I was back on the steps, the rain pounding against my skin like nails.
I was Sunny’s best friend. I was her buoy against all the bad things in her life—the mother who abandoned her, the father who might as well not be there. She was like part of my family. Hell, she was my family. What did it feel like, listening to her crush and her best friend rip her apart? How much did it hurt when she heard me say I’d be better off without her in my life? As soon as I thought of the question, the answer was there, as clear as if I’d plucked it straight from Sunny’s head. I was like her mother. I was like her father. Everyone she ever loved left her because she wasn’t good enough for them. I was one more person to add to the growing list of people who had abandoned her, only I was worse than all of them, because I promised I would never leave her.
I cried. I couldn’t help it. My tears mixed with the rain, and my sobs sailed away on the gusts of wind, drowned out by the cracking thunder. I wished I hadn’t seen it. I wished I was still ignorant to Sunny’s motives. I wished I didn’t know how she interpreted the conversation with Justin, or how alone she really felt.
“Please,” I whispered to the storm. “Please. No more.”
Before Sunny, my world was bland. Without her, I would have always colored inside the lines, which by all appearances may have made for an easier life, but it would not have been a life without Sunny.
I would have given anything to take back the last few weeks and tell her I was sorry, to tell her what I really saw when I looked at her. Sunny would always be my best friend, but I’d never get to tell her. She would never get to know how much I loved her.
More images flashed behind my eyes. My parents. Sunny. Alana James. Brandon Blakes. Logan. Jenny. Amber. Justin. All of them swirled around me like the storm clouds, and all of them were tinged with regret and longing.
Regret was an angry monster. Regret was the storm that swirled around me, pushing me against the steps as I rocked myself back and forth.
“Please. I’m sorry. I wish I could take it all back. I wish … ” I whispered to the storm, my words drifting unheard onto the stairs. “Please forgive me. Please make it stop. Please just make it stop!”
And just like that, it stopped.
The thunder stopped, the rain halted, and the cold wind was replaced with the warmth of a sunny afternoon. When I finally lifted my head from out of my hands, I saw that the sky was back to its perfect cornflower blue. There were no clouds; there was no wind. My clothes and hair were perfectly dry. It was as though the storm never happened.
I sat there for a few minutes before trying to stand. My legs were shaky and my eyes raw and itchy from crying so hard. Slowly, I eased myself up off of the step. My breath caught in my throat.
A few steps ahead of me there was a door.
I rubbed my eyes a few times to make sure it wasn’t a mirage, but when I opened them again it was still there, as real as anything. Has it been there all along? Was it raining so heavily that I wasn’t able to see it?
It didn’t look like anything special—just a plain white wooden door with a brass knob, like you’d find inside someone’s house. It was set inside a blue wall, but as I looked out past the stairs the wall seemed to become part of the sky, so I couldn’t tell if the wall was the sky or the sky was the wall or if they both melded into one continuous space.
I climbed the remaining steps and stopped in front of the door. There was a peephole in the center, staring back at me like a small, round eye. The afternoon light reflected off the glass circle, and for a second I got the impression it blinked at me. Was there someone on the other side of it, watching me?
I reached my hand out toward the knob, but then stopped. It felt strange to open it and walk through after everything that had happened. Should I knock first?
I lifted my fist up, but before my fingers hit the wood I heard a click. My stomach did a double back handspring as I watched the brass knob slowly turn.
The door opened outward a few inches, creaking as though it had rusted over from waiting for me so long.
A soft, warm light filtered through the open space between the door and the wall. It was brighter than the sunlight and warmer than the air around me. It shimmered, glittering against the air as though made of something more substantial, but so clear and sharp that it split the air into tiny particles of color, like the light itself was a prism of glass refracting everything that filtered through it into tiny rainbows. It was as brilliant as the trail left by the dragonfly, and for a moment I wondered if it had been around me the whole time. Maybe the staircase was a veil I had to lift to see the real wonder awaiting me.
A hand slowly emerged from the opening. It glowed like the light spilling from the crack in the door, but I couldn’t tell if the light caused the hand to glow or the hand created the light. The skin was the color of wet sand, not white or black, but somewhere in between it all. Small, square nails sat atop of each finger, neatly trimmed and manicured into perfect little window-shaped tips. The hand flipped over so that it was open, palm up. Normally alarm bells would have gone off inside my head, screaming stranger danger! But I was not afraid.
I placed my hand inside the stranger’s, feeling the warmth of their skin against mine.