nowhere to be found. My heart began thumping uncontrollably, anxious at the thought that she had left without a word. Because as little love as she gave me, she was another person that tied me down to the life I was living.

Pushing my hair away from my face, I walked over to the couch, looking down at it wearily as if waiting for her body to appear. Trickles of dark liquid dribbled down the worn material, enlightening me to the fact that she had only just disappeared, but not to the knowledge of when she would come home.

Thoughts danced through my head, plaguing me with worries and fears that had always been pushed to the back of my mind. Before I knew what I was doing I was running up the stairs, and pushing open a door that had been closed to me for the last ten years.

“Olivia?” I whispered, walking over to the side of her bed. I willed my eyes not to look around her room, already worried by what I would see. But they were defiant, darting around the room hungrily and searching for evidence that my sister was still who I longed that she was.

But her room was empty. There were no pictures, no posters and no trinkets scattered around the room. Her walls were white and bland, parts of the paint scratched away to reveal the pink floral wallpaper beneath. Clothes were tossed around the floor, and all that sat on her desk was a single pen and a black bra. She didn’t hide who she was, and what she felt. My room was ignorant of everything I was, and masked me as someone I could never be, even if I tried. I felt more at home in her room than I did in mine, and that made me wonder whether the two of us were more alike than I had thought.

But then I looked at the scattered clothes, and remembered the man who had left her room. I couldn’t be my sister, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be me.

“Olivia?” I said, louder this time, my hands clenched in fists as I stared at her crumbled body. The little girl in me wanted to climb under the covers and crawl in beside her, and have her arms around me, holding me like she used to. The little girl cried for love and for everything she’d lost. But the big girl, the one on the outside, stood with a concrete mask on her face. And she simply watched.

A groan left her lips as she rolled over, curling her arms around her body and pushing herself deeper under the blankets. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes clenched shut so that I knew she was sleeping.

My heart froze, my mouth dry as I watched her. Her body shuddered, her hands clenching around the pillow; dragging, tugging, pulling. Despair claimed her face as she sighed, pulling the pillow beneath her and wrapping her arms around it as though it was her lifeline.

“What are you sorry for?” I asked quietly, gripping on to the fleeting hope that she was awake and was talking to me, or even the hope that she would whisper something to me in her drowsy haze that she would never say face to face. But she didn’t. A deep sigh left her lips, her features softening into a child-like expression that I hadn’t seen for years. And then the pillow was out of her arms and she was lying on her stomach, her face buried deep within her pillow, hindering me from ever hearing the words.

The words that I wanted to say died on my lips, and suddenly, I forgot how to breathe again. Mum’s gone, I wanted to whisper. I’m scared, I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t. Because I realized that in my attempt to bring us closer, I’d lost the road that lead me to my sister. I knew no more about her than I did about Kennedy.

And so I turned away. I closed the door as if I’d never opened it, and I pushed the image of my fragile sister to the back of my mind. And just like the blood, just like the look in his eyes and the words of the letter, they were pushed down deep inside my body, gone but never forgotten.



I went back to the graveyard. It was pouring with rain, the droplets soaking my red hair and causing it to cling to my face. My body was heavy as I walked, but the water dribbling down my body made me feel helplessly alive. It made me wonder why people seemed to shy away from the rain, and hid inside whenever a storm was out. To me the sun was ignorant of the true nature of life, and brought along false promises of happiness and warmth when in actual fact, life was very cold.

The sun was ignorant. It shone no matter what people were feeling, no matter how deprived of happiness they were or how miserable their life was. It assumed that everyone felt its warmth and that we all shone in its presence, when the truth was that some of our lights had died out long ago. The rain didn’t. The rain was cold and abrupt; exactly the way life was. The cold made me happier than the warmth, simply because I could feel it. I loved the rain.

Although I didn’t want to admit it, I wasn’t going to the graveyard to visit Liam. My curious mind was instead seeking out a clue that would bring me closer to knowing him, and although I felt guilty about that I couldn’t help the ripple of excitement that shot through me.

My stomach churned as I walked into the graveyard, my eyes immediately seeking out the place where my brother lay. It was at times like this that I felt like digging in through the weed-stricken dirt, my hands scratching and clawing the mud away to take a glimpse at what was underneath. I wanted to rip open the wooden cage that held him, and take a glimpse into the green eyes that had guided me through my childhood. And it didn’t matter to me that it was more than likely that those eyes were gone, along with the smile that made him who he was, because even six feet under the ground he was still the closest person to me in the world.

But not today. Today I tore my eyes away, allowing them to drift over to the spot where I had first seen Kennedy. My motives were selfish and unreasonable, but every time I thought about discovering more my heart would flip and my stomach would churn, and I knew that I had to do it.

The rain was my guide as I walked, my mind spinning as it tried to remember the place that I had seen him. My steps were short and my breath sharp as I walked past the graves, a cold shiver rippling through me as I backed away from the safety of my brother. I pushed a strand of my dark hair away from my eyes, twirling a ringlet of hair around my finger to lessen my anxiety.

Green eyes shot out across the atmosphere, reading every word imprinted before them and ignoring the pang of a guilty conscience for disturbing the peace. I licked my lips, a shudder simmering through the tips of my skin as I pushed a branch away from my path.

It was then that I saw it. There were two graves, identical in design, sitting alone behind a tall, willowy tree. A single yellow rose sat on top of each of them, slightly wilted and dampened by the harshness of the rain. The graves themselves were small; tiny in fact, and had deep, black writing imprinted into the stone. What stood out to me was the fact that the graves were connected and didn’t separate in the middle, but instead formed a wave-like structure that stood up only slightly from the ground.

Holding my breath, I walked towards the graves, pushing the tree’s long, tethered leaves away from my view. The noise I was making seemed suddenly immense; although the truth was that I was barely making a sound. When I stopped beside the graves I lowered myself onto my knees, ignoring the fact that the mud below me was painting my jeans a grubby brown colour.

Here lays the bodies of Amelia and Jack Brock, the bones of a loving family and the light of many lives.
In life they were shamelessly loved, and in death they will be eternally remembered.
Connected in life, together in death. In God’s light they will always be one.

I’d stopped breathing again, but it wasn’t because I’d forgotten. It was because of the fact that I had been resentful of my life for years, choosing to delve in my own misery instead of being thankful for what I did have. And suddenly, his eyes didn’t seem so dark anymore, and his personality didn’t seem so misplaced. I knew they were connected, and it made me realise that my assumptions, just like everyone else’s, had been wrong. Completely wrong.

“They were my parents.” The voice came from behind me, surprisingly loud against the humming of the rain. I spun around, my heart pounding in my chest, guilt and regret consuming me as my eyes met his.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, heat flooding my cheeks as I stood up and stepped backwards. “I shouldn’t have looked. I d-didn’t know they were your parents.”

To my surprise, the corners of his lips tilted up as he gave me a small smile; friendlier than the others he had given me. “Don’t lie to me. You came here looking for them.” His eyes glimmered slightly as I stood in silence, unsure of what to say. “You don’t think that I did the same for you?” he laughed, the sound reverberating in my ears as I watched him, the flush on my cheeks darkening to a point where it was as scarlet as my hair. “Only I didn’t wait a month to do it.”

“It was my brother,” I blurted, the words coming out before I had a chance to think.

It was silent for a moment, his gaze dark and unreadable as he stared at me. It made me wonder how stupid I must have looked with my clothes drenched from the rain, my mascara running down my face and mud covering my jeans. I suddenly felt very small and young where I stood, as if I had shrunk by several inches and was standing there, looking up at him through imperatively perfect eyes. “I figured,” he finally replied, giving me a small smile that told me everything.