Everything around her was damp, cold, and gloomy. The rain misted down gently, dampening her skin and causing her naturally wavy hair to curl and tangle in spite of her best attempts to finger-comb it back into place. She shoved a frizzy piece of it behind one ear and watched as the rain pooled on a leaf, shining like a crystal for one moment, and then sliding off onto the ground, breaking into six separate drops when it reached the grass.
It was a little weird that she was sitting out here in her backyard in the middle of a rainstorm, and she knew it. She didn’t even want to guess what her neighbors must think of her. After all, normal people don’t walk around in the rain and stare at how water pools on a leaf. But, then again, when had she ever been a normal person? Maybe that was part of her problem.
She leaned back into her damp seat and shivered a little, enjoying the sensation. The last few days have been warm, too warm for her taste, and it was sort of nice to be able to be cold again. Remembering the stifling heat of a few days ago she stretched her legs out and shivered again as tiny cold drops peppered her skin.
Everytime she was upset, she realized, she was inevitably drawn to water. She tried to remember the first time she realized how much she loved water, the feel of it sliding across her skin or the pleasure of going underwater in a pool and feeling it totally engulf her. All she really remembered though was her mother teaching her how to swim and kicking her legs to feel the water swish around them as her life jacket kept her afloat. Not exactly a concrete memory either, but an indistinct snapshot, like water because of how it rippled at the edges.
She didn’t know why water always had a calming effect on her. She was never a very good swimmer, and she barely even knew basic strokes. She didn’t even really like the sea because all she could ever think about is what might be swimming just a few inches away from her without her ever knowing it. But normal things like a cold bubble bath on a humid summer day, or a lazy swim in a pool, or a rainstorm had always drawn her.
She shook her head, deciding to let it go and just enjoy the peace it brought. Because heaven knows she needed the peace. And deep down, in her slightly bruised and battered heart, she knew the real reason she was sitting outside during a rainstorm is because she didn’t know what else to do. She was hurting.
Goodbyes suck. The thought stood out in her mind even as she reached her hand out to catch a raindrop, delighting in how cold it felt sliding around in her palm. After a moment she tilted her hand and the drop fell onto the grass beneath her feet. It had been so easy to let go of that drop. But it was so hard to let go of a person. And all that person meant to you.
She looked up at the sky, searching for something; a sign, a reason to smile, a momentary distraction from the massive teenage soap opera that had become her life recently, but she couldn’t find much. The sky didn’t even look like a sky today, it was just a blank whiteness. No beautiful blue, no discernible clouds. Just one great big mass of white. It occurred to her that her life right now felt a bit like that sky. There was nothing concrete, everything was uncertain, and everything she thought she had known for sure was swept aside.
She pulled her eyes away from that blank uncertainty and forced herself to chuckle at her own melodramatic thoughts, holding the irony of the situation to her heart like a shield and allowing some of its laughing mockery to momentarily soothe her sadness. She knew she was being silly, but she couldn’t help it. For the first time in her life she wished she had a rewind button, because if she could only start this over and take a good look at what was happening right in front of her she might know what to do now. She might know if this whole fiasco is as hopeless as it seems or not. She might know him better.
Propping her head up on her hand she looked down at the ground, at the grass all covered in drops of rainwater. She wondered if she will always have to look at the normal things that she found so stunningly beautiful alone. She wondered if anybody else would ever see creation as she did, as an unbelievable, overlooked miracle that is right there for people to see everyday, but is forever relegated to the confines of the ordinary and the unexciting. She wondered if she was crazy to be thinking like this. And she wondered if he really knew her, if he knew of the undiscovered galaxies and hidden rooms inside her heart and mind, if he would still have swept pass her so mercilessly, would still have left her behind so casually. Did he just not know how much she still had left to offer, what she had left to give him? The secrets she was saving, the light that was still burning for him in her heart?
No. He had known. And that was the worst part. He just hadn’t cared.
It was her own fault in a way, or at least so she assumed. She had waited too long to let him in, had forced him to work too hard, had made things, as usual, too difficult. Her biggest problem was that she didn’t trust easily, that she had to wait until she really knew someone was worth it before she opened her heart to them, before she really decided to offer them any real good look into who she really was underneath. Who she was when she was behind closed, locked doors, when the masks fell away, when she laughed so hard she cried. She desperately hoped that person was worth waiting around for, but so far it didn’t look too good. Because no boy ever had.
Taking a deep breath and smiling to fight against the tears in her eyes she stood up from her seat and started to walk around her backyard, taking long, deep, breaths. She didn’t really have a plan at this point. She didn’t know where to go from here, her first broken heart. She didn’t know how to handle this weird mix of pain and disappointment and frustration. She was out of tools for this. So she just kept smiling and hoped it would stop.
Almost as if on autopilot she walked around her yard once more and then headed towards the street, feeling the grass change to concrete beneath her feet. She stared at the abandoned street, at all the grey and the ugliness. Not a person or car was in sight, as though the rain has erased the rest of the human race, as though she were left alone there. Completely and utterly alone. Surrounded by lifeless, colorless concrete, with her heart on the floor. Brief, irrational panic gripped her and she swallowed hard against the lump in her throat.

And then the pigeons came.

Later she would think it was strange, but at the time it seemed like the most natural thing in the world when the first one fluttered down in front of her, followed by another and another, as though a small flock of them had just decided to come and visit her, the lonely wreck of a girl standing on the sidewalk all by herself. She watched them as she had watched them for years as she had grown up in this house, as their grey feathers shimmered in the light as the bobbed and pecked around, fluttering their wings every so often like the greeting to the others. Her mind drifted over her memories of them as a child, how she used to chase them, laughing and shouting when they took off into flight, amazed by the flutter of their wings and the way they would fly off and lazily circle before coming down to rest again a few moments later a few feet farther away from her childish antics. She used to think they were beautiful. She had thought it was amazing how their feathers, though at first glance such a dull grey color had so many hidden rainbows in them, like a beautiful secret right there for everyone to see.
And suddenly she laughed. Really laughed, for the first time in a week or more. The noise startled the pigeons closest to her and they cooed indignantly, making her smile at the familiar sound. And suddenly she knew that he would find this strange. That she was standing here, smiling at pigeons. That he wouldn’t understand why she had the sudden desire to chase them, to watch their feathers shimmer with hidden rainbows as they took off into the air, as free as she had so often longed to be. She knew he would shake his head, vaguely confused and even disapproving of her undeniably strange behavior. And she also suddenly knew she didn’t care. Not even a little bit.

Without warning she took a handful of steps backward, readying herself, and then she ran forward, releasing a happy yell at the same time. The pigeons started, flapping their wings and taking off in all directions as she raced into the street among them. She lost herself for a minute in a flurry of flapping wings and brief flashes of rainbow as she spun in a dizzying circle, laughing helplessly as they circled around her, like her own personal whirlwind. And then they were gone, up, up, up into the sky, into the blank whiteness. Looking so free. As free as she felt.

This is who she was. She was a girl who loved laughter, who still dreamt in color, and believed in hidden rainbows. And she was silly. She was idealistic. She was not perfect. She did not trust easily, she made things too difficult, she used too many metaphors, she ran away when she was frightened or overwhelmed, and maybe, yes, maybe she wasn’t worth the effort. But this was her. A girl who chases pigeons. And she was okay with that. Even if he didn’t want her this way. She would find someone else who did. She was okay. Really. She was okay. Okay.


And almost two years later, when she found a boy who told her he loved her, who told her she was beautiful and perfect, and worth every fight and battle, she smiled. Because she knew, the moment she touched his hand, the moment she heard him talk about the world through his eyes, the moment that she heard him laugh and felt his arms around her as he pulled her close, that he was a boy who could love a girl who chases pigeons. He was a boy who affected her like water, soothing and exciting her all at once. He was the one who, instead of shaking his head and rolling his eyes at her foolishness, would take her hand and dance with her to the music of the flapping wings and the swirling winds around them and that he would laugh with her at their own weirdness until they fell into each other’s arms, neither of them without their scars and neither of them perfect, but fitting perfectly together, like two puzzle pieces. Just a boy and a girl. In love. Who like to chase pigeons.