Disclaimer: I do not own either Wicked or the quote halfway through.


It's raining today.

I hate rain. I always have, ever since I was a little girl on the way to my first ball, and my curls and pretty dress were drenched before anyone got to see them.

I loved that little dress. It was made of pink silk, stitched in gold, and had a rose satin bow in the back and a multi-tiered skirt with gold lace peeking through. It made me feel like a princess.

Rain spoiled my sixteenth birthday, too. I had a date that night. Coming home we got so soaked that my hair went limp, and my makeup ran, and what's-his-face couldn't help but laugh at me. I looked like a drowned rat, not a princess. I wonder what he'd think of me now.

I'm older and smarter, I guess, smart enough to stay out of the rain--and yet, still every bit as naive.

Momsie used to keep a plaque on her wall that said, "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." When the weather was bad, I'd usually wake up to find it hanging from my doorknob, nagging me. I'd march the thing back to Momsie's room and tell her that I was never going out in the rain again. Never. What she was really trying to tell me didn't sink in--till now.

There will always be rain, I suppose, and it will always show me at my worst. I can't make it stop, just like I can't hold a bubble, and can't make time stand still.

But maybe there are ways to work around it. If I'm not wearing makeup, it won't run. If I don't date what's-his-face, it won't matter if he laughs. And if I'm really a princess in my pretty silk dress, the water won't change that one bit.

So I take off my shoes, and I wash my face clean, and I go out to dance in the rain.