Elara’s POV

The first time I saw him, it was in my dreams. There were trees all around, and we were running. It was the woods behind Eliot’s home. My grandfather.

I remembered the pines, the way they made everything look better. And that sun up ahead, shining through. He was in front of me, but I couldn’t see him. His laughter reached me, and for some reason, I found myself laughing too.

But everything changed. In one minute, I was drowning. The pine trees disappeared, and I was nowhere.

Something dropped in the distance, and I jerked, my eyes falling wide open. There was something else.

I had fallen asleep on the lawn at the back of our house. It was called sunbathing, and maybe a little slumber in between. My mother always thought I was burning myself, but her shrill voice from the kitchen doors, calling my name, wasn’t what got me sitting up.

It was the smell.

My eyes widened when it hit, like the scent of the earth before rain began to pour from the sky. At first, I was disoriented for a bit, my gaze scanning everywhere around me, wondering where I was, wondering why it smelled like it was going to rain.

But then, in a split second, I felt it.

“Shit!” I yelped, jumping off the blanket. My back stung, like a thousand bees had settled on it. I was only meant to be out here for an hour. What was the time now?

“Oh no!” My mother muttered from behind me as the screen doors opened. “That is some burn, Elara. How long have you been out here for?”

She was home early. That was strange. “Em….” My eyes fished for my phone on the blanket. The screen was on when I found it. It was almost evening.

“Hours,” I murmured with an awkward chuckle, getting on my knees to roll up the blanket. My tube of sunscreen fell out of it.

Great. Just great! I had forgotten to put that on.

“You look angry,” my mother observed as I walked towards her, where she leaned on the doorway, a glass of cold water in a hand. It was a really hot day.

“I’m not angry, Mom.”

A small smile grazed her lips, and then a grimace when she angled her head, her eyes dropping to my side. “I told you to stop doing this. If you need a tan, go to the salon like I do.”

“It causes cancer.”

“Is that what…. What is his name again? Ethan. It’s Ethan, right?”

I rolled my eyes at my mother’s attempt to be cute. “Mom, like I have told you a million times already, Ethan is just my friend. We have been pretty close since grade school, okay? I will literally puke before I have anything to do with him. I mean… like second base.”

She blinked. “What’s that?”

“It is…” I stopped, then shook my head, a chuckle on my lips. “Never mind, Mom.”

“Well,” she leaned away from the frame and pushed back into the kitchen while I followed behind. “You might think of him like a friend, but does he see you that way, too?”

“Mom…”

“I mean, he does look at you like I …like I look at cake.”

“Gross, Mom!” I felt a shudder running through me at the mere thought of it. Ethan and I rolled in the sand together. He didn’t even see me as a girl. “Ethan doesn’t even like cake.”

She angled her head at me.

“I am just going to leave you to do your thing.” I moved with my back towards the door leading into the main house. “You are home early, though.”

“Your father and I thought we would have a little nice dinner with everyone tonight,” she murmured, her hands already moving around the sink. “So, the second Maya leaves, you should come here to help.”

My eyes shone bright with excitement. “Maya is here?”

“Yeah. I let her into your room.”

“Oh my God!”

“Put some lotion on your back!”

I left my mother’s chuckles behind as I raced past the living room and up the stairs, my feet pounding through the ground until I reached my door. She was lying on my bed when I got in, wearing the exact expression I had on.

“Maya!” I screamed, jumping into the bed. We squealed with excitement as she wrapped her hands around my neck. “Shit! I can’t believe you are here. I thought you said you were going to be spending the summer away from Blackwater Falls.”

Her laughter dimmed a little as she pulled herself up. “I was going too,” she started in an awkward chuckle. “But I guess I just realized I would miss you so much.”

“Maya!” I knew she was hiding something. I had always been able to tell since we were kids. “You left last week. What happened?”

She took a deep breath. “Well, my mother…we….”

I watched as she struggled to get the words out, but not once did I push her. I just sat there, waiting for her to get it out.

“They are getting divorced,” Maya whispered, as if saying the words out loud would suddenly make it come true. “I don’t know what happened, but there was a lot of fighting and yelling. Mom said…”

“I’m really sorry about your parents, Maya,” I murmured, jutting out my lower lip.

“No!” She shook her head suddenly, jumping out of bed. “I came here because I wanted to do something other than talk about my parents’ impending divorce. Can we please do that?”

“Of course,” I laughed, swinging my feet to the ground. Maya moved to the window, her fingers pushing the blinds aside. “We could go to the lake. The water is really warm.”

“Elara…”

“Okay, no lake. How about we try…”

“Elara, why didn’t you tell me there was a hot boy living right across the street?”

My eyes narrowed, and I walked towards the window. “What are you talking about? That building hasn’t been taken in…”

And then, the rest of the words died on my tongue.

The scent got stronger.

Rain before it hits the earth.