It cannot be raining.

It's raining. In February. In Canada.

If Darlene wasn't standing in it, it would almost be acceptable. It would be good weather to be at home, sitting on her bay window with a book. Or even at her dad's house, sitting in front of the living door window with a book. But here she is, standing outside the main entrance to the hospital, waiting for a ride she should have known isn't coming, completely soaked.

And because this day wasn't going well enough, lightning flashes against the dark grey, a burning streak of light against an ashen canvas.

In her sweater pocket, her phone vibrates SOS in Morse code. Years have passed since she switched to that from the standard vibration, but it fits her current situation.

She pulls it out, immediately regretting doing so when droplets pound on the screen, unrelentless and without pause.

If it's not Dad, saying he's on his way—

The caller makes even less sense: it's November, her cousin.

"If you're not calling to say you're picking me up, I think you should call back," she shouts into the phone as the rain somehow gets louder.

"Hi, Darlene. I'm just calling to say I guess I'm glad you're alive and well," November says, splashes of acid within every word. She hangs up before Darlene can spit back a fiery reply.

She crosses the dropoff zone and into the parking lot just as an ambulance pulls in.

She doesn't have anywhere to go. Someone should have asked her about that before they discharged her.

No, actually, they should have noticed when neither parent showed up to see her. Mom's across the country for a work trip, and Dad, who promised to pick her up in the pouring rain, clearly did not want to see her.

Which, fair enough. It's the same reason she avoided eye contact in the mirror earlier. Her dark, muddy gaze is not something she wanted to look at while she changed into street clothes.

She gets to the intersection and goes to cross the street when another ambulance rushes by.

She chuckles darkly. That would have been ironic. Take notes, Alanis Morrisette.

Darlene otherwise crosses safely and slows to pull her backpack higher onto her shoulder.

Homeless isn't the right word. Sure, she is without a home at the moment, but she's not poor or hungry or technically even without shelter, even if nowhere's permanent anymore.

She can jump from cousin to cousin every couple of days—it's not like her aunts are speaking to each other—and she can alternate between parents, until one of them asks why she can't stay at her apartment.

Darlene can't do any of that right now, though. It'd be too humiliating. The wound is still too fresh. So is the bandaged cut on her forearm.

She stops underneath a tree—one that doesn't prevent the rain from coming through—and mentally maps out her plan.

Okay, library card's expired, and you need an address to renew, so that's out, but there's always Encore.

Encore Dance Academy is a noncompetitive (as much as she wanted to compete) dance studio that she went to from five to seventeen. You can go up to twenty-five, but after Darlene started spirialing last semester, she decided it would be best if she took a break. Her parents agreed. (Her dance teacher did not, but it's not like Daria has any children.)

You're not supposed to show up unless you have a class or you're the parent of someone in a class, but also, people are there all the time without being either of those things, so she should be fine.

She pulls up her phone to check Google Maps, sidestepping away from a puddle in the street, and takes off.

—

Every wall in the studio is a different colour. It must have cost so much money.

Darlene loves how the bronze at the front desk bleeds into the navy blue of the girls' changeroom. (Though not the best idea. Made it confusing for lots of dancers, especially when the entrance to the boys' changeroom is a light red.)

The building itself used to be a post office, and then a garage, and then a small diner before it became the studio it is.

"Harris' birthday party was cancelled because of the incoming storm," Julie, the receptionist, says without looking up. "Yes, we're still having afternoon classes. Despite the storm. No, I can't tell you why, because I don't know myself."

She wipes her shoes on the (no longer) ivory mat. "That sucks about Harris." She doesn't know how else to respond to that.

Julie glances up. "Darlene!" She flips through the stack of paperwork at her desk and pulls out a prticiular file. "Are you coming back in time for recital practice?"

"No," she replies quietly. "Just trying to get out of the rain."

"Oh." She lowers her shoulders and bites her lip. "Okay."

"Is that...alright with you?" She had hoped it'd be fine for her to come back, even if not to dance, but it never occurred to her that this might be a 'never show your face again, you're dead to me' type of situation.

She perks up. "Of course!" she replies, immediately removing all concern. "Some of the girls have been asking what happened to you and where you went—I think all they want to know is whether or not you transferred schools."

She raises her eyebrows. "They genuinely think I'd do that? Me?"

"They're claiming to not really have known you at all. Encore Dance Academy, Julie speaking," she says, picking up the phone as it rings. "Yes, we're still open."

Darlene decides that conversation is over and heads through the hallway on Julie's right to the dozen of studios Encore has to offer. (Thirteen, to be precise, but no one brings up Studio M.)

She sits on the bench in front of Studio G (wall colours: bubblegum, cherry, mauve, and teal) with an ongoing tot pre-ballet class.

Hey, is that Corey?

She leans forward. It's her.

She didn't know Corey Abernathy well in school, but she heard all the rumours. Clearly the baby one was true.

Hopefully she gave her baby a decent name. A girl or two in the years above her gave their kids names with incomprehensible spelling.

Or not. It doesn't exactly affect her. It's an odd thing to be thinking about, anyway.

What's also odd is how close the girl sits down next to her, on her left. Or why even this bench. But she'd recognize the peach highlights anywhere, and here probably counts in 'anywhere.'

"Look," she starts, taking off her coat, "I'm supposed to be here. I doubt you are."

"Oh? You do?" Darlene queries, taking her coat off too.

She pulls out her sketch pad and flips it open to a current page of uncoloured figures. "I do. Very much. Especially since I've heard you don't even go here anymore."

She hums. "I have no reason to."

Pause. Darlene's sure she's rolling her eyes. "Obviously I mean you don't dance here anymore."

One of the louder kids attempts a handstand and screams when she doesn't land it.

She rolls up the sleeves of her sweater (the website she bought it from calls it a confetti knit sweater, but that doesn't mean she will), making the bandage on her left forearm visible. "If a dancer dies twice, and a writer never dies, where does that leave me?" Hope can figure it out; she went to university. Which is great, since Darlene can't tell her.

She looks straight ahead at the one way glass and watches Hope's reflection as she glances briefly at her arm, then does a double take and sets her pad aside, taking the scene in with concern. She decides a few times to reach out and touch it, but hesitates every time.

She grits her teeth. That's the reaction she feared. That's why she wasn't going to hunt down Hope until she was healthy. Until this was something in the past, when it is clearly very much still in the present.

Hope doesn't say anything for some time, and Darlene elects to politely ignore the sniffling and tearing of Kleenexes during that time. Nothing she could say would help, because she'd find a way to turn it into self-deprecation.

There is still some sobbing, but when Hope finally says something, her voice is not watery.

"I'm sorry," she pauses to wipe at a corner of her eye, "that you were ever in a position where you viewed death as the only way out of your situation."

Now Darlene's going to cry. "You don't have to apologize for that."

Hope turns towards her, and pulls Darlene's other arm to face her, and, when she's sure she's looking at her directly in the eye, shrugs. "Who will, if not me?"

There's no real response to that. No right one.

"I thought you would be more surprised." Hope sounds disappointed. "That I'm here, I mean."

"I—I don't know. Everything's messed up lately." She nods at the sketch pad. "What's that for?"

"Oh, people usually sketch or draw pictures on it."

Darlene turns back to the toddlers doing ballet.

"I'm illustrating a graphic novel about ballet, and I come here to make sure it's accurate," she says to her silence.

"Yeah, watching toddlers is something that—"

"Obviously not now. I'm here for fun. And to get out of the rain." She bumps her shoulder against hers. "But enough about me. What have you been up to?"

Since they last spoke, Darlene has done many things, all of them uneventful and irrevelant and not anything to be proud of.

"Are you going to go back to U of T?" She tries to steer the conversation away from her. Hope has had a much more interesting life. People like Darlene are beneath her. Not that she cares, apparently, with how close she's sitting. "You've only taken a year of your English program, right?"

One thing about Hope is that she's a current—constantly moving, definite. Under the water, yes, but sure of where she's headed.

One thing about Darlene is she's a buoy tipped over face first in the ocean. Once important, once with a reason and purpose, now useless and waiting to be pulled under.

There are no unimportant parts of the ocean for her to be.

"You got that certificate for taking all four years of music, right?" She's acting as though she hadn't heard her, hasn't noticed the obvious attempt to turn away from her least favourite talking point. "And that creative writing course was cancelled again, I'm sure. You either run it, or you don't, but what you don't do is lead students on. Hey, how's Sandy? She's got to be like, fifteen or sixteen now, no?"

Darlene's heart sinks. Of course she wouldn't have known; they haven't been in contact.

"I know smaller dogs like Corgis can live longer than big dogs, but that's a long time. I mean, she could drive. If she was human. Duh."

She looks futher down the hallway (wall colours: turquoise, kelly green, and crimson—someone definitely had a hard time deciding between warm and cool colours) and shakes her head, trying not to let this break her again.

She feels Hope's arms around her body and her head resting on her neck, her orange sweater brushing her back. "Sandy passed, didn't she? I'm sorry."

She opens her mouth to say something—to say anything; she can't talk about this—but she starts crying instead.

God, Darlene. Get it together. This is pathetic. No one here wants to see you crying like some depressed weirdo.

Hope breaks away and reaches over to unzip the black backpack leaning against the bench that she hasn't noticed before (why are you so unobservant these days?) and rummages in search for something.

She passes her a pack of Kleenexes. Darlene takes it and uses her teeth to open it. (Now you're just being rude.)

(It's not like she has any other options. They cut her fingernails down to the skin at the hospital, and her thumbs have barely stopped bleeding.)

"I remember how happy you were the day you got her," Hope says softly after a long moment. "How fast her short tail was wagging."

"We were three," she replies, taking out the first Kleenex.

(You don't remember the day you got Sandy? Are you sure you deserve to grieve her?)

I was three, she argues back to the mean little voice inside her. Nobody has clear memories of being three.

(Hope does.)

Hope's either exaggerating or she really does remember.

(So she's special and you're not. Remember that as this conversation continues.)

She laughs. "My mom has a video of your parents bringing her home. I hardly remember it."

(Hardly's not nothing. Hardly's not you, you remember nothing.)

That's not even true.

She stands up suddenly, almost falling over, and she feels Hope's gaze on her, and it's one filled with worry and concern. Not her best first re-impression. "I have to go somewhere. Anywhere I can shut up."

She rises as well, closing her backpack and throwing it over one shoulder. "Shut up? You've hardly said anything."

(You need to keep it that way, because otherwise she's going to find out you're not just like this because Sandy died; you're normally a freak.)

"Wait until I tell you about my internal monologue." She heads for the door. "I never shut up."

Hope chooses not to take that bait, which Darlene respects. "I guess you could come to work with me."

"I doubt they'd be cool with that."

She opens the door. The rain has quieted down to a light drizzle. Hope waves goodbye to Julie and the door bangs shut.

"It's Cloudflyers. I think they'll be fine." At her look of confusion, she says, "The trampoline park, not the company that makes the Cloudflyer shoe."

"Oh. Oh! I loved that place when we were younger!" And you hated it.

She chuckles. "I know. That's the only reason I work there. I thought for years that you'd come in so we could catch up."

"My mom moved across town after the divorce, so it wasn't easy to get to." Not to mention a trampoline park isn't the place for sad people who are looking to be left alone.

Hope ducks to avoid an overhead bus stop sign. "What did you mean when you said everything's messed up? You were fine. You've always been fine."

"We haven't spoken in five years." She stops herself from saying, 'you haven't spoken to me in five years,' because yeah, a friendship does take two, and neither of them have been doing their part. "Things change."

"Sure, but that doesn't explain what you mean."

Having reached an intersection, Darlene slams the crosswalk button as hard as she can. "So you really work at Cloudflyers? What do you do?"

Hope tucks a strand of chestnut brown hair behind her ear. She also gets the hint. Probably because this is the first time Darlene's sounded even remotely close to happy. "Technically, I'm a cashier, but I help out with everything whenever I can."

She feels strands of her own hair being played with as they wait for the green light. She tucks them over her shoulder. It's a nice gesture, but she hasn't had a shower in two days, and she most definitely looks and smells like garbage.

She should have thought of that before existing in public.

Too late now.

The park's down the street, so Hope leads the rest of the way. When they get there, Darlene's filled with nostalgia and muted joy, a feeling that's supposed to be positive but just makes her stomach hurt a little less than normal. She should make an appointment about that. Maybe. She likely never will. It's not important.

"Here," Hope says, holding the door open, "I'll add you to the guest list."

wc: 2554 (wp) / 2666 (novlr)