Raindrop Parade

Chapter 1: Record Keeper

I first snuck into the Grapevine house on a Tuesday after school. The broken glass was louder than I expected.

Look left, look right. Clear coast.

The Grapevine waved its ivy in the wind, pumpkin vines coiled tight. The house whistled a ghost hymn. Crawling through the broken window, my hand caught and bled.

The Day tells its secrets to those who listen.

Autumn whispered through the air, hot and tickling in my ear, a soft puff, a dandelion scattering its feathery seeds.

In my pocket, faces smiled in the fog of the crystal. Maybe they were descendants of the lemur. Maybe we all were. The shard, once gleaming in the point of the sun, was still and silent.

A bead of blood, bulging like the belly of a tick, pointed my finger toward the door. I thought I could open it from inside, but it was glued shut. The stale air made the back of my throat itch. Somewhere, microscopic spores were multiplying and invading past the filters of my nostrils.

It was late afternoon and dark inside, everything but the broken window boarded up. I flashed my light across the room which was the kitchen. The floor crunched under my feet, the musty smell permeating.

Walking forward in the dark I looked for clues but found only crumbs, debris, broken pieces of things resembling a former life. Maybe a shelf. Maybe a picture frame.

A candy wrapper. It was still silver and new looking.

I walked toward the back, heart beating. The wind blew and then: a sound. Like the grunt of a swine or the ribbit of a frog, but human.

A man.

I shined my light around but couldn’t see.

“Hello?” He called out.

I backed up toward the broken window, my only way out. But he was on his feet fast and held me in through the sound of his voice.

“Birdie? Is that you?” He was old, Dad’s age maybe, and stood in the dusty half-light of the broken window facing me.

I could jump back out if I wanted. Even if it meant another nick, another spot of blood from the glass. I was collecting scars anyway. But seeing him made me stand still. If I left, it would almost feel rude.

He blinked several times, as if the dim light were the brightest he’d seen all year. “Birdie?”

He came closer, his arms out, and I ducked but he grabbed a hold of me, squeezing, pulling me close, and I said, “I’m not Birdie!” and pushed him away and he looked at me with strange eyes, both of us trying to make some kind of sense.

* * *

A month before:

Clouds hovered in UFO formations.

Summer, 1986, camping around Mt. Shasta.

Sweet water collected in a variety of jugs, jars and canteens.

Words circulated around the air:

Harmonic.

Lemuria.

Akashic.

Troops gathered from all over the country, the world. They were preparing for the next year’s big event. Vans with flowers painted on them, tie-dye flags, long trumpeting pipes. How did they know to find each other? They talked in riddles.

Planetary alignments, a grand cross.

Treasure buried beneath the mountain.

The end of the nine hells.

We didn’t know they were going to be there. There was hardly any room to camp. We had to make it a quick stop and move on. Everyone said: drink the water. There’s magic in it.

I went toward the stream to dip in Dad’s camouflage canteen. A woman stood still, her hands hovering over the water. Her eyes were closed and her face had the expression of someone who was basking in the sun for the first time in her life, soothed and content. She stood with her hands barely skimming the rippling water, then started to vibrate. She scooped up the water and let it fall down her head in streams over and over again, gyrating, then sang a foreign mantra in monotone, the stream bubbling the sunlight in liquid gold.

Whispers grew and coiled their tendrils around my head, through my ears, planting seeds in the cracks of my brain. On the road home the passing landscape made my eyes and nose sting, the music in my headphones not quite drowning out the sinking thoughts of what was to come. Returning, returning to the familiar while my invisible cords clung to the mountain, ivy fingers stretching and wrapping around trees.

* * *

Back home in Glorietta, the songs of summer resumed:

Bicycle wheels spinning.

Airplanes droning.

Ice, cracking and clinking against glass.

Sizzling raw meat on hot smoky grills.

Sounds of the Day moved in soft pulses. The clicking cycle of a lawn sprinkler. Children’s laughter somersaulting in the distance. There was a twinkling, twilight feeling with wind chimes moving in a wisteria breeze and lazy insects, too hot to buzz.

Yet, a thumb pressed at the back of my neck. Water nymphs danced on the surface with lily pads, floating, gliding with the murk underneath. Venus flytraps and pitcher plants wagged their carnivorous tongues. Hot, humid heat ready to rain or smother. And deep, under the topsoil fluff where kids screamed and chased, bones turned and moaned to be discovered.

But I found it hard to listen with the orange headphones scratching at my ears.

And the nasal nag of Mom and the neverminds of Dad.

And the mantra of a video game my little brother liked to play:

Uppercut, uppercut, body blow body blow body blow.

* * *

Sable A Donnellan
147 Tigertail Lane
Glorietta, CA 92118

JULY 10, 1986

Please note the following schedule for the 1986-87 school year. Classes begin on September 3, 1986. There will be a brief assembly in the Main Auditorium at 7:30am. Please bring all appropriate books and materials to school that day. Go Tikis!

PERIOD	SUBJECT INSTRUCTOR
1 BIOLOGY	LEE, L
2 ENGLISH LITERATURE	HUMPHREY, J
3 ALGEBRA I	HORNE, A
4 PHYSICAL EDUCATION	GARCIA, F
5 AMERICAN HISTORY	COOPER, D
6 INTRODUCTION TO ART I	SPENCER, H

* * *

Before school started that fall, I found something. A spark, a gem twinkling for me in the water. I heard it calling and my eyes followed its bob. If the rocks weren’t there to block, the waves would’ve left it in the sand long ago. I crouched on one of the smooth, flat boulders warmed by the sun and stuck my hand in. It was hard at first. I eased it over and then snatch!

I set the bottle on the flat rock. It looked like something was inside, but I didn’t want to crack it. The glass was old and fogged, the metal cap stuck. I worked my fingers around the cap, twisting, sand grinding, salt water stinging my tiny cuts. I took the knife from my inside pocket, flipped the pliers out and worked the bottle top until it budged. Just a little more and I could finally see inside, a crinkled piece of newsprint. I took the tweezers and pried it out. It said:

I turned it over in my hands and then looked around. No one. The sun spread its gold all over, starting to dip. I stuck the message and bottle in my pack and hopped on Whiz to go home. My first clue.

To read more of Raindrop Parade or to inquire about representation, please contact Alika Tanaka Yarnell.