Through Sunshine Through Rayne

By Shefali Pati

Rayne, with a dead father and an alcoholic mother is the textbook example of a kid going nowhere fast. Bad choices and emotional baggage define her.

Daniel on the other hand is the exact opposite. He is charming, positive and popular.

When their worlds and hearts collide, nothing stays the same. They have to face the consequences of their decision to be together.

A saga of sacrifices, never-ending passion, commitment and heartbreak.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Dec 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482840575

Shefali Pati

Shefali Pati, is a 17 year old Indian student(born on April 22, 1997) with a passion for storytelling. She started writing creatively when she was nine and has written various poems and articles for children’s magazines. Through Sunshine, Through Rayne is her first published novel. Her second, a Psychlogical Thriller, is on its way. At this impessionable young age Shefali has a flair for fluid prose, strong characterization and deep understanding of human dynamics. Her books are based on comtemporary themes and explores the psyche of her generation. Born in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, she currently lives in Mumbai, India with her parents Sushant Pati and Anita Tripathy and is in the final year of high school. Shefali aspires to become a writer, touch lives, and tell untold tales of loss, betrayal, and the error in human emotions.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Shefali Pati.

ISBN:               eBook               978-1-4828-4057-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Partridge India

000 800 10062 62

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1 Daniel’s Perspective

Chapter 2 Daniel’s Perspective

Chapter 3 Daniel’s Perspective

Chapter 4 Daniel’s Perspective

Chapter 5 Daniel’s Perspective

Chapter 6 Daniel’s Perspective

Chapter 7 Rayne’s Perspective

Chapter 8 Anne’s Perspective

Chapter 9 Rayne’s Perspective

Chapter 10 Rayne’s Perspective

Chapter 11 Rayne’s Perspective

Chapter 12 Daniel’s Perspective

Chapter 13 Rayne’s Perspective

Chapter 14 Daniel’s Perspective

Chapter 15 Anne’s Perspective

Chapter 16 Rayne’s Perspective

Chapter 17 Daniel’s Perspective

About The Author

This one is for my

beloved Aja and Aie, for their unconditional love, extraordinary character, and magic.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my parents profusely for believing in all of my dreams and patiently, for the most part, tolerating my erratic existence.

I would like to thank my friends who stayed with me through the process.

I would like to thank my beloved late grandfather for reading to me when I was small and for writing amazing stories that I read and heard as I grew up.

I would also like to thank my grandmother for her undying love, non-stop chatter, support, and deliciously fattening food.

And to my dog—who never existed.

Thanks, guys.

Shefali

PREFACE

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into my ears.

Her face seemed thinner than before, her eyes were losing the shine that I had always looked into for hope. Her lips were losing colour along with her cheeks. I realized with utter horror that she was dying. I wanted to stop time and hold her in my arms. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to reassure her by saying she was going to be okay. I knew that I had to do something—protect her from the world, from her family, and even from herself but there was no time to think about that. The time for salvation had passed. Now was the time to pray for a miracle.

What hurt me most was that I wasn’t there for her like I had promised. I was too late, there was no way to escape what I knew was about to come but my mind raced as I thought about all the possible ways that I could have saved her.

I stopped. I didn’t want to waste time I knew I wouldn’t get again. I looked at her because I knew in the back of my mind that it would be my last memory of her alive. I looked at her beautiful face again. She looked peaceful. She wasn’t struggling to survive. She was embracing death. She was getting what she wanted. I didn’t know if saving her life would be noble or selfish. All I knew was that she was dying and I was grieving and there was no one who could do anything. No one that could make the pain go away. No one was going to be able to comfort me. No one was going to be able to save her.

I did my best to cling onto her, refusing to let my body part with hers. ‘You cannot leave me like this,’ I whispered, looking into her eyes. She stared right back at mine but her eyes were blank, like they saw nothing and knew no one. She was still breathing but with every breath she took, I could feel her becoming weaker. ‘No, don’t leave me just yet,’ I begged.

My vision blurred as teardrops ran down my face and fell onto hers. I wanted to wipe those tears away so that I could look at her but my hands were too busy making sure she stayed close to me so that she felt warm. I knew she hated the cold.

She started closing those beautiful eyes of hers that I once got lost in. Her eyes used to be a mirror into her beautiful soul and now that I stared into them, I couldn’t find my Rayne anywhere. I wanted to scream but my lungs refused to fill in air. I just cried. I cried because my only source of hope was dying. I cried because I was losing my best friend. I cried because I loved her and I cried because I knew she loved me too.

I loved her from the very moment I saw her. I loved her even when she didn’t love herself. I loved her because she was worth it. I loved her because she was perfect with her beautiful imperfections. She was beautiful in every way that beauty can be defined. She may not have thought so but she was the most beautiful woman I had ever come across.

I loved her, love her, and always will. My mind went back to all the moments we shared together. Then, it simply went blank and all I did was cry.

I was broken like the promises.

I cried for destiny to change its course. I cried for God to save her. I cried because I was too scared to do anything else. I did not want to make it worse.

The last thing I remember about Rayne is the way she smiled for me before she took her last breath. It was a soft yet beautiful smile, the kind that made me adore her, the kind that brought out a part of her soul that was beautiful. Maybe it was my mind playing games with me. Maybe my mind didn’t want Rayne to be remembered with the cold, lifeless eyes. Maybe it wanted to remember her with the kind, beautiful smile. Either way, my last memory of Rayne is one filled with beauty as well as unexplainable tragedy.

After I knew in my heart that the Rayne I loved was gone, my paralyzed mind came back to life. It started screaming that I was to be blamed for her death. I could not hold her any longer. I wanted to let go but my arms refused to move. I was just not ready to say goodbye. It wasn’t time to let go.

Our story had just begun and the pages of our life still had to be filled. We had promised each other an infinite number of moments but that was clearly not going to happen.

I don’t think I will ever find an answer to whether our love would have survived. No one can predict what is going to happen and no matter how strong the love between two people is, they grow apart. And when they do, love fades. I knew that wouldn’t have happened for me and Rayne any time soon but it was a possibility, years from now. I didn’t know what could have been and I guess I’ll never find out. What I do know is that through her life, she looked for meaning, just like I did. Death gave her meaning but it also wasted what could have been a beautiful life.

Her death made my love for her immortal. I loved her with all my heart and it came to me as naturally as breathing.

I was not going to let that go to waste. I was not going to let her memory fade away. She was going to make a difference. We were going to do it together.

CHAPTER 1

Daniel’s Perspective

Purpose—through the ages, people have tried to look for purpose. They look for the purpose in everything—behind each activity they perform, behind all the work they do and most importantly, behind the reason for them being born into the human race. Did they come here to merely be workaholics and be so absorbed in their work that they don’t have time for anything else? Did they come here to make people’s lives better?

Even though everyone looks for purpose in their small way there are people who spend a large amount of time looking for purpose. When they think that they found it, they do their best to portray what they learned. Millions of books must have been written trying to explain the purpose of individuals’ lives. Millions of pictures must have been painted, trying to project an artist’s idea of purpose. Songs must have been sung about looking for a purpose while living a meaningless life, people must have asked themselves about it repeatedly or even spoken to others about the hauntingly small significance of their lives, people must have died, all looking for purpose.

I like to believe that we all have a greater role to play, a life that will not result in insignificance. At the end of the day, people are looking for means to touch lives in a way that shows that they understand life or at least part of it. And they want to make people remember who they are and what they did that sets them apart from the rest of the sea of faceless tides of people lost in the ocean of the unknown.

People want to leave behind a mark that will set them apart. People want to share what made them who they are. People want to shout out into the void and want to be heard and praised.

Don’t get me wrong, there are other kinds of people out there too. The ones that are perfectly satisfied with what they have. They go on to lead simple, happy lives, not questioning the purpose of their existence and not having long, sleepless nights thinking about whether they really belong where they are.

Unfortunately, I’m not one of them and that’s why I’m here tonight, looking for my sense of purpose under the stars.

I sneak out of my house sometimes, get away from all the madness and come out here when I need to think. It’s important sometimes, to stay alone, to clear your head, to think alone about what you’re too afraid to think about when you’re around other people. I can’t say for sure about other people but I have a few thoughts now and then that I can’t share with anybody. If they actually heard what I was thinking then not only would I be called a freak for thinking too much and obsessing over tiny things, but also I would be completely ‘ruining my life’.

At least that’s what my best friend, Anne, thinks. So far, she is the only person I ever confided in. Pathetic? I hope not, I think that comes as ‘baggage to having a broken family’, another thing that Anne keeps telling me. A lot of people think Anne is shallow and weird and even a little crazy but she’s all I got. She’s the only one I can count on. She’s my ‘rock’, as she would say.

She and I have been best friends ever since I can remember and though we’re very different in terms of what we believe in (yes, she’s more of the non-questioning-content-with-life kind of person) we’re close anyway. When I really get tired of the crap my mom says to me about not being a good son, my dad ignores me and the dreams I dream get really bad, she’s the only one who listens to me and asks me not to drown in self-pity and get up and move on. If I’m lucky, she’ll even let me go on and on about what I was born to do.

Today is one of those nights that can only get better, mostly because my day has been the worst and the night simply can’t be any worse. As I stare up at the stars, lying on the soft grass of the school’s football field that I sometimes sneak into, for a moment, I’m overwhelmed by all the beauty that lay in front of me.

‘Getting sentimental, are we?’ spoke a voice, as it put me into a sudden paralysis of shock and fear. No one was supposed to be here. No one was supposed to see me here. I turned my head to see Rayne Austiel, the girl who spent most of her time alone.

‘Rayne, what are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘Watching you get sentimental, I think,’ she said.

‘Gosh. You’re so funny,’ I said with a blank face ‘so I guess you stalked me, followed me out here and waited for me to stare at the stars for a while before you could come talk to me but let me tell you a little secret—you really don’t have to try so hard.’

‘You flatter yourself. I just come out here sometimes,’ she said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

She looked at me for a while before she said ‘to be alone’.

‘I always see you alone,’ I said.

‘I think I prefer being alone,’ she said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Someone’s in the mood to ask a lot of questions today,’ she said.

‘Will you answer them?’ I asked, tearing away my eyes from her and looking up at the sky again.

‘Why? It’s not like I owe you any explanations for what I do.’

There was silence for a while.

‘Answer me anyway?’ I asked.

She sighed and I heard her move. Next thing I