Chapter 2

Raindrops and Rose

It was an eighty-five degree day in mid-July, and I really wanted to go swimming. It had been ninety degrees, but then it rained, and it was now eighty-five. I wanted to get Isabelle or Sarah and go swimming, but it was still raining. It had been raining for almost two hours now, and I really wished it would stop.

I was sitting alone on my bed in my bedroom, reading. I liked reading, but it was hot, and I would rather have been swimming. Mine was one of only three rooms in the house that didn't have a ceiling fan, and the house was big. I was more aware of this unfortunate fact now than I usually was, because it was so hot.

For how large our family was, we definitely had enough money. Each of my sisters and I had our own bedrooms, although there were five of us. My father was a highly paid lawyer, and my sisters and I got the full effects of that. My mother always kept a maid around, and I very seldom liked them. They never seemed able to do anything to my mother's specification, although she almost never told them so. Every now and then I would tell them that they were doing something wrong, but they usually yelled at me or ignored me. One told me that she didn't have to listen to me because I wasn't the one paying her. When I told my mother that, she told me to stop bothering her. My mother almost never fired her maids, but they would occasionally quit so that we had a new one every few months. The longest we'd ever had one maid was two years. They were the longest two years of my life. I liked a little change at home every now and then.

I came to the end of my chapter and lay back on my bed. I could hear the rain on the windows and the roof, as my room was on the top floor of three. I had always loved the sound of raindrops hitting the roof, and while I usually listened to music in my room, I never did when it was raining. I closed my eyes and heard a crash of thunder. Even with my eyes shut, I could see the lightning flash. I loved summer storms, but still, I'd rather have been swimming.

I considered for a moment putting my swimsuit on and walking around in the rain to cool off, but decided against it. It was storming after all, and I didn't want to get hit by lightning. Besides, I was too old for such things.

Now what? I didn't particularly like it when it rained. Listening to the storm was only good for so long, and I was quickly getting bored. I wonder what Isabelle's doing. I left my room and started to walk down the hallway toward my sister's room. When I opened the door though, I found that she wasn't inside.

The third floor of our house belonged to my sisters and I. Every one of us had our bedrooms on that floor. The hallways sort of spider webbed out from the center of the house, creating what I had always thought would look like an asterisk from above, and although I had never seen the house from above, I didn't think it looked like that, considering it looked so square and regal from the front.

There were multiple rooms in our house that weren't used for anything. Most of them had a bed and standard bedroom furniture in them, masquerading as guest rooms, although we very seldom had more than one or two guests at a time. The one at the very end of my hallway, that is, the hallway where my room was, was almost never used, except by me. I kept a shelf in the room filled with books I almost never read, and things from when I was younger that I almost never looked at.

When I cracked open the door to the room, which I considered to be just as much mine as was my room, I was surprised to find Rose. She hadn't noticed me, so I took advantage of that and stood in the doorway, watching her.

Rose had her back to me, and she appeared to be writing something. Be it a homework assignment or a diary, I couldn't tell. I assumed the latter, as she occasionally giggled and made various noises that wouldn't have made sense had she been working on homework. I couldn't see her facial expressions, but from her motions and sounds, guessed that they would have been interesting, and ever-changing.

Rose was the most mysterious of my sisters. I didn't know much about her at all, really, but had never noticed until just then. I wondered how long she had sat in this room just as I did on occasion. Did she come in here just to write in her diary, or did she do other things as well? She hadn't left anything behind, or I would have found it. She didn't keep things in the room as I had for so many years. I had always thought that this room was my secret, that nobody else ever frequented it. Apparently I had been wrong. Or was this the first time Rose had sat in this room? I wasn't sure if I liked sharing my special room with a girl I barely knew anything about.

Was she seeing anyone? One of the most basic questions, particularly in the lives of my sisters and I, and I hadn't the slightest clue. I didn't know any of her friends, yet she went out on occasion, so I knew they existed. What college was she going to? What kind of grades did she get? Why didn't I know? Did she wear makeup and paint her nails? What color eyes did she have? She was my sister, and I had never bothered to notice these things. I knew she had red hair, not auburn like Totsie's and mine, but red, like my mother's. This might have had something to do with my parents' logic in naming her Rose, but I didn't know for sure. My two youngest sisters had inherited my father's dark brown hair, but Totsie and I had both ended up with a blend of the hair colors of both of our parents: auburn.

Before, I had never noticed how pretty she was. Her hair was long and not curly like my mother's, but not straight, like mine and most of my sisters'. Hopie had the curly hair. Her hair was a long mishmash of brown spiral curls, which she could make look nice if she put the effort into it, but she only did so on occasion. Rose had wavy hair, entirely different from any of us. Unlike some wavy hair though, it didn't look as if it needed brushed within ten minutes of brushing it. Her skin was perfect; fair and unblemished, yet fairly pale for mid-summer.

Rose was apparently very concentrated on what she was doing; she never once turned and never saw me. Eventually I figured it would be polite for me to make myself known, although I didn't have to tell her I had been watching her for nearly five minutes.

I walked into the room and sat down beside Rose on the bed. She appeared startled at first, and she snapped the book she had been writing in shut. It turned out I had been right, it was a diary. After the book had closed, she seemed to relax. "Hi Em," she said. "What are you doing in here?"
"Funny," I said. "I could ask you the same thing."

"I was writing," she said simply.

"Ah. I was just… bored I guess," I said. "Bad weather, got tired of my room." I wasn't yet ready to disclose the fact that I came in here often, and she wasn't saying anything either.

"That happens," Rose said simply. It seemed odd to me how awkward the conversation was between my older sister and I. If I had been talking to Totsie, either I would be angry with her or she with me by this point in time. If it was Hopie, I would probably be trying to escape the room, and she would be pestering me to do some childish thing with her. Isabelle and I would have probably been deep in conversation about something of absolutely no importance. But Rose, I didn't dislike her, but I didn't really have anything to talk to her about.

"You're sixteen," Rose said, not as a question, but a statement.

"Yes," I said, not sure where she was going.

"You'll be coming out this year," she said. Coming out ceremonies weren't something to put much thought into among the girls in our family. You came out when you were about sixteen, end of story. My mother, on the other hand, put more thought into our coming out ceremonies than almost anything else. None of us minded, and although I hadn't thought about mine much, now that Rose mentioned it, I was a little excited.

"Yes, I guess I will," I said, smiling. "Wow, I haven't thought about it much."

"It's not a huge big deal," Rose said. She had been through the coming out ritual two years ago, and hadn't gotten particularly into it, but hadn't minded it.

"Well, it kind of is," I said. "It's like proclaiming to society that you're an adult, you know?"

"It's a coming out, not a bat mitzvah," Rose said.

"I know, but we aren't Jewish, so it's kind of what we get instead," I said.

"I guess," Rose laughed, evidently having never thought of it this way. "Hey, want to go for a walk?" Rose asked me.

"It's raining," I told her, although it was obvious, as it could still be heard easily against the windows and the roof.

"So what?" she asked. "It isn't storming anymore. Grab your raincoat and your umbrella and meet me downstairs."

"Okay," I said smiling, pleased with the idea of walking in the rain with my older sister. It sounded more like something I'd do with Isabelle, yet I never had before.

I went into my room and grabbed my raincoat and umbrella, as Rose had instructed, and also pulled on the rain boots I had received for my last birthday.

I met Rose in the kitchen in front of the back door. We opened our umbrellas on the back porch, and set out down the sidewalk. We passed Hopie, dancing in the backyard in her bathing suit, the only confirmation I needed that I had been correct about being too old for such things.

My older sister and I walked down the street side by side, she in her classic yellow rain jacket and I in my red one, both with matching boots. We talked idly as we walked, and I found myself totally content with my newfound friend and role model. I didn't think I'd mind sharing my secret room with her one bit.