Falling Rain - Chapter 1

The road is wet from the ferocious storm that is pounding down from the heavens. Trees are bending over from the wind and rain is beating down hard on the windows of the lone car driving down the desolate road. Even though the headlights are on bright, they can hardly be seen through the torrential rain. The blonde girl driving the car is laughing and whooping gleefully, seemingly enjoying the dangerous road conditions. I am sitting in the back seat, gripping the seat nervously. I say to the driver,
‘Lauren, slow down in this weather! It’s so slippery!’
Lauren snorts and replies loudly,
‘Stop worrying, Lisa. Nothing will go wrong. Stop being such a party pooper!’
I smile nervously.
‘Heather?’ I say. The short, freckled girl in the passenger seat of the car turns around to face me and starts to say something. Her sentence is interrupted, however, as suddenly there is a loud crack and a tree falls right over, falling on the road with a loud crash. All of the girls in the car scream as Lauren jerks the steering wheel and slams on the brakes in an attempt to avoid the tree. The car skids and turns sideways, slamming into the fallen tree.
I scramble out of the car, my head aching, but relieved to be alive. I call out my friends’ names, but only Lauren answers with a feeble,
‘Help me out of the car, Lis.’ I hurry to help her. Once she is out of the car I call again for Heather. There is no answer. I scream her name, growing frantic and climb back in the car. I look over at the passenger seat, to see most of Heather’s body crushed by the side of the car that was smashed in. There is a long, drawn out scream that seems to go on forever…

My eyes flew open. I held a shaking hand up to my forehead, to find it covered in sweat. I felt confused. I thought the nightmares had stopped. Shaking, I climbed out of bed and walked into my bathroom. In the mirror I saw that my whole face was wet. Judging by my feeling of intense misery, I had been crying in my sleep. Well, it wasn’t the first time. These nightmares had plagued me since that night in the car, but they had eased since the holidays had started. I wondered why they were coming back. In a sudden bout of superstition, I wondered if it was an omen.

My name is Lisa Slater. I come from a relatively stable family, you know, with a mum, a dad, and two point five children. The usual. I am tall, thin, with brown eyes and hair.
My mum and dad have been married for 23 years now. They haven’t ever shown signs of divorcing, either. I’m glad of that. Some of my friends come from broken families and they are really cut up over it. A lot of them go to counsellors and psychiatrists often. Anyway, my family. My mother, Katherine, is an extremely protective parent. She works as an office administrator, 3 days a week. People say I look like her, but I don’t agree. I suppose we have similar features, but I recently got my hair cut and styled into a box fringe. Mum never does anything drastic with her hair. Well, she got highlights put in a couple of weeks ago, but that’s not really drastic, is it?
Mum hardly lets me do anything by myself. If I go to the shopping centre, I have to be with a large group of girls and only girls whose parents she knows. Mum gets on my nerves a whole lot, but I guess I can understand her point of view. A little.
My dad is the General Manager of a huge company in Brisbane. He’s tall, tanned and balding. He thinks he is the funniest man alive.
People always look at me strangely when I say that I am closer to Dad than Mum, but I am. Dad isn’t as strict as Mum, for a start. I also have a lot more in common with Dad than Mum. Dad and I are both really active, so we jog together and play sports. Dad is away a lot for work, which means that he is always guilty for not spending time with Rebecca and me. So when he is at home he gives us pretty much whatever we want. Mum says that he lets us get away with murder. I say I know how to wind him around my little finger. It also means I can play Mum and Dad against each other really well. It’s something of an art.
My older sister Rebecca is a pretty cool big sister to have. She's a bit of a nerd, and she doesn’t care what she looks like at all, which would be okay, but she doesn’t even brush her hair some days. Well, except for school. She doesn’t care what she wears either. Mum is always on her case about it. Mum says that Rebecca would be so pretty if she took care of her hair and everything. I agree. What can you do, though? Aside from all that I get along with her pretty well. Becks is also a genius. She is doing university level maths in Grade 11 and all the science subjects for school. Let’s just say I have a lot to live up to.

We all live in Alexandra Headlands on the Sunshine Coast, about an hour out of Brisbane. To the locals it is known as simply ‘Alex’. My house is right near the beach, about a five-minute walk away. We get a lot of tourists out here, because of the beautiful beaches and the perfect climate. Our beaches are some of the best in Queensland, for both surfing and swimming. As for the climate, well, perfect is pretty much the best word to use there! Because the temperatures are tempered by the ocean, we never have blazing hot summers or freezing cold winters. Our highest temperature in summer is usually around 30°C and our coldest would have to be around 10°C.
So that’s my family, in a nutshell. I suppose we get along well enough, but that’s not to say we don’t have a lot of fights. There are two teenagers in the house, after all!

As for my social life, well, I have an amazing boyfriend, and some of the best friends in the world. Greg, my boyfriend, is the best guy to have around when you’re upset. He is really funny to be around, and he has me in stitches every time I see him. He is also totally cute. He has really soft curly black hair and really deep brown eyes. He isn’t one of those muscle-bound “oh-look-at-me-I-work-out-for-hours-every-day” kind of guys, but let’s just say, all those months of swimming training did pay off, especially in the upper arm region!
Charlotte, one of my best friends, is also really great. She is really beautiful and has the most gorgeous long blond hair. She almost always has a male admirer, but she is the furthest thing from stuck-up you could imagine, even though she goes to some snooty private school about half an hour out of town.

I could go on about all my friends, but I suppose you want to know why I was crying in my sleep, right? Well, just a month ago I was in a car accident with another one of my best friends and her sister. Heather, my friend, invited me to a party at her place and her sister Lauren drove me home afterwards. It was storming that night, and Lauren was driving pretty fast down that road. Heather wasn’t worrying about it, but I was getting very nervous in the back seat. I was telling Lauren to slow down, but Lauren just kept teasing me about being a party pooper. The storm was getting pretty heavy and the wind kept getting stronger. Eventually, it knocked over a tree, at exactly the wrong moment - for us, anyway. Lauren was going too fast to stop, so she tried to swerve around it. All that achieved, however, was us hitting the tree sideways instead of straight on. That was a mistake. The way we swerved made Heather get the whole force of the impact, which killed her straight away. I was sitting behind Lauren, in the back seat. I guess I was just lucky I chose to sit there instead of behind Heather. If I had, we would both be dead.
I’m told that Lauren is really beating herself over it. Lauren and I escaped with bruises, and in my case, a mild concussion, but Heather was killed. Heather had turned to reassure me of her sister’s driving skills, when we had hit the tree. Her last words to me were:
‘Relax, Lis! Lauren’s a great-‘
She never got to finish her sentence. I will never forget the sight of her body, crushed and mangled.

I sank down onto the toilet seat and sobbed, my head buried in my hands, my long brown hair falling over my face. I stayed like that until my mother knocked on the door and called,
‘Lisa, honey? Breakfast is ready, if you want to come down.’
I scowled. I wiped my face with a towel and opened the door. Mum still stood there, obviously waiting for me.
‘What, Mum?’ I asked grumpily. She frowned at me. I waited for the usual “tone of voice” speech, but she surprised me. It never came. Now that I came to think of it, she hadn’t lectured me at all since the accident. I supposed she thought I was too fragile to cope with a lecture.
‘Are you feeling okay, Lisa? I thought I heard--,’ she said.
‘I’m fine, Mum.’ I said with forced happiness, ‘What’s for breakfast?’

*****

As we sat around the breakfast table, heaped with blueberry pancakes, Rebecca talked about her university course she was attending during the holidays. This course was similar to the one that she had gone to during the term, where she had studied quadratics or something like that.
‘This course has such a wide variety of mathematical subjects. They are all so fascinating; I hardly know which one to choose! Dad, do you think that I should do the new course on complex numbers or do further study in quadratics?’ she said.
Dad looked perplexed.
‘Honey, the only thing I know about is a²+b²=c²! I don’t think I can help you here!’ Everyone laughed, except me. I pushed my pancake around my plate until I felt someone’s eyes on me. I looked up and saw Mum hurriedly glance away from me.
‘What, Mum?’ I said loudly. Dad and Rebecca stopped talking and watched us. Mum shook her head, barely perceptibly, at me.
‘No, Mum! What?’ I nearly shouted.
‘Lisa…’ Dad said warningly.
‘She was watching me, Dad! I want to know why!’ I said. Mum looked like she was about to burst into tears, for some reason. Well, I suppose I was getting a bit hysterical. Dad laid his hand over hers and told me to finish eating. Rebecca was looking between us so rapidly it looked like she was watching a tennis game. I waited for Mum to say something, but she never did. She just looked at her plate until I looked away from her. But all through the meal I could still feel her watching me.

*****

I sat at my desk later that afternoon, trying to start my maths assignment. I stared down at the question page and the resolutely blank working sheet lying in front of me. After a few minutes, I gave it up as a bad job and leant back, my chair rocking back onto its back legs. Staring out of the window at the waves crashing down onto the beach, I let my mind wander, thinking back, almost inadvertently, to the car accident. My eyes filled with tears again as I remembered that awful night.
I was suddenly jerked from my thoughts when my mobile phone rang. I checked the caller ID and saw it was my boyfriend Greg.
‘Hey, Greg,’ I said, ‘What’s up?’ I felt instantly happier when I heard his deep voice answer me.
‘I just wanted to talk to my favourite girl, Lis,’ he said, ‘How about I come over for a bit?’
I answered elatedly, ‘That would be great, but how about we go down to the beach instead? It’s such a nice day.’
Greg agreed, so ten minutes later we were sitting on the beach together. Greg caressed my arm as I leant against his strong body, staring out into the waves. For several long minutes we sat in silence.
‘Do you want to tell me what’s wrong, Lisa?’ he asked, breaking the silence. I looked up at him.
‘Nothing’s wrong.’ I lied. ‘I’m fine.’ Ruefully I thought to myself how I had been telling so many people that I was fine, and whether I had ever been less fine. Greg must have seen this in my face, because he raised an eyebrow.
‘Come on, Lisa. You can admit it to me, you know,’ he said, ‘I can tell something’s wrong, and I want to help you.’
I glared at him. Greg always knew how to guilt-trip me into doing something, and I said so.
‘Hey! Lisa, just let me help you,’ he said, in a no-nonsense kind of voice. I reluctantly relented.
‘Well, the nightmare came back last night.’ I said. Greg looked aghast.
‘I thought you said they went away?’ he asked. I shook my head slowly.
‘I must have been wrong. But, Greg, I was just starting to feel happy again, and now—‘
Greg must have seen the anguish in my face, because he swept me up in his strong arms and hugged me tightly. For a while I just sobbed in his arms. Finally I pulled away and said,
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to start crying. I--'
‘Lisa, it’s okay to cry. You’ve just lost one of your best friends. It’s okay.’ said Greg. I wiped my eyes and smiled at him.
‘Thanks, Greg. I’m sorry I’m not that great company anymore.’ I laughed humourlessly. ‘All I seem to be doing lately is cry.’
Greg reassured me again and we sat in silence once more. I leant back against him, loving the feel of his arms around me. I was glad that we could sit like this, with no pressure to talk or do anything more. After a while, Greg asked,
‘Are you sure that’s all that’s bothering you?’
I started to say yes, but stopped when I saw the look on Greg’s face.
‘Well, no. See, my mum’s been acting really weird around me since the accident. It’s like she thinks I’m cracking up or something.’ I said, ‘She has just been watching me all the time. She hardly ever says anything to me. It’s just like she’s walking on eggshells around me all the time now.’
Greg smiled ruefully. ‘Lisa, she’s just not sure how to go about making you feel better. Maybe all she wants is for you to be happy again, but she knows you have just lost someone very close to you. She’s not a counsellor. She doesn’t know how to help you.’ he said. I looked up at him.
‘Have you ever considered a career as a counsellor?’ I asked, jokingly. Greg laughed and pulled me closer to him.
‘If being a counsellor means making you feel better, then yes. I would love to be your personal counsellor.’ he said. I laughed.
‘I would love to take you up on that, kind sir,’ I continued the teasing. All this joking with Greg had made me feel better. Greg had made me let the bad feelings out, which released the tension inside of me.
‘Come on, Lis,’ he said now. ‘Let’s go for a swim.’ Greg pulled me up and we ran down to the sea hand in hand.

******

As Greg and I walked back to my house together, I breached the question that had been bothering me for some time.
‘What is the point of life at all, Greg? I mean, we’re going to die anyway. What’s the point of living?’
Greg frowned, not like he was annoyed at me, more like he was pondering the question.
‘I don’t know, Lisa. That’s a deep question. I suppose—‘ he paused.
‘You suppose? You suppose what?’ I asked.
‘Maybe there doesn’t have to be a point to life. After all, some of the most beautiful things in this world have no point.’ said Greg.
‘Like what?’ I asked.
‘Like, I don’t know, a beautiful piece of music,’ he answered, ‘that pretty much has no point. I mean, we can survive without it. But things wouldn’t be as interesting or special if they had a point.’
I mulled that over for a while.
‘But if you follow that logic, that if we can survive without it, it has no point, then life should have a point, because we can’t survive without it!’
Greg laughed. ‘Come on Lis. Let’s not talk about this. It’s making my head hurt!’ I pulled a face at him, but the effect was somewhat ruined by me breaking out into giggles. Greg took hold of my hand and we continued walking. Along the way, we looked at each other several times and burst out laughing. It was one of those jokes that only a couple could understand.