ReWritten

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The rain had been silently tumbling to the earth all morning. The first roll of thunder filled the sky with an ominous feeling that the storm would be settling in for the afternoon as well. Nevaeh was standing outside, bare toes in the grass, face uplifted as the fat drops soaked her hair, rolling down it’s length and dripping from the tips to her lower back. It had been eight weeks since she had been outside and the fresh July rainstorm beckoned her with it’s cloudy façade, hiding the harsh sun from her pale skin.

She had thought about Jay’s phone call deep into the night. He was right; of course, she had to find new motivation. She had not lost Ava just to make the same mistakes. This time she would listen, she would learn, she would choose to change for the better. Nev glanced down at the running shoes bouncing in her hands. Rhythmically, they hit against her thigh as she swung them out and let them fall back in. She remembered how much she used to enjoy running in the rain. When everyone else hunkered down indoors the world was only hers. She loved to match the beat of the rain with the step of her pace, watching as the world seemed to freeze around her. It was beautiful.

She moved to the front porch and pulled her socks out from the shoes. Her wet toes clung to the fabric but they were warm and dry soon after she laced up. Starting slow, she walked south a few blocks before turning left, breaking into a slow jog. Her muscles sighed and stretched, awakening from a long nap. They led her feet as she allowed her mind to wander through the old neighborhoods she knew so well. Memories flooded back and soon she knew where her body was taking her. Looking up she saw the curve in the road had already flooded. It was always the first street covered in water. The old drainage system needed upgrading but it wouldn’t be done for another five years. When she ran in the rain, she often came through here where all the kids would gather to play. It was the most common route to the pool, so many were clad in bathing suits and rain drenched towels, splashing around in the most suitable alternative.

Today, it was empty. The gathering thunder had called all the children inside where they showered to get clean and warm. She splashed through the curve and took an immediate left. In three more blocks she found herself standing in the empty parking lot of the municipal pool. She walked up to the chain link fence, lacing her fingers through the mesh and stared out into the vacant pool. The water was crystal, disturbed only by the falling rain.

For most of her life, this had been her summer home. From sun up until well after sunset, Nev had spent her timeplaying, teaching, coaching, guarding, and swimming here. She had cried the year they tore it down to build the water park. It had been her most favorite place anywhere. She pictured it on a sunny day; the guard stands full, the slide turned on, and the noise of swimmers rising from the agitated surface. It was built to be full of life. Silently, the tears slid down her cheeks, mixing with the fresh rain water. She felt a kinship to this pool, empty and unused. Both oblivious to their own destruction just a few years down the road. But not this time, not Nev. She had the advantage and she was going to learn how to use it.

Nev turned and headed back down the parking lot. When she got to the street she broke out into a run, hard and uninhibited until she was all the way home.

Exchanging one wet environment for another, Nev stepped into the steamy shower. Her body ached from the mile she had ran back home. An oddly pleasant feeling of exhaustion swept over her as she let the hot water soothe her muscles. Breathing in deeply, Nev filled her lungs with steam and, exhaling, she blew out with it all the tension she had held within herself since mid-May. She stood there with her hands against the wall, letting her head hang low beneath the showerhead just feeling everything she had missed. Her mind was finally empty and her thoughts were still as she remembered how it felt to be alive.

The door hinge squeaked open, letting a subsequent rush of cold air into the muggy bathroom. “Nev?” A sweet voice rang through the fog.

“Yeah, Nana?” Nevaeh turned off the water, reached around the shower curtain and grabbed a towel hanging on the rod to the right.

“You have a phone call,” she cast a weary smile towards the shower and the invisible form behind it. She covered the receiver with one hand as Nev poked her soaked head out of the shower, wearing the same tired smile. “It’s nice to see you smile,” she whispered.

“It’s nice to smile,” Nev replied as she took the phone from her mother. “Hello?”

“It’s nice to hear that you are smiling,” Jay’s tender timbre slid through the line.

“I went for a jog today…outside…in the rain.” She paused lifting the phone from her ear momentarily to run her towel over the length of her straight, black hair. “It was nice,” she said as she brought it back beside her. She realized she had only thought of Ava once today. And even so, it was not in reverie but as motivation to live, even if it meant making choices that would change her life so irrevocably that they would never meet.

“A reason,” he sounded almost relieved.

“Yeah,” her words were light, “...to continue.” Wrapping the towel around her thin frame, she encircled herself twice before tucking the edge into the top. She rested her hand on the door handle, but paused. She spoke with the door still closed, “I can see a few more now.”

“Keep going, Nev and they will multiply.” As he spoke, Nev opened the door and let the cold air flood the tiny bathroom. She inhaled deeply, letting the breath clear her lungs from the dampness. Exhaling, she turned, walking through the house, heading downstairs, not to hole up in the basement any longer, but to start fresh and new. “Michael called today. He asks about you.”

“Does that strike you as odd that we live in the same town but he has to call you two hours away to see how I’m doing? He could just come over.” She spoke flippantly focusing more on whether or not she should get into her pajamas so early in the evening.

“He has, Nev.” His words stopped her in her tracks, “you won’t see anyone.” She refocused on their conversation. Her heart thudded noisily in her chest, she had rejected him again. It made her sick to think that her dad was right. In a sense, she hadn’t thought about anyone else, or the pain she was putting people through, people who genuinely cared. “Tracy asks about you too, almost every night. I think she’s lonely in that apartment all by herself.”

“Oh, Jay. I didn’t mean to hurt them, make them worry,” Her shoulders drooped and her entire body sagged in her own disappointment. “Will you tell them I’m sorry?”

“You could do it yourself.” It was a gentle prod, coaxing her back into reality. He could see the signs, he knew she was ready. It was herself that she had to convince.

“I can’t.”

“You can, Nev.”

“I don’t know,” she whined. She thought of her run today, how good it felt to get outside. Life; she could see it right around the corner, but something held her back. She was afraid of people, what they would say, how they would act, of how different everything would be. She sighed heavily.

“And that’s ok...to not know. It’s exactly when you lean on those who do. You can trust me, Love.” Jay cut himself off abruptly, the smallest of gasps released from his lips. "Um…” he was back-peddaling, “Michael, Tracy...me; we all love you. We will support you. It’s ok to trust them, they won’t let you down, I won’t let you down.”

Wait, did Jay just call her Love? She tried to focus on his conversation but her mind kept creeping back to that. You can trust me, Love. She replayed it in her brain, rolling it over and over as the smallest of smiles graced her thin lips.

“Nev?” he called her back to him.

“Yeah?” she tried again to refocus.

“You can’t alway let your reasons come to you, sometimes you have to get out there and look for them.”

“I know,” she barely breathed, admitting to one thing she knew was inevitable, but still wasn’t ready to face: leaving.

“I want to see you,” Jay spoke, serious, determined.

“Maybe,” she said cautiously. His breath caught on the other end of the line. She waited for his excitement to barrage her with questions she could not answer yet. Perhaps she had spoken too soon.

“Alright,” was all he said, equally as cautious.

“Ok,” she smiled, amazed again at how well he understood her, and hung up the phone.

***

The rain came and went for three more days, just like it does in Kansas, never making it’s mind up from one minute to the next. But by the evening of the fourth the clouds cleared away just long enough for the city fireworks show to go out with a bang! Nev lay on the raft in the midst of a million chlorinated gallons as she watched the bursting lights flitter above her. For a long time she simply floated there, thoughtless, letting the past few days really soak into her soul. Jay had only called one other time since she had even hinted at the possibility of venturing outside her hometown and into the world of her past, and he had said nothing about their past conversation, pushed for no answers on when she was coming. She had found it refreshing yet slightly disappointing which left her utterly confused by her own reaction. This life that seemed to be creeping in around her was exciting, but sometimes Nev could not shake the guilt that came with knowing her stubbornness cost her Ava. “Change is not easy,” she recalled from the rich, gentle words over the phone yesterday. “If it were, everyone would do it.”

It was hard not to think of Ava tonight. She had dreamt of the swing yesterday and it disturbed her that waking up hurt less this time than it had previously. The entirety of the dream took place in the dark, not necessarily at night, but in that space where the silence breathed. A presence was also there to share the burden of her pain. It whispered to her through the wind and eased the transition of her daughter disappearing. Nev recognized it as her father’s spirit. She awoke in tears, with only a dull and hollow ache as opposed to the jolt of being ripped from her previous reality.

Looking down from the sky, she rested her gaze upon her own toes. Lifting a foot she dropped it over the side, dangling her leg into the pool. The shifting of her balance caused a little flood to rush onto the raft, pooling around her hips and thighs. As she watched the crystal clear water she took note for the first time of the newness of this young body: the tight, stretchmark-free stomach, breasts that lacked the sag related to nursing, even her hips seemed to be more tightly compacted and it struck her…she was not a mother…yet. Sorrow overwhelmed her. Nevaeh lifted her eyes to the sky to watch the grand finale through the blur of tears streaming down her cheeks. Although it was unlike any sadness she had ever felt she knew, if only for a moment, that she was not crying alone. In a moment she could not define, in a place she could not see, she felt someone cradling her and she let herself be wrapped in the comfort.

My Darling. Her secret comforter whispered to her.

“Hey, Daddy,” she whispered back. It seemed odd, and a bit ironic to be talking to her father, dead and gone, when he was physically thirty meters away from her, floating in the diving well. But it had happened more than a few times now, and even though acknowledging his dual presence made her feel a bit crazy, she could not deny that it also dulled the sharp, searing grief emblazoned on her heart, even if only for a moment.

A tinge of worry prodded her at the thought of her father floating lazily in the pool tonight. He looked thin and worn in his swim trunks and, whether or not it was a trick of the fluorescent street lights, she thought his skin looked almost sallow. Nana glided up beside her, distracting her from this train of thought and reached out to slide her hand into her daughter’s. “You’re going to make it.” She spoke to the stars, “I’ve seen you. Whatever it is, is more than we know, but something in me knows you will learn to love again.” The last firework exploded in the sky, searing downwards to the earth, fizzling out, leaving them in darkness.