Praying for Rain (Praying for Rain Trilogy, #1)(46)

And then she says the words that cut deeper than any goodbye I’ve ever suffered through.

“I just wanted to help.”





Rain


My feet feel like cinder blocks as I stumble back down the trail toward the highway, struggling to open the childproof bottle in my shaking hands.

Don’t fucking cry.

Don’t you dare fucking cry.

My eyes, my throat, my lungs—they burn worse than when I was crawling through Carter’s smoke-filled house. But I have to hold back the tears. I have to. If I cry for him, then I’ll have to cry for all of them. And I can’t do that. I won’t.

“Go home, Rain.”

I look behind me, but Wes isn’t following. The only thing I have left of him is his cruel, dismissive voice. I walk faster, trying to get away from it.

“Go be with your parents.”

He told me he would use me up. That I would leave him. I didn’t believe it at the time, but all it took was five simple words for him to prove himself right.

“I don’t need you anymore.”

With a desperate grunt, I rip the cap off and throw it as hard as I can against a tree. I don’t look to see where it lands. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does.

Wes was my only hope. My only shot at life after April 23. Without him, my hours are numbered.

Without him, I don’t want the ones I have left.





Wes


As I listen to Rain’s footsteps getting farther away, I feel a pure, unbridled hatred begin to fester in my soul. I don’t hate the nightmares or the flooded shelter or even Rain for doing exactly what I told her to. I hate the man staring back at me. I want to wrap my fucking hands around his neck and squeeze until I have the pleasure of watching all the life drain from his eyes. Because he’s the one who made her leave.

He’s the one who makes everyone leave.

His fucking face is nothing more than a lie. He uses it to trick people into thinking he’s trustworthy. Attractive. Confident. Strong. But he’s an ugly, lying piece of shit that people can’t wait to get away from as soon as they see past the facade.

I spit in his worthless fucking face, watching it distort into ripples just before I slam the metal door with a primal scream.

The clang vibrates through my arms and into my chest and rattles a cough from my smoke-stained lungs. When the silence falls back around me, it comes with a strange sense of calm.

The man is gone.

I don’t know who I am without him, but I feel lighter. Younger. Freer. I no longer have anything to fear because every bad thing that could possibly happen to me has already happened. Because of him.

And, now, he’s locked away for good.

I pick up Rain’s backpack, noting how heavy it is. As my feet begin to move, my strides feel too long. My point of view unusually high. I’m a kid again, in a grown-up’s body, walking home with a backpack full of food scored from the dumpster behind Burger Palace like I did every afternoon.

The trail is wider than I remember. Muddier, too. But the birds are singing the same songs they always have, and the trees smell just as piney. I almost expect Mama and Lily to be waiting for me when I get home. Mama will probably be passed out on the couch with that thing in her arm or arguing with her “friend” in the bedroom. Lily will probably be screaming in her crib. Her little face will light up when I walk in the room, but she’ll start crying again after a minute or two. Mama said babies do that. They just “cry all the damn time.”

When I cut through the Garrisons’ backyard, I notice that their swing set is gone. I used to spend hours playing on that thing with their son, Benji. The Patels’ house, next door, looks like it hasn’t been lived in for years. The grass comes past my knees, and a few windows are broken out. Junk cars line the road, which is littered with broken television sets, glass vases, dishes—anything that the big kids might like to smash. I let my feet carry me across the destruction, but with every crunch of my boots, it becomes more and more apparent that the squat beige house at the end of the street isn’t my home anymore.

And it hasn’t been for a long, long time.



“Four-five-seven Prior Street,” I told the woman on the phone when I called 911 like they’d taught me at school.

“What’s your emergency?”

“My baby sister stopped crying.”

“Son, is this a prank phone call?”

“No, ma’am. She … she won’t wake up. She’s all blue, and she won’t wake up.”

“Where is your mommy?”

“She won’t wake up either.”



The mailbox still says 457, but the house looks nothing like I remember. For starters, it’s been painted—light gray with bright white trim—and the shutters, well, it has some. The rotten front steps that used to wobble when I ran down them, always on the verge of missing the bus, have been replaced, and hanging from the side of the porch, where the giant wasp’s nest used to be, is a blue-and-red plastic baby swing.

My chest constricts as I instinctively listen for the sound of crying.

But there’s only silence.

I run to the porch, clearing all four steps in a single leap, and press my face to one of the windows on either side of the freshly painted front door. “Hello?” I bang on the door with my fist before trying to get a better view in through one of the other windows. “Hello!” I pound on the glass with my open palm.