Delilah: The Making of Red

Chapter 7 The Thunder Before the Rain

It’s funny how when I look back on my life, I can see all the mistakes I made and how blinded I was by wanting to be noticed. I’d spent so many years in my mother’s shadow that when a guy finally noticed me, I thought it made me stronger. But really, it only made me weaker.

Maybe if I knew what lay ahead of me, I’d have wanted to stay in the shadows and remain unnoticed. But honestly, I doubt it. I think I was too vain at the time to believe that anything could happen to me, especially death.

And now all I can do is lie here in the cold water, staring up at the storm clouds, listening to my heartbeat fade away, and reflect on how I lived my life… let my memories take me over and haunt me…

Despite my awkward and uncomfortable first time, I end up having sex with Dylan a lot. By mid-July, we are one hundred percent consumed by each other, spending every waking hour together. We go to parties, and instead of hanging out in my front yard, watching him work on his car, I sit in a folding up chair beside the car while we talk.

Not to say that everything is perfect. Sometimes we argue over stuff, like what we’re going to do for the night. It’s nothing major and we make things work. Plus, he always makes me feel special. Always holds my hand. Always kisses me. Touches me. Always lets everyone know I’m his.

I’ve pretty much been walking around with a huge smile on my face for weeks now, something my mom’s noticed.

“God, I forgot how exciting everything is when you’re young,” she comments as I enter the kitchen wearing the red dress, because I love how Dylan looks at me whenever I wear it.

I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and skip toward the doorway, doing a little pirouette. “Aw, to be young again,” I joke, and part of me loves that she’s looking at me with a hint of jealousy instead of the other way around. That I don’t feel so insignificant standing in the same room as her when she’s wearing nothing but a nighty.

“So where are you going tonight?” she asks as she takes out a pan to cook dinner.

I check my reflection in the small mirror on the wall. “To a party.”

She sets the pan down on the stove. “You’re being careful, right?”

I nod. “Always.”

She turns up the temperature of the burner. “Good.”

I leave the room and go get my purse before heading out to meet Dylan. It’s nearing sundown and storm clouds are rolling in. I hear a boom in the distance, the thunder before the rain, and I step back inside and grab my jacket off the coatrack. I slip it on as I cross the lawn and wind around the fence to Dylan’s driveway. Then I sit on the hood of his car and wait for him to come out, because he told me never to knock on the door, that his mother hates when people come over.

But twenty minutes go by and he still hasn’t come outside. I eye the door, willing him to come out, but it stays shut. The sky starts to rumble again. Lightning strikes and flashes across the land. And then the rain comes pouring down.

I jump up from the car and run up to his front door, soaked by the time I get there. I hesitate before I knock quietly. No one answers, so I knock a little harder, then I startle back when it swings open. Dylan stands there with more anger in his eyes than I’ve ever seen, and it’s all directed at me.

“I thought I told you to never knock on the damn door,” he growls, his chest heaving with his breaths.

I trip backward and into the rain. “I’m sorry.”

His mom starts shouting in the background, telling him to shut the damn door, that he’s in deep shit for making noise and waking up his father. That he’s such a fuckup. With each one of her words, he gets tenser. Angrier. But he doesn’t say anything back. He just bottles it in and steps outside, slamming the door behind.

He doesn’t say a word to me as he brushes by me, stomps through the puddles to his car, and climbs in. I stand on the porch in the rain, my jacket drenched, wondering if I should follow him. He seems so angry that I’m not sure what to do. But he keeps sitting in his car with the engine running, like he’s waiting for me, so finally I run to the car and hop into the passenger seat.

His knuckles are white as he grips the steering wheel, breathing in and out. He’s not wearing a jacket, his T-shirt is soaked, and beads of rain roll over his skin.

“Are you okay?” I ask, wiping some of the rain off my forehead.

He doesn’t look at me. “I’m fine,” he says coldly, and then he puts the car into reverse and backs into the road.

He doesn’t speak as he drives down the street toward the edge of town. The longer the silence goes on, the smaller I feel. I watch the buildings and houses blur by, the rain crashing down against the ground and washing everything away.

“I’m sorry I knocked on the door,” I finally tell him as he turns off the main street and down a dirt road where trees line the side and mountains are in the distance.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry,” he says, his attention straight ahead on the road. I can see the lightning reflect in his eyes every time it snaps, and it lights up his anger.

I start to grow nervous. “Where are we going? Is the party up here or something?”

He doesn’t answer me and a few minutes later he stops the car at a turnout beneath a canopy of tree branches. I look around, wondering why we’re here, wondering why he won’t look at me. Wondering if he’ll ever look at me again.

Without saying a word, he turns off the engine, gets out of the car, and stands in the rain in front of the car. I watch him lower his head, the rain pounding down on him, making him sink lower, like he’s drowning.

Finally I get out of the car and take tentative steps toward him, the ground below me soft, and my sandals sink into it. When I reach him, he doesn’t look up at me right away. He stares at the ground, a thin trail of water trickling off his forehead. The longer the silence goes on, the more I wish he would look at me. Please. I can’t take the silence anymore. The invisibility.

Eventually, he gives me what I want without asking, elevating his chin, and his eyes lock with mine. Part of me wishes I could take back my inner wish, that I could tell him to look at the ground, because he’s looking at me like he hates me.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” he asks, stepping forward. “How much I’m going to deal with for you knocking on that damn door?”

“I said I was sorry,” I tell him in a shaky voice. “But you weren’t coming out, and I don’t know another way to get a hold of you.”

My excuses make him angrier, his face reddening. “Then you should have just waited by the car like I told you.”

“But it was raining,” I say, wrapping my arms around me as the cold seeps into my bones. “And I got cold.”

“Cold.” He gapes at me, fury burning in his eyes as thunder and lightning snap above us. “You’ve made the next week of my life a living hell because you were cold.” He lets out this sharp laugh, but not because he thinks it’s funny. He starts pacing in front of the car, running his fingers through his wet hair, clenching his hands into fists. “Do you know what it’s like? To be yelled at all the time?” He pauses, like he’s waiting for me to answer, and I shake my head. “Of course you don’t.” He laughs again, and it’s filled with so much pain and anger that it makes my hairs stand on end. “I should have never got involved with you,” he says. “You were too immature. I knew it, yet I looked past it because I wanted you.” He turns away from me and starts walking toward the trees, like he’s going to disappear into the forest and leave me alone. “God, you can’t even listen to a simple direction.”

I panic the further he gets from me, not wanting to be alone, and ultimately I rush after him. “Dylan, I’m sorry,” I say. “I promise, I’ll make it better. Tell me what I can do to make it better.” I catch up with him and wrap my fingers around his arm, trying to pull him back to me.

As soon as I touch him, I feel this ripple course through his body. I don’t even realize what’s happening until it’s over. Until his fist collides with my cheek. Until my ears start to ring. Until the world spins. Until the pain sets in.

I cup my aching cheek as he stands in front of me, looking so much calmer as hot tears spill down my cheeks and the raindrops instantly wash them away.

When I replay the moment in my mind, I can see how my pain brought him some sort of peace from his own internal pain, pain that I would never fully begin to understand. But at the time, I didn’t see it. At the time, I only felt my own pain and shame. My own worry that this meant it was all over.

That I was no longer Odette.

The swan.

That I would become Delilah again.

It seemed so repulsive. So horrifying. To become that girl again. The one no one saw. The one that lived in the shadows.

God, what I would give to be that girl again.