It Never Rains in Colombia (5 page)

Chapter 5 - Never Say Die/The Truth About Bees

                                          “Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” - Confucius”

Present day
             

             
Harlow
moved through the woods, seamlessly leaving the bicycle behind, sliding silently along, like a ghost alone and cold under the silver glow of moonlight.

             
“I can’t believe this,” she whispered emerging from the undergrowth, her white shirt brushing lightly against the waxy green leaves as the music grew louder. Looking up the long concrete driveway, she saw the massive white country mansion with masked circus performers standing sentry on either side of the doors. She was a few yards away, close enough to see them breathing fire and bowing down low to welcome the guests through the mansion's imposing doorway. Two women wearing feathered white angel's wings and blue and silver masks ran past her. A loose feather freed itself from the African girl's wings and sailed innocently past her party dress to the ground. Curious, Harlow bent down to retrieve it and was almost knocked down by a devil. The burly man with red blinking devil's horns rushed past. “Ah, watch it!” he shouted, jumping over her outstretched arm in a hurry.

             
“S-s-sorry,” she stuttered. The winged girls turned back to see if he was following. He charged after them, wielding a red devil's pitchfork, and they ran further inside, giggling as they went.

             
The mansion had a long driveway ensconced on either side by acres of green grass. Students dressed as angels and demons zipped across the lawn holding sparklers. A fiery, yellow flame escaped the doorman's mouth, leaping a foot into midair and licking the night sky violently before disappearing into nothingness. When the smell of singed hair touched her nose, Harlow automatically patted her hair, then hurriedly entered the large marble hallway mingling in amid the mass of dancing bodies in there. A large red banner with gold letters hung above the far door. It read: “The Heavenly Ball.”

             
Sophia emerged from a crowded room dressed as an angel, her gold mask hanging around her neck, when she passed the large stairway her eyes flickered in brief recognition. “Whoa, what are you wearing?” she cried.

             
Harlow looked down at her own navy schoolgirl’s outfit. “I guess I didn’t get the right invitation.”

             
Sophia laughed, taking off her wings, “Here, have mine.”

             
They made their way down the hallway. They hadn't talked much about Sophia's secret. Harlow had tried broaching the subject once and Sophia had been dismissive, saying, “I don't want to talk about it.” Since then, things had been strained. Harlow couldn't understand why Sophia would want to hide who she was, especially when she was obviously so lucky.

             
A superstar with a hit album and millions of fans, why would you hide that?
Harlow mused;
I would love to be in her shoes.

             
Now she didn't really know what she could and couldn't say to Sophia without making her irritable, so she just kept things simple.

             
“Thanks for giving me the directions. If it weren’t for you, I’d still be wandering around outside.”

             
Inside the party, there were six masked dancers in red sequined corsets and shorts, some with angel's wings and others with devil's tails that whipped from side to side as they danced wildly on their podiums. Angels in glass boxes and devils behind steel cages. Below, a ballroom full of men and women dressed as bishops, kings, archangels, and cupids, crowds of angels in white dresses and white tuxedos, devils in smart trousers and miniskirts dancing, jumping up and down to the music. Roberto stood, momentarily watching a girl climbing up onto a podium to dance. His face lit up in a surge of pure elation under the pulsing blue and white light, then he moved through the doors with his friends and went out to the garden.

             
Harlow's hands were shaking. The letter clutched in her right hand fluttered a little as she walked over to him. The sound was distracting. She felt as if she couldn't breathe as she walked, and so she sucked in a gulp of fresh rose-scented air. The flowers in the garden were in full bloom. She heard the crunch of her own feet on the gravel. There were so many students scattered around but she could only see one. He was not far from her now. She didn't care about how everyone loved him; she only knew that her face grew warmer when he looked at her. When she slept, she would smile at the thought of him. When she woke up, his beautiful face would be disintegrated, blown from her mind by the cold winds of reality only to return again when dressing for class. She would shove the thoughts of him to one side and they would forcibly push their way back into her mind.

He would call her, sporadically lately, but they'd never really talked about how they felt about each other, whether it was just a friendship or something more.

             
Friends don't hold hands, right?
Harlow considered. It seemed like Roberto wanted something more and she did too.

             
He was surrounded by a group of girls. Her mouth was as dry as cotton; when she swallowed, it felt as though she would choke on her own tongue.

             
A crowd of masked people had gathered by the lake to watch the fireworks. She stopped in the middle of the gravel path, in the midst of the crowd, hesitating, wondering if she should wait, but then she considered the torment of not knowing. The torturous game of back-and-forth  that beset her mind every waking minute, and if she didn't have the courage at sixteen, she might never have it. “Roberto,” she called softly.

             
He looked up from his iPhone; the group of girls bristled and slowly began to dissipate. “Um, can I talk to you for a moment?” she asked.

             
“Sure.”

             
They moved away from the others so that it was just the two of them near the lake.

             
“I, uh, I think,” she murmured. She raised her hand; it shook like a wooden boat in a storm. The letter went up and down like the grey waves of a rough sea. “This is for you,” she said, leaving it hanging in the air until he took it.

             
He took the letter, calmly unfolding it slowly. She watched as he scanned the lines and then walked slowly away. The girls rushed back to his side as she left.

             
“What's that?” Amy asked.

             
“Nothing,” he replied, tucking the letter into his back pocket.

              “What is it?” Amy snatched at it.

             
“It's nothing,” he repeated, taking it back from her. “Look,” he said:

             
“Dear Roberto,” her heart stopped as he read aloud. “I have watched you for a long time.” She turned quickly. Sarah, Amy, and a girl she didn't know began to giggle as he read on, “Every night when I sleep, I dream of you.”

             
The students in the immediate vicinity stopped what they were doing. Conversations halted mid-sentence as his voice grew louder. “I think you are beautiful. Normally men are handsome, but you are really beautiful. I really like you, and—” he paused looking at her for a long time laughing, “if you feel the same way about me, please let me know, much love, Harlow, kiss, kiss, kiss.” She remembered how she had crossed out the “much love” twice thinking it was too much and felt sick that he had read it.

             
He carefully tore the letter in half, then ripped those halves again and again until only tiny pieces of white paper fluttered to the ground like confetti around his feet. When he began to hold his stomach as if to contain the laughter, she felt that it was feigned, just to spite her. Turning fully toward him, anger boiling up, she marched toward him. He stood up straighter as she came over.             

             
“What makes you think that I would like you?” he asked as though he were some magnificent King and she were merely a Pauper.

             
The hot tears pressed under her eyelids, threatening to slide freely down her wind-chilled cheeks. Without thinking, her hands stopped shaking and she punched him as hard as she could. Amy gasped and shoved her with both hands so hard that Harlow fell into the dark lake.

             
Sophia rushed up behind Amy, shouting, “What are you doing?”

             
Harlow thrashed wildly in the water, frantically trying to swim, and finally sank below the lake's surface.

             
There was a splash as someone dove into the water, his jacket discarded on the grassy bank. Roberto stood on the periphery of the crowd; his friends began howling in laughter. An eerie silence fell over the crowd in the garden as she sank below the water. Water rose in plumes of bubbles above her, convalescing in mushroom clouds as she sank deeper, deeper still. It felt as though she were being pulled downwards by some terrible beast, an unknown force gripping her calves, sinking, as if her ankles were tied with lead weights.

              She sank lower, as if her legs were tied with leaden weights.

             
He grabbed onto her waist then propelled both of them back up, swimming onto the other side of the lake closest to the woods, clutching onto the bank as he dragged her out of the water. She coughed out water, trying to catch her breath, drawing her knees up to her chest, trembling.

             
“Are you okay?”

             
She nodded vaguely, looking up briefly. His hair was soaked, water dripped down the black mask, down his face past the beauty spot above his lip.

             
“Harlow!” She turned around and people came rushing over. He placed a black jacket over her shoulders, when she looked back he was gone.

             
She heard her clothes dripping when she got up and the crunching sound of her footsteps on the gravel path. For a moment, the only sound she heard was her heart breaking. She ran from the humiliation through the doors, back into the party where people jumped aside as she pushed through.

             
There were partygoers wearing angel wings laughing on the front lawn. She ran past; the music pumped in her ears and they faded into a blur—the sparklers, the shiny happy people under the night sky. She retrieved her bicycle from amid the trees and cycled across the road to get away from them, her chequered white and blue school skirt rustling sadly. Her head was thumping; the sound pulsed in her eardrums like a tiny marching band, as she tried to focus on the street ahead,

coughing, looking down at the yellow lines in the road glistening with rain. The newly washed street kept on moving as she cycled. It reminded her of the dewy daisies on the windowsill at home and the bee that had once stung her. She pedalled faster, trying to block the tears. A few feet ahead, people were cramming into their tiny city cars, bright eyed and singing, full of midnight adrenaline. She turned just in time to see the flashing headlights of the car; there was a scream of tyres when it spun to avoid her and the bicycle turned over. Her eyes fluttered as she crashed to the ground. Banging car doors, screaming, and stomping footsteps came all at once. That face. He adjusted his thick black spectacles and she was jolted back to reality, looking into piercing brown eyes. A concerned face, afraid, hovering above, disembodied. An explosion of colours burst across the night sky, spraying sparkles of bright red, blue, and gold fireworks onto the dark canvas above.

              She realised the truth as consciousness slipped desperately away. The truth was a bee could only hurt you once before it died; humans were repeat offenders.

Chapter 6 –  The Girl That Fell in Love With Love

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.”
Confucius

              “Harlow, Harlow.” Fingers clicked in front of her face as she blinked wearily. “You had an accident. It's okay. You're okay now.”

             
“What?” she asked groggily.

             
“I'm taking you to the hospital,” Christian replied as he drove through the darkened streets, “How are you feeling?”

             
“I feel fine,” she sat up straighter in the passenger seat, “I'm all right.”

             
“That's what you said last time you fainted,” Sophia said.              

             
After a while, he turned the car down a lamp-lit road and parked at the bottom of a steep incline. Sophia got out and waited for Harlow, who stepped lightly on the pavement trying to avoid pressing down too hard on her throbbing ankle. Christian came around the front of the old green car to their side. Looking down at her feet, “You'll never make it.”              

             
She pretended that it didn't hurt. “Where is it?” Harlow asked. 

             
“Up there,” he nodded towards the top of the hill.

             
“Seriously, then why did you park all the way down here?” Sophia asked in irritation.

             
“The road is closed,” he replied, pointing to the yellow plastic barricades and the Men at Work sign a few metres ahead, cordoning off the entryway up the hill. “I don't know of a faster way to get there, do you?”

             
Sophia grimaced, turning away from him, and stomped haughtily up the hill. She couldn't understand him.

             
“Shall I carry you?” Christian asked Harlow jokingly, his eyes on Sophia's retreating back.              

             
“It's okay, I can make it,” she began to limp forward making the off-white bedraggled angel's wings shake.

             
He crouched down.

             
“I feel fine.”

             
“Come on, piggyback.”

             
She climbed on, wrapping her arms securely around his neck as he stood up to his full six feet. She winced in pain when he hooked his arms under her thighs to secure her, inadvertently agitating the swollen ankle. They slowly navigated the crooked pavements going up the hill and found Sophia sitting on a low wall that circumvented the garden of a large house. She jumped down and began walking with them.

             
“There you are,” he said with a wry grin.

             
She smiled faintly then looked away.

             
“Harlow?” he asked.

             
“Yeah?” 

             
“Just checking you're awake. Did I ever tell you the story of the girl who fell in love with love?”

             
“What?” she laughed, “no.”

             
“Good,” he continued, “Sophia, have you heard this one?”

             
“How far is it?” Sophia asked in reply.

             
“Not far,” he told her, “just up the hill.”

             
“Tell me,” Harlow said.

             
“Well, in Cartagena some time ago, there was a girl called Elle. She grew up in a rich household and when she was little she often played with her cousins, running down the maze of cobbled streets, in and out of the crowds that walked there, dodging the horses that pulled the fancy white carriages along the streets. On the weekends, during the long hot days, she would sit outside her aunt's bakery singing and playing on her guitar, her hair fluttering behind her in the warm breeze. A passing merchant heard her singing on the wind, her voice like an angel’s carried to him by a swift gust. He followed the voice until he found the sixteen-year-old girl sitting by an old woman on a thin wicker chair outside a café. The Merchant talked to the aunt and told her that he was producing a show in the neighbouring city of Medellín. They needed a singer and he was convinced that she was a star. After days of discussions, Elle's father and mother travelled to Medellín with her to begin filming. The show was a hit. Within months, Elle's face was the most well known in Colombia. By the time she was seventeen, she had become involved with a powerful drug baron.

             
“This doesn't sound like a very happy story,” Harlow interrupted.

             
“It is,” he insisted as they neared the top of the hill and the neon lights of the hospital shone in the distance like a lighthouse across a dark sea. Sophia looked at the blanket of stars twinkling above them, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

             
“I can walk now,” Harlow said feeling herself slipping down his back more and more frequently.

             
“Are you cold?” Christian asked, setting her down.

             
“No, I'm fine,” Sophia said, looking around at the houses on either side of the road.

             
Harlow was unsteady and Christian offered her his arm.

             
“Carry on,” Harlow said as they began to walk and she limped toward the imposing building in the distance.

             
“She became involved with the local drug baron,” he continued. “Before she knew it, she was trapped in an impossible situation. She couldn't leave him because he promised that if she ever did, he would follow her. She was known everywhere; slowly she came to feel that her fame had become a prison that she couldn't escape. What had once been her beautiful kingdom turned into a nightmare. When she ran away, he sent his men after her. They would abduct her from wherever she hid and return her in the boot of the car if she struggled.”

             
“What the hell kind of story is this?” Harlow asked.

             
“A love story,” Christian insisted.

             
Sophia rolled her eyes.

             
“Elle's only refuge was in the bookshop deep within the streets of Medellín, jammed in between pavement cafés and houses that had balconies draped with pink Bougainvillea. She would make her excuses every Saturday on the pretext of going to confession and hide there in that small old bookshop, lose herself in the aisles amongst the tall mahogany shelves. She would often sit in a large leather sofa in the corner of the shop and read, stopping only to talk with the old store owner. One day, she looked above the pages of her novel and saw a young man at the till where the elderly store owner was usually perched. The book that had covered her face now lowered, revealing her true beauty to the young man who found himself lost in her eyes. Elle, unable to read, got up as if to go. The handsome assistant became alarmed and, ignoring the queue of customers, hurried over to her.

             
“I must know your name,” he said unable to take his eyes off of her.

             
She was accustomed to having admirers but not to being unknown, and in her surprise she forgot herself and said “Elle. What do they call you?” she asked.

             
“I am Love,” he replied, enjoying the look of shock that passed over her face.              

             
“What do you mean?” Elle questioned him.

             
“That's what my friends call me,” he replied seriously, sitting down next to her.

             
The old store owner returned from the back room. The customers gave up on giving the young man's back reproachful looks and returned to contemplating their other problems. He took her hand in his and removed a red felt tip pen from his shirt pocket and gently wrote the letters  A.M.O.R. on her palm.

             
“What is this?” she asked, resting her hand peacefully in his.

             
“A name you will never forget, I hope,” he replied, tracing a finger softly around each letter. “I am Alejandro Miguel Olivera–Ribero, but you can call me Love.”

             
Elle laughed, taking a liking to him, then told him she had to go before the game was found out. Elle promised to come the next day. He waited for her outside the closed shop.

             
They spent many happy months together arranging more and more secret meetings. She knew she had fallen for Love and was terrified by the thought. He struggled to sleep at night, restlessly seeing her face and running through every memory of her. Alejandro decided that he would leave his job and the next day, when he saw her again, they would run away together—leave Medellín, go far away where the baron could not get her. That Saturday when they met, he told her the plan and she decided to act on it immediately. She rushed back to her house to collect her clothes; when she arrived at the house, she learned that the baron had gone out and couldn't believe her luck. She returned to the bookshop triumphant. She found Love lying on the floor in a pool of blood, the baron standing over him with a gun. Elle screamed, rushing over to Alejandro only to be dragged back by the baron's men. She wrestled with them until the baron came over and said, “It's useless. He's dead.” Then he knocked her out with the butt of his gun.”

             
“The end,” Sophia said as they went through the hospital's sliding doors.

             
Christian laughed, “Not quite.”

             
“Hi,” Sophia said, nearing the Accident and Emergency counter.

             
The man looked up, “How can I help?”

             
“My friend fell off of her bike, we think.”

             
“Okay, take this form and fill it in. The doctor will be out to see her in a moment.”

             
Sophia nodded, taking the clipboard back to the chair were they sat. The man next to them groaned, pressing a bloodied handkerchief to his head. It took a while for Harlow to be seen by the doctor. She sat on the hospital bed. The doctor nodded as Harlow counted the fingers she held up. Her pupils contracted as the doctor shone a torchlight into each eye.

             
“No sign of concussion,” she said. “How do you feel, any headaches?”

             
“No.”

             
The doctor nodded, “You had a lucky escape then. Try to get some rest.”

             
Harlow got up from the chair, “Thank you.” She grimaced as she walked.

             
“Let me have a look at that ankle.” 

             
In the car, Harlow said, “I can't go back like this,” looking down at the crutches.

             
Christian kept his eyes trained on the road, “Sophia, shall we?”

             
“No,” she said cutting him off, “not today.”

             
“Fine, do you mind coming back to mine?” Glancing up at the rear-view mirror, he saw her silhouette against the rear window.

             
Sophia twisted her hands nervously, “Do what you want.”

             
To Harlow, it sounded venomous.

             
“Where are we going to sleep?” she asked as Christian unlocked the front door of his house.

             
“You guys can share my room. I'll take the sofa,” he whispered.

             
He showed them down the hall, then up the stairs, turning on the lights as he went revealing a worn red-carpeted hallway leading to a sparsely decorated bedroom that contained only a computer, a bed, a guitar, and a few posters of cars on the walls. She sat down gingerly on the double bed wincing in pain as she rested the crutches against the wall. Sophia walked idly around the room, touching one of the photographs on the far shelf. Christian rifled through his wardrobe and returned triumphantly with a giant T-shirt and a set of girls’ pyjamas.

             
“Shotgun pyjamas,” Harlow cried, snatching them.

             
He laughed.

             
“Why do you have girls pyjamas?” she asked.

             
“They were my girlfriend’s,” he said.