Unforgettable Nights

~§ A (not so) short story about friendship §~ -Created: Jan. 10-11/13

I’ll never forget that stormy night. Never forget the fog and the wind in your long black untamed hair, and my long blandly brown pony-tailed hair in my eyes, my mouth.

            How I teased you for not just using one of your heavy bangles to hold your hair.

            We went up to the old mansion on the hill, despite our parents’ disapproval. Well, I’m sure they would’ve disapproved had they known. That was why you told me not to tell, wasn’t it, Adriana? Or was it because you’d known? Known what would happen…and hadn’t wanted anyone besides me with you?

            I’m sorry I’ll never find out. You’re so far away now, and you haven’t contacted me as you’d promised you would.

            “Cross my heart, hope to die,” you told me.

            “No talking about dying tonight, it’s gloomy enough as it is,” I replied jokingly.

            You smiled your goofy pretty little smile the same way you had since we’d first met on our first day of kindergarten. And just like on that day, you took my hand and pulled me along behind you, and I followed with blind faith like a ribbon behind you.

            When I asked you why we were going there at such an odd time, you spoke your words.

            “Just trust me, ok? Timing doesn’t count or anything.”

            I then questioned you about why we were going at that precise moment, if timing didn’t matter; why we were in a rush to reach the rustic building.

            “Timing is also everything,” you told me. I remember most of the exact words you uttered to me that night. I’ve written them all down, and won’t soon forget.

            When we reached the old mansion, you led me around to the back, through a shattered glass window. You went in first so that you could judge whether if it was safe enough for me to get in without being cut by the glass. Of course, you brushed it off and pretended to be self-centered.

            “Hey move aside, loser,” you told me teasingly. “Ladies first.”

            But I didn’t miss the few seconds that you spent examining the jagged edges and the size of the fractured whole in the glass. And definitely not your true intentions when you tried to find another way into the place, in vain.

            Missing for a year, and you get back and get right back into the habit of doing things as if nothing had ever happened. You strode through the darkened inside of the main floor of the building and told me to follow your silhouette on the outside. You led me to a crumby-looking door and, after a few complicated moments, opened it from the inside.

            “We need to talk,” you stated as I stormed in from the brewing storm outside.

            “You bet we do,” I  joked. “Did someone forget to inform you that you’re not my mother?”

            “Mother…” you echoed.

            Your eyes were haunted and there were secretive shadows on your face, I realized. As soon as I did, I asked you what you wanted to talk about. Pretended as if I had no clue. To be air, I only had a hunch of which topic it would be based on, but when you told me the specific words that were troubling you, I had to look around to find something to sit down on.

            I understood everything then. You weren’t really back to your old self coming back to your old life before your incident. You were attempting to put on a show. You were scarred, but masked the scars so the rest of the people at the ball could be happy and continue on without worries.

            But like you, I wasn’t invited to the ball. I was an organizer of it, but refused to participate in a masquerade of society. You and me against the world. But…

            Why did you wait a week to tell me about your demons, Adrianna? Were you afraid that I’d stop cherishing your companionship? Were you unsure of how to approach me? But do best friends ever wait so long and get worried about such things if they’re truly the best of friends? Why did I not ask you these questions at the time? Was I afraid of the answer? The answer to this one question is no, because at that moment, outraged thoughts were zipping through my mind in a blur. Unfortunately, that’s the only question’s answer I know out of all the questions I have now.

            There was a mansion-glass shattering silence in the unlit interior of the faded kitchen. You were stuck in your own troubled thoughts whilst I was fantasizing about murdering that devil’s spawn.

            You suddenly gazed at me then, for a few seconds, without blinking or looking away. “You can’t tell anyone.”

            I began to stammer, taken aback by the unanticipated words. Of course ratting you out wasn’t the first thing on my mind, but naturally, you had to voice it just for the record. I understand now. At the time, I was hurt that you hadn’t trusted me enough to not feel the need to say the words. And ironically enough, that was when I considered it. I wondered if telling someone older and wiser about your problem might actually turn out to be helpful after all.

            When I mentioned the thought, and you gave me that broken look, I wanted to sink through a broken mansion floor. I knew then that I would have to take it to my grave. I’ll never forget the way you looked at me, as if I could never understand you or feel your pain, despite being your soul sister for almost your whole life.

            We had rarely ever had communication problems before. We were not about to let this be one of those horrific rare times. So you hugged me and I squeezed your hand and inquired about it.

            And you told me. You talked about the orphanage, the nursery inside it, the babies, the wet nurses. A year. Eleven months and 22 days.

            The kitchen smelled of wet wood. The roof was leaking all the way down to the main floor. The stairs of the mansion looked unstable. The ghosts of former residents may have been weeping for you.

            You told me you were glad to get it off your chest, and “We must now focus on smaller problems at hand.”

            With that, you declared that you were going to brave the stairs to search for something to protect ourselves from the rain. As I was getting up to go with you, you quickly gestured for me to sit back down, which I reluctantly did. You then bent down and hugged me, jokingly murmuring, “How kind of you to offer, love, but I’m fine going by myself. In fact, I’d prefer it” It was a Welsh accent, too, which you knew was my favourite.

            “If you insist, dear,” I responded in your most loved English accent.

            “Oh, I do, miss,” you said, keeping up with the posh accent.

            You strode up the stairs like a gliding fairy. No trace of the year of scar on you from the back. Only your graceful slim silhouette and your glinting black hair. I mused about what I should do, as the only person you chose to confide in. Trapped in my own head, I didn’t notice the passage of time. I was in a state of trance.

            Until I heard the soft thud that could barely be heard, and wouldn’t have been heard if not for the rain having stopped. Were there dusty worthless furniture up there that you were moving around?

            I called for you, but you didn’t acknowledge it. You didn’t even hear it.

I slowly ambled up the rickety stairs and asked myself how the heck I was supposed to know which part of the mansion you were in. Second-floor was a given, but which wing? My instincts told me right. I searched every room I could find in the north wing. It wasn’t the first time my instincts had failed me.

            Next I went around the other way from where I ended up on the north wing. Directionless and worried. Anxious and annoyed with you for not answering my calls asking where you were.

            And then I saw you. Or I should say, your body.

            The poison that you’d told me was killing you was a different kind of poison than the bottle you were still holding. Your body must have crumpled and thudded down onto the floor when you’d drunk it. But the thought didn’t have enough time to process in my head. I blacked out the moment I saw the different you…

                                    *                                              *         *         

Dear Mom,

            I found your letter. You secret letter to Adrianna"my real mom. I can’t believe my own mother"I mean you"thought of me as a problem before you ever even laid eyes on me. And my real mother hated me so much, she killed herself over my birth. My real father became my father through rape. What can there possibly be left for me to say?

Why did you adopt me, “Mother”? Was it so that you’d feel a sick kind of satisfaction at raising your dead-by-suicide friend’s child?

I hate her. I hate you. I’m even disappointed in Dad for not telling me the truth.

Don’t look for me, seriously. I’m 17 now; I can take care of myself.

Tell Dad I still love him.

-Rain (if that’s even my real given name).

                                    *         *         *

“And when I came to, I’d lost all track of time. Hours could’ve passed, or days, or mere seconds,” I explain to William.

            “What did you do then?” he asks me.

            “I went back home alone, without Adrianna,” I reply miserably. “I told her parents first. But before leaving, I gently stacked some wooden panels and metals beams on top of her and hid the bottle of poison in my coat pocket. I told them she’d been crushed by heavy things that had fallen on her.”

            “But there must not have been any marks on her body from that,” my husband points out.

            “I only realized that when I got back home,” I explain. “It was too late. I was too disoriented to notice it before, and I was only seventeen. I felt as if I was a criminal hiding evidence from the authorities. But the weird thing is, they didn’t even question it.”

            “I can’t believe you’ve finally decided to tell me after all these years,” he voices. “But I’m glad you have.”

            He smiles and kisses me, taking me by surprise.

            “You know, a week after that night, I realized something,” I continue.

            William raises an eye brow and pulls me nearer to him.

            “And what’s that?” he inquires.

            “When I asked Adrianna if she was sure she wanted to go up those stairs herself, that I should stay where I was, I said ‘if you insist,’ and she replied, ‘I do.’ I think…I think she meant for me to raise Rain. I think that’s what she was thinking when she spoke those words.”

            William nods thoughtfully.

            “I don’t know if I’m reading to much into it…But whatever the case, I know she loved Rain. I still have the letter she hid in that mansion that day. She must’ve just written in that same day. It had tear stains all over, and the place she hid it was away from the leaking roof.”

            “Maybe she wanted you to find it,” he suggests.

            “Unlikely. She knew how much I kept losing thingsand never finding them. And she hid it in a very secretive location.”

            “Did it say she loved Rain?”

            “That’s all it said, in so many different way with so many words.”

            “We love Rain just as much,” he reassures me. “Speaking of Rain…are you ever going to let her read the letter?”

            How do adoptive parents tell the most wonderful child in the world that she’s adopted?

            “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “She might think she was an unwanted baby.”

            As I speak the words, an overwhelming sweep of emotion overpowers me. I get up from the bed and walk to the bedroom door.

            “Where are you going?” William asks.

            “I just want to kiss her sleeping face.”

            I stand before her bedroom door, confused. She always locks her door before going to bed. This is peculiarly uncharacteristic of her. It’s unnerving, if I’m being honest with myself. My mother’s-instincts kick in, and I burst through the door into her room. There is a piece of lined notebook paper that’s been hastily ripped out of a book, sitting on her empty bed. As I walk closer, I see that it is addressed to “Mom.” And her hand writing, I suddenly realize, looks a lot like Adrianna’s. Her page is also tear-streaked like her mother’s was. And like her mother’s letter, I never expected the content to be what it is.

            Rain (if that’s even my real given name).

            A note at the back, just one short line. A long black hair is subtly lying on it.

            P.S. love you too, Mom.

Author's Note

~I hope this never happens to anyone~
Feedback/comments/questions/constructive criticism/(free) advice or suggestions would be much appreciated. Seriously. =p