It Never Rains in Colombia

by W. H. Benjamin

  “You missed it,” Mei said. “It was awesome. Who would have thought, hey?” Mei linked arms with her.

  “What class do we have now?” Harlow asked.

  “Class?” Mei gave her a strange look, “it's lunchtime.” She shook her head disapprovingly, steering Harlow toward the Cafeteria.

  “You know, she looks different with her hair like that. Blue contact lenses! That's why it didn't click,” Mei said. “She looks a lot like her mother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maria,” Mei said.

  “Maria?” Harlow asked in confusion.

  Mei started singing, “My heart goes boom boom every time we kiss.”

  “No!” Harlow stopped, her feet rooted to the ground in shock. Her words came out slowly, drip by drip, as if each one were struggling to be comprehended by its speaker. “Maria's daughter.”

  Mei nodded, “Monica Sophia Valdes.” Mei smiled, “You're a fan too.”

  “I have her album,” Harlow sputtered in disbelief. “I have all her albums!”

  “Join the club,” Mei laughed, “but I prefer her mother's stuff from the eighties. Retro Latin Pop always gets me moving.”

  Chapter 4 – Before I Met You

  One year and four months ago

  Buenos Aires – May 6th

  She looked up from her crouching position. The stage was blacked out. There was a buzz from the sea of people below, watching, waiting in giddy anticipation. It was a large crowd—90,000 strong. She saw only blurry shadowy faces under the flickering flames of lighters held high and mobile phones held aloft like torches in the dark. Her heart thumped in fear and excitement as the elevator came up. It was always the same, that nervous feeling in her stomach like butterflies were floating around inside. When it reached the correct height, she jumped up, high, straight into the air, not looking at the other girls. Her right arm outstretched as if she were trying to touch the stars beyond the arena's dark ceiling. The lights came on simultaneously as the hard bass of the song started. A roar came from the crowd. The screaming was deafening.

  She pressed the microphone closer to her mouth, skipping to the front of the stage, singing:

  “I can only breathe when I'm with you…”

  The main spotlight followed her as she reached the front of the stage. She got in line with her two band mates. Antonia began to sing.

  “Monica, Monica,” she heard someone scream, “I love you!”

  “I love you too,” Sophia said breathlessly into the microphone. She stepped out with her left foot bouncing lightly back onto her right. She brought her hands together as if she were praying, then pushing her elbows back she shoved her chest out and back in and forwards again like she had seen Beyoncé do so many times when she was younger.

  A backing dancer sailed through the air in front of her, his body crunched up into a ball, flying through the air as he flipped to the other side of the stage. As soon as he landed, just as his feet touched the ground, the two girls in matching white dresses on either side of Sophia began to spin, right on cue, pirouetting.

  Sophia sang, skipping forwards, feeling the beat infuse her muscles with new energy. The rhythm was fast. The pink spotlight followed her as the blue and white runner lights clashed across the stage following the other two members of the group. She sang with all her heart following the heavy reggaeton beat.

  “You were there when I needed you

  I've grown up, things have changed

  I can only breathe when you're around. Feel like I'm free, but now…”

  She reached a hand out to Javier, the most experienced dancer. He pulled her closer quickly, making her costume jingle in time with the guitar solo. It was an all red outfit, a red dress made up of sparkly red jewels that hung at the end of red tassels. As she spun around to meet Javier, the jewels threw out an array of colours on the stage around her. The crowd cheered as she pushed her right knee upwards. He held it securely, allowing Sophia to arch her back slowly as Antonia sang. Four of the backing dancers ran forwards, circling Sophia and Javier waving large grey Ostrich feathers as the music changed nearing the end of the song. It became slower. Sophia circled Javier, strutting around him to the expectant beat of the drums. She flipped her long blonde hair nonchalantly from one side to the other. Then they joined hands and began to salsa. It came to her automatically after all these years of practice and months of rehearsals.

  She was glad she could hardly hear the crowd. The flash of cameras and the jumping, bouncing, bodies near the front of the stage were all she needed to see. Any more and she might forget the words even after all this time; all those shows, she could still be overwhelmed. She moved lightly, stepping forwards then back, shaking her hips as she went. He spun her outwards and she pirouetted across the stage, bringing a rain of glorious colour, purple, gold, blue, and pink, as she went. Her dress twirled out around her, the lights flashed haphazardly. Fans scrambled to take photos. The excitement built as she sank into the splits. The cymbals clashed. Then all was dark again.

  Two backing dancers helped her up. She pulled out her ear plugs and heard a deafening roar, as if the sea had hit the shore. The crowd was cheering so loudly that she had to put the yellow ear plugs back in.

  “Thank you for coming!” Sophia shouted. The screaming, though muted, could still be heard. “We love you all!” She ran backstage

  In the dressing room, Sophia wasted no time. She changed at lightning speed; she couldn't wait to leave. She smiled as she thought of him. Anna the stylist had barely finished unzipping her dress when Sophia pushed the straps off of her shoulders and shimmied out of the dress.

  “I couldn't breathe,” Sophia said, realising the irony of her statement. Antonia laughed. Sophia, now in her underwear, sat down in the makeup chair without stopping to look at her reflection in the large mirror across from her. She bent down, unbuckling the heels without waiting for Anna to come and help. She glanced surreptitiously at Anna, who was placing the red dress back on its hanger, and then looked around the full room at Hannah, Antonia, and the man and woman from the styling team. She wondered if anyone had noticed her urgency.

  “Sophie.” Anna called her by her nickname, breaking her out of her reverie. Sophia looked up. Anna handed her a silky, deep purple top and a black miniskirt. “I think this will work for the press conference.”

  “I thought we were going for the whole demure thing?” Hannah commented.

  Sophia waved Anna away as she opened her mouth to speak.

  “It doesn't matter,” Sophia said.

  She slipped the purple top over her head, and once she was dressed, she padded over to the styling rack, walking barefoot. Her toes pressing into the soft furs of the lush, thick, white rug.

  “Shoes,” she demanded impatiently. She didn't mean to be a diva today, but she was in a hurry.

  Anna picked up a pair of black strappy heels with gold soles and handed them to her. Sophia went back to the chair and considered that after this one little press conference, she would get to see his face again, and settled back into the chair with a satisfied smile as Armand, the makeup artist, came over.

  Chapter 5 - Never Say Die/The Truth About Bees

  “Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” - Confucius”

  Present day

  Harlow moved through the woods, seamlessly leaving the bicycle behind, sliding silently along, like a ghost alone and cold under the silver glow of moonlight.

  “I can’t believe this,” she whispered emerging from the undergrowth, her white shirt brushing lightly against the waxy green leaves as the music grew louder. Looking up the long concrete driveway, she saw the massive white country mansion with masked circus performers standing sentry on either side of the doors. She was a few yards away, close enough to see them breathing fire and bowing down low to welcome the guests through the mansion's imposing doorway. Two women wearing feathered white angel's wings and blue and silver masks ran past her. A loose feather freed itself from the Africa
n girl's wings and sailed innocently past her party dress to the ground. Curious, Harlow bent down to retrieve it and was almost knocked down by a devil. The burly man with red blinking devil's horns rushed past. “Ah, watch it!” he shouted, jumping over her outstretched arm in a hurry.

  “S-s-sorry,” she stuttered. The winged girls turned back to see if he was following. He charged after them, wielding a red devil's pitchfork, and they ran further inside, giggling as they went.

  The mansion had a long driveway ensconced on either side by acres of green grass. Students dressed as angels and demons zipped across the lawn holding sparklers. A fiery, yellow flame escaped the doorman's mouth, leaping a foot into midair and licking the night sky violently before disappearing into nothingness. When the smell of singed hair touched her nose, Harlow automatically patted her hair, then hurriedly entered the large marble hallway mingling in amid the mass of dancing bodies in there. A large red banner with gold letters hung above the far door. It read: “The Heavenly Ball.”

  Sophia emerged from a crowded room dressed as an angel, her gold mask hanging around her neck, when she passed the large stairway her eyes flickered in brief recognition. “Whoa, what are you wearing?” she cried.

  Harlow looked down at her own navy schoolgirl’s outfit. “I guess I didn’t get the right invitation.”

  Sophia laughed, taking off her wings, “Here, have mine.”

  They made their way down the hallway. They hadn't talked much about Sophia's secret. Harlow had tried broaching the subject once and Sophia had been dismissive, saying, “I don't want to talk about it.” Since then, things had been strained. Harlow couldn't understand why Sophia would want to hide who she was, especially when she was obviously so lucky.

  A superstar with a hit album and millions of fans, why would you hide that? Harlow mused; I would love to be in her shoes.

  Now she didn't really know what she could and couldn't say to Sophia without making her irritable, so she just kept things simple.

  “Thanks for giving me the directions. If it weren’t for you, I’d still be wandering around outside.”

  Inside the party, there were six masked dancers in red sequined corsets and shorts, some with angel's wings and others with devil's tails that whipped from side to side as they danced wildly on their podiums. Angels in glass boxes and devils behind steel cages. Below, a ballroom full of men and women dressed as bishops, kings, archangels, and cupids, crowds of angels in white dresses and white tuxedos, devils in smart trousers and miniskirts dancing, jumping up and down to the music. Roberto stood, momentarily watching a girl climbing up onto a podium to dance. His face lit up in a surge of pure elation under the pulsing blue and white light, then he moved through the doors with his friends and went out to the garden.

  Harlow's hands were shaking. The letter clutched in her right hand fluttered a little as she walked over to him. The sound was distracting. She felt as if she couldn't breathe as she walked, and so she sucked in a gulp of fresh rose-scented air. The flowers in the garden were in full bloom. She heard the crunch of her own feet on the gravel. There were so many students scattered around but she could only see one. He was not far from her now. She didn't care about how everyone loved him; she only knew that her face grew warmer when he looked at her. When she slept, she would smile at the thought of him. When she woke up, his beautiful face would be disintegrated, blown from her mind by the cold winds of reality only to return again when dressing for class. She would shove the thoughts of him to one side and they would forcibly push their way back into her mind.

  He would call her, sporadically lately, but they'd never really talked about how they felt about each other, whether it was just a friendship or something more.

  Friends don't hold hands, right? Harlow considered. It seemed like Roberto wanted something more and she did too.

  He was surrounded by a group of girls. Her mouth was as dry as cotton; when she swallowed, it felt as though she would choke on her own tongue.

  A crowd of masked people had gathered by the lake to watch the fireworks. She stopped in the middle of the gravel path, in the midst of the crowd, hesitating, wondering if she should wait, but then she considered the torment of not knowing. The torturous game of back-and-forth that beset her mind every waking minute, and if she didn't have the courage at sixteen, she might never have it. “Roberto,” she called softly.

  He looked up from his iPhone; the group of girls bristled and slowly began to dissipate. “Um, can I talk to you for a moment?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  They moved away from the others so that it was just the two of them near the lake.

  “I, uh, I think,” she murmured. She raised her hand; it shook like a wooden boat in a storm. The letter went up and down like the grey waves of a rough sea. “This is for you,” she said, leaving it hanging in the air until he took it.

  He took the letter, calmly unfolding it slowly. She watched as he scanned the lines and then walked slowly away. The girls rushed back to his side as she left.

  “What's that?” Amy asked.

  “Nothing,” he replied, tucking the letter into his back pocket.

  “What is it?” Amy snatched at it.

  “It's nothing,” he repeated, taking it back from her. “Look,” he said:

  “Dear Roberto,” her heart stopped as he read aloud. “I have watched you for a long time.” She turned quickly. Sarah, Amy, and a girl she didn't know began to giggle as he read on, “Every night when I sleep, I dream of you.”

  The students in the immediate vicinity stopped what they were doing. Conversations halted mid-sentence as his voice grew louder. “I think you are beautiful. Normally men are handsome, but you are really beautiful. I really like you, and—” he paused looking at her for a long time laughing, “if you feel the same way about me, please let me know, much love, Harlow, kiss, kiss, kiss.” She remembered how she had crossed out the “much love” twice thinking it was too much and felt sick that he had read it.

  He carefully tore the letter in half, then ripped those halves again and again until only tiny pieces of white paper fluttered to the ground like confetti around his feet. When he began to hold his stomach as if to contain the laughter, she felt that it was feigned, just to spite her. Turning fully toward him, anger boiling up, she marched toward him. He stood up straighter as she came over.

  “What makes you think that I would like you?” he asked as though he were some magnificent King and she were merely a Pauper.

  The hot tears pressed under her eyelids, threatening to slide freely down her wind-chilled cheeks. Without thinking, her hands stopped shaking and she punched him as hard as she could. Amy gasped and shoved her with both hands so hard that Harlow fell into the dark lake.

  Sophia rushed up behind Amy, shouting, “What are you doing?”

  Harlow thrashed wildly in the water, frantically trying to swim, and finally sank below the lake's surface.

  There was a splash as someone dove into the water, his jacket discarded on the grassy bank. Roberto stood on the periphery of the crowd; his friends began howling in laughter. An eerie silence fell over the crowd in the garden as she sank below the water. Water rose in plumes of bubbles above her, convalescing in mushroom clouds as she sank deeper, deeper still. It felt as though she were being pulled downwards by some terrible beast, an unknown force gripping her calves, sinking, as if her ankles were tied with lead weights.

  She sank lower, as if her legs were tied with leaden weights.

  He grabbed onto her waist then propelled both of them back up, swimming onto the other side of the lake closest to the woods, clutching onto the bank as he dragged her out of the water. She coughed out water, trying to catch her breath, drawing her knees up to her chest, trembling.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded vaguely, looking up briefly. His hair was soaked, water dripped down the black mask, down his face past the beauty spot above his lip.

  “Harlow!” She turned around and p
eople came rushing over. He placed a black jacket over her shoulders, when she looked back he was gone.

  She heard her clothes dripping when she got up and the crunching sound of her footsteps on the gravel path. For a moment, the only sound she heard was her heart breaking. She ran from the humiliation through the doors, back into the party where people jumped aside as she pushed through.

  There were partygoers wearing angel wings laughing on the front lawn. She ran past; the music pumped in her ears and they faded into a blur—the sparklers, the shiny happy people under the night sky. She retrieved her bicycle from amid the trees and cycled across the road to get away from them, her chequered white and blue school skirt rustling sadly. Her head was thumping; the sound pulsed in her eardrums like a tiny marching band, as she tried to focus on the street ahead,

  coughing, looking down at the yellow lines in the road glistening with rain. The newly washed street kept on moving as she cycled. It reminded her of the dewy daisies on the windowsill at home and the bee that had once stung her. She pedalled faster, trying to block the tears. A few feet ahead, people were cramming into their tiny city cars, bright eyed and singing, full of midnight adrenaline. She turned just in time to see the flashing headlights of the car; there was a scream of tyres when it spun to avoid her and the bicycle turned over. Her eyes fluttered as she crashed to the ground. Banging car doors, screaming, and stomping footsteps came all at once. That face. He adjusted his thick black spectacles and she was jolted back to reality, looking into piercing brown eyes. A concerned face, afraid, hovering above, disembodied. An explosion of colours burst across the night sky, spraying sparkles of bright red, blue, and gold fireworks onto the dark canvas above.

  She realised the truth as consciousness slipped desperately away. The truth was a bee could only hurt you once before it died; humans were repeat offenders.