And It Rains
Carly stands close to her father and grips his hand tightly in her own, her small fingers barely able to curl around three of his. The sky is overcast and the clouds roil with distant thunder as they stretch across the sky. It's going to rain.
Her father kneels down before her and hands her a single white lily which she grips to her chest as if she'll never let it go. But she does. Without a word she unclenches her hand from around the stem and tosses it into the air, watching it turn over and over before disappearing into the hole in the ground just a few steps away. She knows that it falls onto the cherry wood lid, on the engravings of a gold nameplate and amidst the dirt that's already starting to fill the grave. Carly does not actually look to find out.
She never lets go of her father's hand.
OoOoOoOoO
Sam runs. She likes running. The beating of her heart and the raggedness of her breath reminds her that she's alive. Each footfall that hits cool pavement and each rise and fall of her chest as she sucks in air keeps her going. Life is the only thing worth running for.
She pauses beside a busy street and rests her hands on her knees, trying to even out her gasping breaths. Her mom will be so mad when she comes back, she's sure of it. Melanie will be so upset, so worried. Sam doesn't really care.
"I'll be back in the morning."
He's lying. Why can't they see that he's lying? Why can't she be as oblivious as her mother and sister, at home watching cartoons and eating store bought cookies as they wait for a man that will never return? Sam saw the suitcase in the hall, the second car in the driveway. She's not an idiot.
"Are you okay?"
Sam narrows her eyes and looks around, catching sight of the small boy crouched on the sidewalk, fat piece of chalk in hand and a mess of colors across the ground at his feet. "No," she says, surprising herself with her own honesty.
He holds up the piece of chalk to her, "Wanna draw?"
It's the simplest of questions, and Sam can't quite wrap her head around it. What will drawing help? What can anything possibly help?
She sits down across from him and takes the chalk. Sam prides herself on her drawing skills, her teacher in the afternoon class compliments her on them all the time. So she draws, tracing out vague likenesses of the faces she thought she loved and now can't quite bring herself to look at anymore.
"Is that your family?" the boy asks.
Sam scribbles out the tallest of the figures angrily until he is nothing but a smear of chalk across sidewalk. "This is my family now," she hears herself say bitterly, the words like a distant echo in a dark tunnel even to her own ears, full of regret and guilt. As if this could somehow be her fault.
The boy nods solemnly and takes the chalk from her, making three simple stick figures next to her more detailed family, drawing a harsh line through the largest one. "Me too," he says softly."
Sam ducks her head and smiles, "Wanna play hopscotch?"
Together they sketch out a rough and rather curvy hopscotch track, adding on more and more numbers until they can't count any higher. "If you can't do it, I get'ta punch you in the arm," she tells him in all seriousness as he tosses his stone forward onto the track. He gives her a skeptical look, but believes her less than a minute when she does as she said she would when he stumbles on number fourteen.
Overhead thunder rolls and Sam glares up at the clouds challengingly, daring them to ruin their game.
Of course, they do. The pair scurry under the shelter of a nearby apartment complex, standing on the steps just out of reach of the rain. Drop by drop it washes away their drawings and their game. To Sam, it's almost like it's washing away the world.
The boy stands beside her and tilts his head to the side, watching her smile slowly shift back into the smallest of frowns. "Come on," he says, pointing out into the rain, "Let's play."
"It's raining," Sam states.
"I know."
"We'll get sick," she says, repeating what her mother told her, what her sister worried about constantly.
"That's what mom says," the boy nods. "But I don't care." He sticks out his chin defiantly and Sam laughs, taking a step forward with him out into the downpour.
Where their hopscotch game was just minutes before a scattering of puddles has already begun to form. "Come on!" the boy calls, bounding feet first into the nearest one and splashing water everywhere. He holds out a hand behind his back almost absentmindedly as he bends his knees in preparation to jump into the next one. Sam takes it without question, and they race forward through the rain and cloud painted puddles together.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
Carly leans her head against the window, watching the droplet's of rain race down the glass and disappear from sight. Her father is talking, hushed regretful tones she tries not to listen to. He needs to leave, he says. He needs to attend a conference. It'll just be for a week, only one week and then he'll be home.
Why doesn't she believe him this time?
Her brother is curled up in the front seat next to her father, his head on his knees and his face buried in the pocket created between chest and legs. Her hand slides into the door handle without even thinking, and she sits up a bit to glare at him.
He'll be leaving for college soon, for somewhere far away because he doesn't care. She knows he wants out, out of the military lifestyle of traveling from base to base, of having no friends you can keep, of the fear of a concept of a father who might not return one day.
It'll be just a week. Only a week.
Their mother had just a cold. Only a cold.
Carly flings the car door open, struggling out of her seatbelt as her dad hits the breaks, swerving in the rain. As the car skids to a stop Carly jumps out, running to the sidewalk and down the road as fast as her little legs can carry her. It won't be just a week. It will be just one week, and then just one month, before turning into just one year.
She hears her father call her name, but she does not stop. She hears the car door open, and she only runs harder, her mind filled with lilies and false promises and the cold wood of a closed coffin lid. She can't live with one more "Just one week," anymore, not if she has to spend it alone.
She trips over a soggy piece of chalk, barely glancing at the surprised boy and girl she barely misses crashing into before she ducks down an alleyway beside a towering apartment building. She slows down then, met only with the rain bouncing off tin trashcans and a solid brick wall. Carly sucks in a breath as she realizes she actually has nowhere to run to.
Her world falls apart.
She leans a shoulder against the dirty wall, sliding down it with a choked sob. There's no where to go, no one to go to. There's not someone waiting with fresh cookies and bright smiles. Carly sobs and the sound wracks through her like a bullet, a wound with no one left to kiss it better and tell her she'll be alright. She closes her eyes and wonders if the rain will ever stop.
Two strong arms scoop her up before she even notices she's no longer alone, and she's tucked against a broad chest, two lips kissing the top of her head with a whisper she can't quite make out.
"Don't ever do that again . . ."
Her brother's whole frame shakes as he says those words, and she opens her eyes to look at him, startled. "Don't run away like that and scare me ever again," he says into her hair, his voice trembling underneath the never ending rain.
She stares at him, at how closely he holds her and the way his nice suit pants soak up the muddy water on the ground where he kneels that he doesn't even seem to notice. Carly swallows, feeling a lump form in her throat she can barely speak around. "I . . . Don't want to be alone . . ." She whispers.
"You won't be," Spencer promises. He opens his eyes and pushes the hair back from her eyes, wiping the raindrops from her forehead, "You won't be."
He walks back to the car with her in his arms, her head on his shoulder and his hand on her head, shielding her from the worst of the rain that continues to fall. They pass the apartment building she'd hid behind, the children playing a game of hopscotch amidst the puddles and laughing through the storm. Carly looks up and watches them with mild interest and Spencer follows her gaze.
"This is a nice place, huh?" he says, glancing up at the building with the blue neon sign and clock at it's top. Carly nods. "Do you wanna live here?" he asks suddenly, pausing outside it's doors, the laughter of the little girl and boy still close enough to hear over the pounding of the rain. "We can live here, if you want. Have a home we can keep." She nods again and he grins, "I'll save up, then. We'll get a place here we won't have to leave ever again."
A place with no broken memories, and even less broken promises. Carly nods at the thought and tries to think of the world ahead rather than the one left behind.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
"Fredward Benson you get out of the rain and into the building right now."
Sam looks up when the boy at her side flinches and freezes with one foot raised to splash into the next puddle. He lowers said foot and gives her an apologetic look, "I gotta go, my mom is really mad."
She glances back at the woman standing on the steps of the building, her foot tapping and her arms crossed. Sam frowns at her for spoiling their fun. "Okay," she relents, letting go of his hand.
"You should come play again tomorrow," he says, smiling a smile that is undeterred as his mother calls his name again impatiently.
Sam nods, liking the idea more than she'll admit aloud before turning and starting to walk away.
"I'll come play again soon!" she promises with a wave before darting down the street the way she had come.
In the end it takes her more than an hour to get home, and when the rain stops the next morning her mother keeps the door bolted so she can't get out. A week later when she's finally allowed into the world again, Sam finds she can not recall the way she had run, and spends a long, long time searching for a building with a sign of blue neon and a little boy with chalk in his hands, inviting her to play.
It's many years before she finds it again, the day when it rained long forgotten save for warm hands, laughter over the sound of a storm, and lines of chalk washing away down the street.
RANDOM AUTHOR RAMBLE
Yeah, um, so I may have literally cried when writing this. *insert poker face here*
Basically I've always wanted to write a story which talked about Carly's mom, and with Miranda saying she wanted Tina Fey to play her mom, I decided to write my head canon before it got fucked. YUP. SO HERE. HAVE SOME ANGST. Also, the gang is six at this time. SIX.