A wet breeze brushes against me and I reach for a blanket, then smile. Guess I left the window to this wreck open again. I feel the course fibers of my cot with my fingertips and carefully stretch my back as I get up – careful not to move it too fast from its stiff position on the bed. Then I yawn and my smile widens. I open my eyes and let the slightly unfamiliar room fill my vision again. A splintery observation deck with a shelter ceiling and poor insulation.

“Home.” I cautiously test the word, then sigh. The room was sparsely decorated with forgotten telescopes and spyglasses next to a mini-fridge and a wheeled seat I had bought for myself. My entire wardrobe was on me or lying in the corner and the closest rest rooms were sixteen floors below me. But it was exactly what I had been working towards. A second chance on life which forces me to face the question of who I’ll be, how things will turn out, and if I’m able to take the chance I’ve had to make. I have no regrets.

I rub my temples as I remembered the constant yelling and the violence. Of things that were said and the hopeless feeling that every teenager in the town felt the same way as I did. Barred by threats and “parental” laws that were used to the wrong extremes. I spent so much time being abused mentally that I didn’t even know who I was until someone came and practically shoved it in my face.

I catch my reflection in a window and see how far I’ve come. I wasn’t a kid anymore and for the first time I saw that the person in the mirror was beginning to look familiar. So this is what I looked like living a dream and a fresh start. In this small space set away from the world and yet the perfect place I can watch it from.

The doves sing in their nest and I look up. My roommates were reminding me to eat something before they left for the day. I peer out the window and wonder if I should go with them. Maybe I should get a breath of wet metal again. It’s been a while since I’ve stepped out there, but I have errands to run anyway. I pick up yesterday’s list from under my pillow and read the checked items carefully.

“Pass out free-tickets to the ballpark, write song for depressed friend, buy a few oatmeal cookies for the birds, tell the old lady next door she’s beautiful, thank random people on the street and give them roses, and walk around the block smiling… okay, great, and the unchecked errand is… deal with her.” I glance at the phone and then out the window again to the bustling city below.
I get up from my cot and venture outside and onto the ledge. Vertigo threatens to overwhelm me again and I laugh as I feel the surge of adrenaline begin to pump through me. The doves burst from their nest and fly around me once before diving down to the streets below. I spread my arms out and angle my palms in front of me so I can feel the wind against my skin and buffeting against the inside of my coat. Is that what the doves feel each time they get up in the morning? Then memories sober me and my arms drop to my sides.
Cars go by below me and I watch as beggars set up their posts between the streets and children play on the sidewalk. Life was continuing on its way.

“Why can’t I do the same? Why can’t I let go?” I whisper into the wind, “I’m not everything good like she told me I was. I’m not the boy who’ll never back down – at least, not yet. If only it weren’t for that stupid misunderstanding… if I could have told her she was loved by someone and that she mattered to me,” I catch my breath and internally scold myself for falling that deep into my feelings again. I turn away from the view below and echo something she had said to me once when I asked why the rain always followed me.

I even remembered the faint smile on her lips when she said it, “Because you are the epitome of all things good and wash every one of their pain wherever you go… just like the rain.”

Looking into the sky, I can’t see anything but tears. Sympathetic, but unusually on-time, the clouds seemed to know how I was feeling, but the pigeon begins to sing. What a joke. Who needs me this time? I think to myself and pick my spyglass once again as I checked the poor neighborhood she lived in. Half hoping I wouldn’t see anything, half-hoping I would.

“And there she is.” I whispered breathlessly. Held in the view of my spyglass was a tall teenage girl with sun-touched white skin and white-gold hair that seemed to be lost in a crowd that seemed to blur around her. It had been a long time since I last saw her. So long, I wasn’t evens sure it was her at first. But those eyes… she had the kind of eyes that seemed to reflect her heart, a sad silver-blue that no one ever seemed to notice. Though I had done my best to forget, they still had enough intensity for me to feel her pain – even by this distance. But this time they were tired eyes. A kind of tired I could not allow anyone to feel. This was the poor angel I took it upon myself to protect – who I tried to be everything for. Everything she ever needed. But that was before I was pushed away… I need to do this for the both of us.

The gutter inches away from my feet gives up its red rose-lily and the flower is swept with the water to the edge. I lunge for it. Time to become the rain for the last time – everything I could ever be to her.

As I slide down the support rail of the building, I hold onto my gutter flower and remember the year we had together. Or was it years? It all went by so fast and yet… I don’t think I had ever been so much alive. Suddenly all those moments from the past year came flooding back to me as I slid down the wet metal so fast that the rain seemed to be flashing upward. All the moments we laughed together. All the moments we cried together. The moments our relationship began and the ones that lead up to its end. Now this moment where time seemed to rewinding and I could give at least one of us a second chance.

All those years I spent focusing on pain and doubting who I was were suddenly turned over. Like I was meant to do this. I’ve told her I would always be there for her… that I’d still love her just as much when she finally figures everything out. And so I’ll be waiting for the phone that never calls… I’ll be able to move on, but never forget a second of it. I whisper the lyrics to our song for the first time in months and jump off the last few feet of the slick metal railing, throwing myself into a run. I won’t hide from my fears any longer.

“And I don’t want the world to see me, ‘cause I don’t think that they’d understand. When everything’s made to be broken; I just want you to know who I am.”

* * *

There I was. The girl who had finally had enough of it all. I’m tired of people controlling me – playing god with my life. I’m tired of living with everything that’s been done to me. I’m tired of living with the people that did them, having to pretend I’m stupid, submissive, and in a sick love. But my mother, after everything I had said and done, haven’t I deserved better than to be shut out? I was telling the truth and yet she thinks I’m a lying s**t! Her own daughter. Well if that was all I was to her… I feel the bricks in my pockets. Then I’ve had enough.

A hooded figure runs through the rain, hands in his pockets. He dodges through people as if late for something important and speeds close to me as he tries to run past. Too close.

“Mmph!” I pull a half spin as he crashes hard into my arm and I begin to fall.
But the boy catches me with a firm grip and gently pulls me back up, the hood covering his eyes. He parts his smooth lips as if to say something but I cut him off and tell him I’m alright. Same lie I had been feeding everybody for years.
But his mouth closes and he gives me a soft smile. “I know you’re not. Sorry for the bump,” and he dashes away.

But that voice… I’ve heard it somewhere before. I reach into my pocket again and instead of harsh brick, I felt something smooth and fragile. I pull it out with care and gasp as I realize what had happened. I held a brilliant rose-lily in my hands and felt something in me warm. I looked up to the sky and felt the mixture of rain and sunlight warmly splash against my face.

“So beautiful… how could I not notice you before?” I stare up at the sky in wonder, then remember the hooded boy and turn three-sixty in the crowd.
“Where did you go?”