YAFF Muse: Black Summer Rain

By Cam

YAFF Muse is a new weekly blog series featuring some YA Fiction Fanatics members. In this series, we’ll post original short stories created from an image meant to inspire our Muse. Hope you enjoy! And don’t forget to check out the other *YAFFers participating in this series (links below).

Around the Streetmarket by Plamen Stoev

Black Summer Rain

“That black looks hot on your feet.” Gavin smiles at me. It’s the sort of smile he uses when he wants something.

“Not feet,” I say. “Toes.” I wiggle them to show him exactly what I mean. He plants his hands on the car’s hood on either side of me, and leans in, way in, until he fills my field of vision. “You’re going to make me spill polish all over your paint job if you don’t be careful.” Actually, it would get on the towel under my butt and not the paint job, but I give him a gentle nudge anyway.

“I don’t care,” he says, plucking the bottle from my fingers.

I’m not sure where he sets my Knocking On Death’s Door nail polish because he pushes me back until my spine kisses the curve of the hood. It was eighty-seven degrees at noon so the top of the car is warm—no, wait. Not warm. Warm is like apple pie after ten seconds in the microwave. The car is scorching and I wonder if my thin white shirt will melt off my body.

Gavin nuzzles my neck and angles his head so he can blow down my top, between my cleavage. He knows this drives me crazy.

“What do you want?” I ask, and my voice is a little breathy, a combo of the humidity and Gavin’s hard-on teasing the space between my legs.

There’s a naughty hint in his eye when he flicks his gaze at my mouth. It’s in the lazy way he blinks, like he’s trying to hypnotize me, and in the way his mouth puckers just a bit. I swallow hard because I know what he wants.

* * *

It’s one of those flash storms, the kind that catches you while you’re walking home from school or getting the mail or rolling a joint on the hood of your boyfriend’s car.

Gavin curses and grabs the rolling papers and baggie before he ducks toward his house. I laugh because summer rain is my favorite. Closing my eyes, I turn my head to the crying sky and open my mouth. Precipitation doesn’t taste as clean as it did when I was a little girl, but it’s not as bad as, say, drinking from the toilet.

My shirt is soaked through and I realize anyone who wanted to could look out their window and see my flimsy bra with the black stars as clear as if I wasn’t wearing anything.

The rain patters harder and it’s the only thing I let myself hear. Pure. Powerful. A shiatsu massage for your ear drums. When I turn, my breath hitches because Gavin’s an inch from my face. He holds an umbrella over his head, except one side dips at a forty-five-degree angle so a cascade of water pelts his shoulder. I don’t get why he bothers with it.

“Come inside,” he says. “I want to smoke before my parents get home.”

I glance at his car, then the street. When I turn back, he has a mixed expression on his face. I wink and say, “I have a better idea.”

* * *

I tell Gavin to slow down around the bend because I don’t want to burn myself. For once, he actually listens and we pass the street that takes you into the farmer’s market without any problem.

The rain has scared everyone off the road, so I place the lit joint between his lips and let my head fall back against the headrest. My eyelids flutter because it’s almost impossible to keep them open when so much smoke is trapped inside.

* * *

They say it wasn’t Gavin’s fault. That the driver coming from the opposite direction took his eyes off the road and didn’t see us in time. But that driver can’t really say anything, least of all the truth, and no one bothers to ask me.

I roll my eyes at an EMT whose face has turned a brilliant shade of albino. But she sees right through me like I’m not even there, like she doesn’t notice I’m plastered with rain. My star-spangled bra practically winks at every John, Dick, and Harry but no one gazes for more than a second. When a firefighter storms by, I wiggle my black-painted toes. But that gets zero reaction, too. And I find it odd no one asks where my shoes are or why we were driving in the first place.

If they did, I’d say, “Because summer rain is my favorite.” With drops so big they’ll wash you away.

© 2010 Cambria Dillon

(Author’s Note: The girl in the pic looks like a bit of a rebel, no? I mean, who runs barefoot in the rain? The street is just so…gross. Well, that small detail is what inspired me for this week’s story. It started with the simplest activity of painting toes and ended with a stoner-ghost. The mind works in mysterious ways!)

*Don’t forget to check out other stories from YAFF Muse participants:

RM Gilbert
Min Buchanan
Rebekah Purdy
Traci Kenworth
Vanessa Barger
Penny Randall