Eve's Rain.

for english class. had to be on belonging or discovery. mine started off as belonging, but at the end turned into discovery a little.

 Eve gazed out the window, watching the rain splash onto the drowning grass outside. Twirling her short black hair around her finger, she was called back into reality by the school bell screeching the arrival of lunchtime. Wincing, she gathered her books and escaped the stuffy room before anyone else had even arisen from their seats.

Walking slowly through the rain to her locker, she was overtaken many times by people rushing, not wanting to get their hair wet.

Entering the locker room, she cringed at the mess of food, paper and bags in the center. Stepping around it, she found her locker and dumped her schoolbooks and grabbed a worn notebook. Her locker was on its own, in a corner, like an afterthought. Leaving the room again, she walked through the school, enjoying the rain and loneness.

 Glancing around quickly to check that no one was seeing her for once, Eve slipped behind the back of a building. There was actually a path here, but it was either out of bounds or just forgotten. She’d never seen anyone use it or even look at it. It was overgrown enough to shade her from the sun and cover her from the rain, but it also allowed enough light in for her to see.

Seating herself in her customary corner, she opened her notebook and took her pen from her pocket. Her notebook was full of stories, poems, thoughts and ideas. She spent all her free time at school here, adding to her notebook. She wrote about people, rain, life and being alone. She wrote down her daydreams, the most popular of which was where she was on an island with no people, where it rained every day and there was a library which took up half the island. Every now and then, feeling guilty, she wrote her family into her daydreams, but they always eventually disappeared. Eve was always happiest on her own. She had never been bullied or harassed by anyone, but thought that she should have been. It wasn’t that she had low self-image or anything like that; it was just that at schools and on TV, the loner always gets bullied. But Eve never was. She’d always managed to slip below the radar of people who wanted to hurt others. As if she wasn’t fully there.

Eve often wrote about that in her notebook, forming ideas about why no one saw her. She was never picked on by teachers, chosen to answer questions, bullied or talked to. Even when she received an award in front of the entire school, whenever she looked at the crowd, everyone was looking in a different direction. She liked it that way, but she still didn’t know why it happened.

Today, for some reason, words weren’t coming with the effortlessness they usually did. Sighing, Eve leaned back against the building wall. She let her thoughts wander, a method which usually helped. To her surprise, they settled on the new boy in her year; Charlie. He had only arrived today, and had been assigned a buddy to show him around, but already he was separate from the rest of the year. Eve only noticed him when he was introduced to her science class in second period. He was tall, with dark hair and pale skin, which made Eve think he was from somewhere in Europe.

She hadn’t given him a second thought until fourth period, where he had looked at her. Realizing how corny that sounded, Eve sighed again. But it was true. He had passed her seat on the way to his, and he had glanced at her. It was only for a second, but he had seen her more clearly in that moment then anyone else had all year. In his eyes, she’d seen empathy and anxiety, not pity as she’d expected.

Suddenly, Eve heard footsteps. Concealing her notebook behind a shrub, she stood awkwardly as Charlie himself came around the corner. He started a little when he saw her, then said, “Whoa, I didn’t expect to find anyone else here. I should go.” He turned and started to leave.

“Don’t go. I mean…you don’t have to if you don’t want to, Charlie. I was just a little startled; no one else has ever come here before,” Eve said, a little flustered.

Charlie turned back round. “Call me Chip please, I prefer it. And thanks…Eve, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. So, Chip, um, what are you doing here? In Newcastle I mean?” Eve stammered, trying to think of things to say. It had been so long since she’d had to hold a conversation that she’d forgotten how to. Thankfully, the bell signaled the end of lunch, cutting his answer short.

“Oh, um, I’d better go then,” Chip said. “See you round?”

“Um, sure. Bye.” Eve waited till he left, then saved her notebook from the plant. Hugging it to her body, she gazed into the space he’d stood in, before drifting away to class.