I’m sitting on the concrete floor, digging ragged fingernails into my arm and counting the floor tiles.
The rain is coming. I can feel it in the air.
Their voices taunt me, loud, artificially bright, scraping down my spine like nails on a chalkboard. Alcohol and drugs are flowing inside the house; couples everywhere, kissing, laughing. Like animals, I think morosely.
And I’m sitting here, on the deserted back porch, wishing pathetically that they would go away so I could sleep.
Clink. A glass shatters. Roars of laughter follow.
I turn, groaning at the stiffness in my back from sitting so long in the cold air, and peer inside. Shards of crystal are scattered across the floor. Crimson liquid rolls across the tiles. Sticky. Like blood.
A shiver runs across my shoulder blades.
I don’t know how long I shiver on the dilapidated porch, wooden slats digging into my back, listening to the raucous laughter inside. I haven’t had any drinks, and I don’t dare touch the white powder my old friends have brought, but it feels like time is blurring.
My stomach roils. A sudden stab of pain lances through my stomach. I double over, groaning.
Not now. Please, not here.
You see, the Hurt doesn’t go away. The Hurt doesn’t listen. It nags on, keeping me constant company, making its presence known with each prod of agony in my belly.
I struggle to my feet, choking back a gasp, and lean heavily against the door. The white-hot flare of pain recedes, and I can breathe again. The doorknob is slippery with alcohol - or perhaps rain - but I wrench it open and step inside.
Medicine bottles, cigarette butts and smoking embers litter the floor.
Eyes blur.
Blink, blink. They won’t clear. Stop panicking. Settle down. Blink again.
My eyes water, but I can see now, and the Hurt has settled back into its usual faint, grumbling complacence. I lean against the back of the couch and peer around.
Everyone’s gone. Oh. The party must be over. I can go home now. Irony, thou art a hateful deity.
I laugh hoarsely at my own wit. It sounds frightening in the silence, and I shut up.
“’Ello?” Crash. Creaking wood. Footsteps coming towards me. I tense up, can’t help it.
“Didn’t know anyone else was here.” He sticks his head through the front doorway, black hair flopping in his eyes, and I blink because I can’t really believe how beautiful he is. Bloodshot eyes, like rose-tinted crystal. Cheekbones carved by the hand of a Grecian architect. Thin lips, an artist’s hands. His voice sounds like sandpaper and whiskey, all rough and warm.
I’ve never seen him before in my life.
He sways, still tipsy. “I know you,” he mumbles, with just a bit of slur to his words.
“No you don’t.” My voice shakes. Beautiful people make me nervous. Beautiful drunk people are even worse.
“Yes,” he insists, with the stubbornness of a male who’s been very familiar with the Jack Daniels bottle on the floor. He steps toward me, eyes curiously clear. “You’re that girl....sat on the porch, all night. Didn’t talk to a soul.” He tilts his head, the gesture oddly endearing. “Why not?”
He’s got a trace of an accent. The faint lilt entrances me. Irish? Scottish? I shake my head, and the room blurs again. “I don’t like people.”
He laughs, and I wish I hadn’t been so blunt. “I like you, quiet girl.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Then what is?”
I clamp my mouth shut, and he laughs again. Even his rough, tipsy laugh is beautiful. I grind my teeth. “I have to go.”
“Wait.” He lurches toward me, nearly falling over an empty six-pack, reaching for my arm. I flinch, but let him steady himself on my shoulder. He smiles down at me, soot-black hair falling over his eyes. “I know who you are, quiet girl.”
Fear sparks in me, but I push it away. Not possible.
“Yes,” he insists, clear eyes burning into mine. A strange light glows there. Not pity. Curiosity? “You’re the girl that’s gonna die.”
My shoulders slump. I’d done a good job of it. Letting my hair grow out, taking out the piercings, covering up the tattoos. But a few people still always recognized me. The girl with cancer, they whispered, be careful with her. Because she’s a little bit crazy. Gonna die soon anyway, and the mad strain in the family’ll be good and gone.
But this one is different. The world is blurring and his crystal eyes are still fixed on mine, so I just shrug and sink to the floor again. “Yeah.”
“Eight months, they’re saying.”
“Yeah.”
He flops down next to me. “What’s a beautiful girl with eight months to live doing here, then?”
I laugh, but it comes out as a cough. “Living.”
“This isn’t living,” he opines, gesturing about the deserted room. “We’re all dead here. Zombies with cigarettes. Helpless slaves to our primal urges.” I get the feeling he’s given this proclamation before. “Raging - "
“You shouldn’t be here either,” I interrupt, staring at the too-thin hand he gestures with.
He gives me a small smile. “Maybe I wanted to run into a quiet girl who likes porches.”
I laugh again. This time it comes out, and it doesn’t sound awful. He stands up. The drink’s wearing off; he’s not slurring his words, and his grip on mine is steady as he pulls me to my feet.
“Let’s go,” he says, eyes asking me a question.
I look past him, out into the tang of an autumn midnight. The wind is fresh and lively, leaves whirling in a wild dance on the sidewalk. Clouds gather above me, ominous gray and heavy with moisture.
I nod and step out the door, past the boy who also has eight months to live.
I want to taste the rain.