The Bluestocking 2022-23

Sarah Douglas | Grade 12 Rain

They said she was a pluviophile, one who loved the rain. She lived on the unlit side of town, in a house with three shattered windows and an overgrown garden to greet the front door. Her room was small, with items of her imperfect childhood scattered about. The kitchen was filled with half-eaten muffins and dishes from the night before. The mugs stacked in the sink were almost as tall as her. She spent every day mourning the life she didn’t have. Summer was the worst—the humid air, the suffocating heat, and the absence of rain. There was no reason to admire drops of water as much as she did. In fact, rainy days were the only days she felt like living. She loved watching the rainfall form drops on the timeworn window sill as the clock’s hands slowly ticked away in another room. She especially loved the rain because that’s when her friend appeared. She described him as reliable, but nobody else saw it that way. They had been best friends since she was three, and he still looked the same to her. She often wanted to play cards with him; solitaire was his favourite. The game would go on for hours until they lost track of time, and she caught herself staring out the big window across the ta ble. If she was bored of cards, they would bake muffins, each sharing a half. Sometimes they’d burn when he didn’t remind her to take them out of the oven in time; she often forgot. On the days with wild storms, they always played the piano together. Somehow, they always ended up playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The raindrops on the window fascinated them, and they would often watch to see which one hit the ledge first. He liked to pretend it was a race, but her drop always won. He always offered to fix the leak in her roof, but he never did. It’s not like she cared if her floor got wet, as the only thing she hated about the rain was when it stopped. After all, as the rain faded, so did he.