It has been raining for ten days straight. I've been keeping count.
Mum never liked rain. Always said it made everything gloomy. I use to like rain, letting it soak my face and creating muddy puddles to frolic through, but I don't like it anymore. It reminds me of her. Almost everything does.
The only purpose the rain creates today is to mask my tears as I walk out of the dorm building, stretching my shirt collar away from my neck. The boarding school uniform always felt like a straight jacket and the shirt collar my noose.
Everyone has colourful umbrellas and rain jackets. I have nothing. I let the rain seep into my skin, like I am being baptised again.
No one looks at me, so I return the favour and keep walking along the pavement to my class, listening to conversations. I always listen to other people's words when they don't think I do. This one about their father hitting their mother for the first time and scaring them. The tale is compelling, but it is cut short by my arrival to the maths building. I step inside, almost grateful to be shielded from the antagonizing rains but almost remorseful of it.