This is an alternate ending to the original story (appropriately titled the umbrella story). Im posting the link for down below. I'm curious to see whether we prefer fact to fiction, reality to dreams

http://www.teenink.com/fiction/romance/article/620963/Umbrella-Story/

The umbrella story wasn’t true. She liked to think in her head that a girl named Sonia and a boy named Drew almost fell in love in the rain outside the library under the shelter and romance of an umbrella. But that fiction was just a continuation of fancy, of girlish wishes and imagination. It wasn’t even raining that day when she returned the umbrella to him; she hadn't kept his umbrella hostage for even a week but had returned it to him the very next shift. Just like her name wasn't Sonia, his name wasn’t Drew either. It was Ryan.

The day she returned the umbrella to him, he had barely looked at her, his back bent over the volunteering desk as he eyed his Barron’s AP Physics workbook.



“I brought back your umbrella,” she said, standing behind him. He turned to her, his chair swiveling around, the light catching his glasses.



“Thanks,” he said, his voice flat. He extended his hand out for it. It had been dried, folded back, and carefully put in a new, dry plastic bag. She watched his fingers wrapped around it, only for him to toss it to the floor behind him and continue working. She had tried not to feel wronged. But it was impossible to ignore the way his back was turned to her, that penguin sweater so obviously not warm and comforting. The smiling penguins seemed to mock her as they stared at her with their patterned, knitted scarves wrapped gaily around their heads like turbans. Penguins had no business wearing scarves.



She didn’t stay at that volunteering desk, though she’d been assigned there since August and had diligently stayed there since. She went to the other desk in the next building for the first time. For the next month, she signed in at Ryan’s desk on the computer, and left to go work at her newly claimed desk, left on her dinner break, ignored Ryan—in fact it was her friend Christine who would have to be civil to Ryan for her, to invite him to join them on their break. He would refuse each and every time. She was glad, though a part of her wanted nothing more than to laugh together and do whatever dumb teenagers did or talk about whatever dumb teenagers talked about.



After all, if she was a dumb teenager too, then it shouldn’t have made too much of a difference. But she told herself that she had her pride. Pride was everything to her. Until it wasn't.



One day, she had decided to talk to Ryan. It seemed harmless enough. She needed to prove that she was over that crush, that it was stupid, pointless, and ultimately meaningless. Her friends had accused her of flirting, as they had smiled at her through the corner of their eyes knowingly. She had gotten Ryan to laugh. She had been careful to not look at him once.

She had told him she hated him, that he was awkward, that if he would just sigh and look at his watch all day, why didn’t he go home already? She had said it all pleasantly (and apparently that had fallen into the realm of flirtation, but she had no idea, she had no idea how to flirt, otherwise she wouldn't be in this situation in the first place), but she had meant every word.

The part that was so ironic was that he seemed to take it with stride and with that smile.

He had talked to her, laughed at what she said, watched her as her mouse would skim the computer as she pretended to do Chem homework when really she was trying not to slip, trying not to fall too far, trying to stay grounded, trying to accomplish what she had set out to do. To prove something, to move on. He had left that day at 6:00, three hours after his own shift had ended. She started to actually focus on the hydrogen bonds and van der Waals forces; she refused to watch his departure. But she had a smile on her face that even doing Chem outlines couldn't wipe completely away.



She ditched volunteering the next week. She tried not wonder if he would miss talking to her, knowing he probably wouldn't, that it meant nothing. But the thought was warming, welcoming.



Then she went to volunteering. She had waited for him. And waited a little bit longer. She hadn't made him a Valentine, but she was starting to wish she had. But he didn’t show up. He didn’t come the next week, or the following one.
He had quit volunteering. And he hadn't even said goodbye.


Today it was raining. It hasn't rained so hard since I was in third grade. But back then I still lived in Ohio, so I was guessing that to the Southern Californians, this was something not of this world and something unprecedented. It's 7:04 PM March 1. I'm still at the library. I'm still at same desk, sitting in Ryan’s favorite chair.

It's an ugly chair, a bland office green color, and though I ordinarily find green a beautiful color, the vitality of this green has already been leached out by years of use. Outside, it's already dark, the orange street lamps emanating an eerie glow one normally associates with notorious car garages behind dimly lit malls.

This afternoon, as I sat at my desk, I had to finish this story the right way, not live in a separate, romantic world crafted out of imaginative longing and need. The rain thundered down, flooding the streets, and the rain poured in torrents of water from the roof in a crescendo of sound. The wind whipped the tree leaves, scattering droplets everywhere in the mad storm. I longed to run outside to run in the rain, for someone to come shield me with their black umbrella and look at me I wish he would. I love the rain, even though my friends think it smells terrible on asphalt. But the smell of asphalt has been drowned out by the smell of memories and freshness, of tears that are not quite tears.

Now I can barely hear the rain over the heater hovering above the library information desk. But it's there. I can imagine that the rain is falling just as hard as it was in the Umbrella Story, that the sky is still as beautiful a gray as I pretended it was, that I can feel the droplets falling in my face, in my hair, the same warm fingers brushing my hand.

I can still pretend that a girl named Sonia and a boy named Drew are still wandering out in the rain that one meaningless rainy day. But they are of a separate dimension, lost in the gray curtains of rain that separate reality and fantasy, and Sonia's heart is still strong and unyielding, too proud to fall.

It's a crazy thing to do, but I look towards the library doors every so often, wondering if I'll see his long frame against the curtain of rain.

I just want to have the last word. I just want to say goodbye and that maybe this story can end after all, instead of unfinished, with him somewhere I can't see, and me sitting alone at this desk, trying to shield my typed words from my volunteering friend who's snap chatting again on her phone.

The families and couples and refugees from reality wander through the library doors, their shoes squeaking against the tiles, and I can hear the squeak of Sonia's and Drew's sneakers dashing in for refuge.

But I can also almost see the silhouette of someone's back walking into the rain, his image being washed out to gray.


Now, there is no girl with the broken smile, there's only a regular volunteer in a garish blue shirt typing away and realizing that, despite his apathy, it wasn’t actually the boy’s fault. It’s such an interesting thing to look out and realize the rain has stopped though it had never fallen in the first place.

This story doesn't have an ending. It doesn't need one. There are so many umbrella stories that never happened, of unrequited wants and imaginative teenage hypothetical what-if's. Of people who want to know what it is like to love in the rain.

Going back to the girl in blue still typing this story, it still makes her sad. But she still can find it in her to smile. He was gone. But now that she thought about it, she preferred it that way anyways.