Me, Delilah

I love it when it rains. I love watching it from inside and I love going outside to play in the rain. I guess that's how I found myself on 2nd street on March 21st that day. It was raining and my best friend, Leon, and I wanted to go for a walk. I splashed around in the puddles in my blue sneakers while Leon did his usual relaxed walk with his hands in his pockets. I stopped in front of him and laughed. He smiled at me.

I met Leon in the 7th grade at Jackson Middle School in Maples, WA. He sat by me in Mr. Acker's second hour art class. I failed because I liked to watch Leon draw. He drew beautifully and his hands were so full of grace. For some reason, watching someone draw the way he did was so mesmerizing to me. I could watch for hours. I always wished that I could draw that way. To take an image that existed only in my head and put it on paper for the whole world to see.

I was never the popular girl in high school, but that never bothered me, because the friends I had were real. I was never afraid to get dirty. And although I was shy, i wasn't afraid to make an idiot out of myself for fun or to cheer a friend up. High school wasn't the place for me, though. I suppose it's a great stepping stone for a lot of people, but for me it was just a struggle to keep my head above water. With being "unpopular", came people teasing me. I left my sophomore year to go to college.

I always wanted to be just like my older sister, Eliana. She was calm and quiet, with few friends, but they mattered. I had one sister, Eliana, and two brothers, Daniel, and Joshua. I was the closest with Joshua. He was my only blood sibling. We were all adopted. When we were little, Joshua and I used to talk about what we thought our real parents might be like.

Joshua was two years older than me, Eliana was six years older than me and Daniel was four years older. Eliana and Daniel were adopted together, and Joshua and I were adopted together. I was closer with Joshua, not only because our ages were closer, but because he was my only blood sibling. Eliana was a little more withdrawn and tried to be a good big sister to me but she and I never understood each other. Daniel stuck with Eliana and didn't really make an effort to make family of me or Joshua.

Daniel was always a little bit of a rebel. He always got in trouble at school, and would sometimes refuse to talk to anyone but Eliana for days on end. When I asked my mom about his odd behavior, she said only that Daniel and Eliana had been through terrible things during their lives, things that I would understand later.

Growing up, Joshua was my best friend. He never let kids in school pick on me and he helped me with my homework. He always put me before himself. There was never a time when he'd turn me down to go somewhere with his friends. He played guitar and wanted to be a rock star when he grew up. I wanted to be a rock star, too. I always took his guitar and played with it. Every time I unknowingly untuned his guitar playing with the strings and such, but he never got angry with me.

Eliana and I got along but with little communication. She wanted to be a pianist when she grew up. Our parents bought a keyboard that sat in the room I shared with her in our house on Pritchett street. Eliana and I weren't ever like sisters, we just shared a room. She cared about me, and I cared about her, but we never acted like sisters. Joshua and Eliana got along fine, but they didn't seem to have any more of a bond than I had with her. If anything, there was a tenseness between them because Joshua always thought that she should be more a part of my life than she was.