Back in the Rain

by Elen Chase

  "This university is too big! And she isn't on any social network! Can you believe that? You can find anyone on social networks these days. But I just found one photo of her. She's in the cafe stand group."

  "Then you can use it to find her, right? Like, ask the people in the picture with her."

  "But if she isn’t on any social network it means she doesn't want to be found by strangers… and I admire that. She must be the type who wants to meet people in person, I can totally tell."

  "Now I sort of want to see her."

  "I set my eyes on her, got it?"

  "Sean…" As if I could think of any other girl but Shallie. That was sort of gloomy for me to say, so I decided to let his unhappy comment slide. He didn't do it on purpose after all. He opened the group picture on his watchpad and I understood immediately who he was talking about. The most beautiful girl he had ever seen, indeed. I breathed my coffee out of my nose, yelling her name. "Chloe?!"

  Chapter 24

  "Dan, I sort of got into trouble," I told him when we met again at the library.

  "What happened?"

  "My friend is in love with Chloe," I said. Dan didn't seem very surprised.

  "Drew, do you have any idea how many guys are in love with Chloe in the entire city?"

  "But he wants me to introduce her to him." He turned to look at me without saying a word. "Will you help me?" I asked him.

  "No fucking way," he said, coldly. "Why do you think I would help a guy I don't even know hook up with my ex?" I could totally understand his point of view.

  "Can you do it for me?"

  "No."

  "Please?"

  He sighed. "Don't you have something more serious to ask me?"

  "Oh, right! Did you find the guy?"

  "Yup, he's one who usually doesn't skip class, just like I thought."

  "Eh? How did you know that?"

  "I can tell from the way he uses socials."

  "It didn't look like he was using them too much."

  "I rest my case."

  "So, what are we doing with him?"

  "I'll keep an eye on him for a while, while you work on those files."

  "You're not gonna help me?"

  "I'll help you whenever I can. I'll check them out tonight."

  "Tonight?"

  "I plan on staying here in Uptown tonight. You can go home with the bike and come back tomorrow."

  "Why do you want to stay here?"

  "I have something to do tomorrow morning, quite early."

  "I still don't get it."

  "I can't drive yet with this hand, so it's better if I stay here," he said, gesturing with the hand he had punched the wall with.

  "But I can bring you wherever you want to go."

  "..."

  "What's with that silence?"

  "Tomorrow is May 5."

  The 5th of May. The day An died. It would be exactly seven years since that day. I felt a great loneliness spreading all over me. Like he already told me, he used to go to the graveyard every year on our birthday and on her anniversary. But I never did. I wasn't ready to go there, even after seven years had passed. "I..." I tried to find the courage to say that I’d go too.

  "I'll stay here," he said and dropped the subject just like that. Then he cut the tape around the box with a pair of scissors he got from one of the shelves. I went to help him, in silence, until we got all the material on the desk. We started by checking what kind of things Robinson had gathered; there were four different editions of the “New Era Eulogy,” and two piles of articles from several newspapers. The first was all about the sect and the murders they committed sixty years ago. The second was full of obituaries and articles about the death of girls and young women from the past thirty years. That was the category with more data. Robinson was clearly searching for clues, and apparently he had found it inside that.

  "So he suspected it all restarted thirty years ago," I said.

  "It seems so." All the titles of the articles seemed completely unrelated to each other and especially to the case. "I think he got a lot of random stuff," said Dan. "Most of these articles might be completely useless, so we'll have to figure out which ones to exclude as we go on with the research. I'll start reading the books first; you read the articles and take notes. Then we'll do the opposite. We'll try to find references to the books in the articles and also if there’s any difference between the four editions. Let’s be especially careful about the third one, it's from thirty years ago."

  "I think that’s a good idea," I said, and we began immediately. Dan sat on the sofa reading the first edition of the book, while I started from the articles about the girls. It probably wasn't the best choice for my nerves, since I still had my sister's death anniversary and Shallie's murder in my mind. Those articles and obituaries were clearly there because Robinson was looking for girls murdered by the new sect. So I put away all the ones of girls dying from illness or in the hospital in front of other people, marking those with a more mysterious background. After hours spent reading and categorizing those papers, I bumped into one of almost seven years before, that I knew very well. An's obituary. I read it over and over, thinking of her anniversary, remembering that day. Immersed in my thoughts, I was startled by something touching my shoulder.

  "Drew," Dan called me, shaking me delicately. "Are you alright? You're pale," he said, moving his gaze on the obituary I still had in my hands.

  "Yes, everything's fine," I said, putting the paper back in its place.

  "Enough for today, why don't we grab something to eat?" Now that I thought about it, I was starving. My body and mind were at their limit. I had to fight a sweet temptation to hug him and forget everything in the world but his warmth, like I used to do after An’s death.

  "I feel like eating junk food," I told him.

  He smiled at me. "I know what to do then." He brought me to the Campus take-out restaurant and we got a pizza and beer. Then we went back to the library and Dan used the key of the room to unlock the terrace of the rooftop.

  "I had no idea the electronic key could be used like this."

  "This kind of key is generally made to unlock the rooftop area. I saw them at the hospital too. They’re usually given to the patients of the private rooms."

  "I see." I sat on the floor by the ledge, and Dan joined me. It wasn’t nearly high enough to prevent people from jumping off it, but it made a nice table for the pizza. The night breeze was exactly what I needed to clear my mind a little.

  "I like looking at things from a high place," I told him. "It puts everything in the right dimension."

  "We have a sort of terrace on our rooftop in Downtown too. It's nothing like this, but I can show you sometime," he said and took a sip of his beer.

  "Are you sure you can drink?" I asked. "What about your pills?"

  "I'm not taking them tonight, so it's alright."

  "Why?"

  "They'd make me sleepy. I have to get out of here before sunrise."

  "Right, your visit time is messed up."

  "Says the one I found yelling in the graveyard at 3 a.m.," he said, smiling and hitting my beer can with his. It was nice being there with him. His presence could still relax me to the point that reality wouldn't hurt me too much.

  "This is the first time we’re drinking together," I said.

  "Yeah, last time at Jim's you got drunk on your own like an idiot, remember?"

  "There's no need to put it like that! I had… problems."

  "Be honest, you’re pretty much a lightweight."

  "I’m not, it’s just that the stuff I got last time was strong." I could see on his face he wasn't believing me at all. "Alright, drinking challenge," I said.

  He looked at me with a you'll-never-beat-me face but finally he said, "Challenge accepted." We stopped by a mini market open 24/7 and got some more beer, then we went back to our room in the library, sat on the sofa and started drinking.

  "Sean was sure my life in Downtown was all sex, drugs and gam
bling," I said.

  "College students come to Downtown mostly for that."

  "Yeah, all my friends booked a week at a casino as soon as we got out of high school and it became legal for us to go."

  "But you didn't?"

  "No, Shallie would have killed me!"

  "She was smart," he said with a grin. "When those big groups go to casinos we get a lot of work."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah, the casino or hotel staff call us for entertainment."

  "You might even have met my friends then. This is awkward," I laughed.

  "No, guys are not requested so often by students, but I know Sara works a lot with them."

  "Wha— I still absolutely can't picture her doing that job."

  "She's shy, but when it comes to work she's a real professional. We've worked together a bunch of times."

  "I'm a bit confused, what does it mean that you worked together?" I asked. He looked at me as if he didn't understand the question, then chuckled to himself.

  "I'm not sure I want to explain that to you," he said, and I felt like he was making fun of me. I was slightly bothered by that attitude, so I finished my third beer all at once and tapped the can on the table. Dan was still laughing, but he said, "I'm sorry, it's that… It’s cute that you don't know these things." He put his can on the table and sat again crossing his legs on the sofa. "It happens when the clients request a group thing… or maybe someone who likes to watch," he explained patiently. I felt my face heating up, half because of the beer I had drank in a hurry and half for the awkwardness of the huge gap between Dan’s experience and mine. I didn't want him to look at me, so I let myself fall on the sofa resting my head on his crossed leg, just like he did when I dried his hair at the cottage.

  "Drunk already?" he asked me, giving me a sweet smile.

  "Shut up," I said, and tried to convince myself to get up to get another beer, but tiredness and fatigue got the best of me, and I closed my eyes just for a moment.

  "Drew," I heard him calling from a far distance. "Drew," he called me again, this time right close to me. I opened my eyes and slowly got up to sit on the sofa. "Was I asleep?" I asked him, still confused. I felt dizzy and I realized I had been drooling all over his jeans.

  "Yes, for four hours," he said. "Ah, look what you did here."

  "What about the challenge?"

  "You drank… " he said, checking my cans, "three beers including the one we had while eating."

  "And you?" I asked, then looked at the table and counted six more empty cans. So seven in total. "You drank all that on your own?" I asked.

  "Yup, while reading. I had to pass the time after you fell asleep like a little kid."

  "You're gonna die young."

  A grin on his face, he told me, "Go back to sleep, I have to go."

  "Wait," I said, "take me with you. I want to see An."

  Chapter 25

  Since I was there we took the bike to the graveyard, but first Dan asked me to stop by a public locker area. He typed in a code and opened one, taking out of it a bouquet of white and red lilies, which he passed to me. The flowers were fresh and smelled nice. It was perfect for An; she would have loved it.

  "Since my visit time is messed up, like you said, I buy the flowers during the day and leave them here for a little bit," he told me.

  "Lilies were Shallie's favorite," I said, my eyes still on the flowers.

  "A good choice then," he said. I turned his way and saw him with another bouquet of lilies of a different color in his hands. It was a variety with white borders and a bright, pink leaf.

  "Two?"

  "Of course. You know that An doesn't like sharing."

  "Is that one… for Shallie?"

  "Yeah, I thought I'd go see her too."

  I wanted to go back to Shallie's grave only after I found out everything about her death. I didn't know if I was ready to see it again so soon.

  When we arrived at the gates of the graveyard it was still dark, but on the horizon the color of the sky was starting to change. We walked for a time that seemed way too long to me, and we reached An's grave. Her stone was of a shining white marble, and she was smiling happily in the picture on it. I had seen her smile every day after her death: in pictures hanging on my house walls, in old videos recorded on my watchpad. Seeing those was already hard enough for me, yet in that context everything was even heavier and painful. I thought of her body lying in the ground, forever fourteen years old, but no longer the same. I remembered the day she died, and that impression of part of my soul leaving my body forever. I was never the same after that 5th of May.

  The grave was already well kept, and there were still flowers in front of it, but Dan started cleaning it better by removing the leaves brought by the wind, throwing away the dead flowers and replacing the water for the others. His gestures were somehow solemn; I could tell he had done it many times, and it felt like it was still an important ceremony for him.

  "Does it make you feel better?" I asked, as he put the lily bouquet in a vase, kneeling before the grave. "Cleaning it, bringing beautiful flowers here." I found it hard to breathe. "If you're doing it for her, I can assure you that she's not gonna thank you." He looked at me with a calm and warm expression, and gave me the sign to sit beside him. I did so, and he asked me to hold the vase while he cleaned under it.

  "I'm not doing it for the dead An lying down here," he said. "I'm doing it for the An that's still living, for the An I remember." He was making a sad, yet serene, smile. I could feel he had truly accepted her death, unlike me. "She was always happy knowing that we thought of her, and she always appreciated a flower, a present, a hug, every sign that we cared. This is my way of respecting who she was. It's true, she won't thank me if I bring her flowers, she won't smell them and she won't touch them. But the An I remember will. As long as I do this, there will always be an An that's happy, somewhere inside of me."

  "Don't you ever want to forget everything? Throw everything away and be free?" I asked him. That was the way I often felt.

  "Forgetting is what scares me the most," he said, looking in my eyes. "Do you remember that she held her spoon with the bowl upside down while eating ice cream?"

  "I think I never even knew that."

  "Me neither. But the other day in a cafe a kid was doing the same, and when I saw him I remembered." He took the vase back and put it in its place. "I wish I could remember more, I wish I could keep every habit she had alive, the way she talked, how her voice sounded. If I forget, I'll lose her forever." He was way stronger than me. All I could do, for seven years, was run away from the thought that my sister died. There were times I wished I could forget the both of them. I tried to lock them away somewhere in my mind and live normally, ignoring the fact that half of my heart was gone. I was trying to kill what he was trying to keep alive.

  I think they never really left you. Shallie, you could see so much more than me.

  "Do you pray for her when you come here?" I asked him.

  "No, but if I have something to say, sometimes I talk to her."

  "The An inside of you," I said, "is she happy that we're here together?" I broke down crying as soon as I finished the sentence. To keep myself from running away I was holding my knees strong on the ground with my hands. Dan put his right hand on mine, covering his eyes with the other. I could see tears falling down his cheeks. We stayed like that until dawn, then he helped me stand up. Without speaking a word, and not letting go of his hand, I walked toward Shallie's grave. I put the bouquet in front of the stone and Dan cleaned it like he did for An. I got on my knees again, trying to find the courage to say some words to her.

  "Shallie, I swear, I'll keep my promise. Just wait a little longer." My eyes were burning because of all the dust and the tears, and I felt awfully self-conscious, so I turned to Dan. "Will you say something to her too?" I asked. I knew he didn't know her, but I needed to hear him say anything.

  He knelt next to me, closed his eyes and thought about it fo
r a little while, then opened them and said, "Shallie, I couldn't keep a single promise in my entire life, so I can't really make another one to you. But your boyfriend is different from me. He'll be alright." Knowing he had so much faith in me made me feel immediately better.

  "These flowers," I said to him, "are perfect for Shallie. The color, the smell, the shape, everything reminds me of how she was. And she loved them. Thank you, Dan, for giving me a memory of her that will never fade." From the things I told him about Shallie, he was able to understand so much about her. I admired how he could be so sensitive with others, and I was a little envious of him.

  On our way back to the exit of the graveyard, Dan was silent and seemed troubled. It was now morning. "Drew," he said, and suddenly grabbed my hand, his beautiful eyes looking desperately into mine. "There's something I have to tell you. The day An died..."

  "She regained consciousness before dying, didn't she?" I asked.

  Dan was stunned, "How do you know?"

  "I've known the whole time. I could tell you were hiding something from me. When the doctors talked to us, explaining how she died, and said that she never woke up since the accident, I was holding your hand like I am now. Did you think I wouldn't notice? It was written all over you."

  "… you never asked me anything."

  "I thought you'd tell me when you were ready. It sure took you a lot of time. Dan, why did you keep it secret?"

  "An didn't want me to say anything. To anyone except you."

  "And you didn't tell me anyway. Why?"

  "I tried but… It’s painful."

  "What did she tell you?"

  "She made me promise I'd take care of you. Her last words were: ‘love is such a small word, if I told you guys that I loved you, it wouldn't be enough.’ I'm sorry I never told you that either. I couldn't keep my promise. I couldn't keep a single one."

  It hurt. An's feelings were so strong, and left in our hearts a hole so deep, that those words felt like a miracle and a curse at the same time. I was angry at Dan for concealing her last words from me for all those years. But most of all the thought of him feeling, alone, for seven years, the same pain I was feeling in that moment, was unbearable. I pulled him closer in a warm hug, holding his head against my chest. "I feel the same as her," I told him.