Treehouse Kiss and Disappearance: A Stormy Memory

In the morning, when I woke up, it was raining. Not the soft kind of rain that makes you want to stay in bed. This rain struck the windows like it was trying to get inside. A dark storm had come to town. The sky was almost black, even though it was morning, and thunder moved somewhere above us with the weight of something alive. It sounded less like weather and more like anger. As though the gods had found us. As though they had been searching. I remember that day as clearly as if it happened yesterday. The last day he was here with us. It was his birthday. He had just turned eighteen. At the time, I was seventeen. His mother had decorated the house before anyone arrived. Black and gold balloons floated against the ceiling. A silver banner hung crooked above the kitchen doorway because neither of us could get it to stay straight. He kept laughing every time one side fell. I remember watching him stand on a chair, pressing tape against the wall with the side of his thumb. His shirt lifted slightly above his waist. I looked away. I did that often back then. Looked at him. Then looked away before the looking could become anything else. When I looked at him, I had home. I did not know how to explain that at seventeen. I only knew that when he entered a room, something inside me loosened. The world became quieter. I felt loved without him having to say anything. And beneath it, there was an ache in my chest. A heaviness I believed was jealousy. Jealousy of what, I could never say. I did not want his face. His life. His family. His confidence. I never wanted to be him. I just wanted him. I wish I had known that at the time. By the afternoon, the storm had grown worse. The lights flickered as people began arriving. His family filled the kitchen. Our friends moved between the living room and the back porch, carrying drinks and shouting over the music. Everyone kept saying the weather was strange. His mother said storms always came when something was about to change. Someone laughed and asked if that was supposed to make us feel better. She did not answer. He was different that day. Quieter. He smiled when people spoke to him, but it took him a second too long, as though he had to remember how. I watched him move through the party while everyone reached for him. A hand on his shoulder. An arm around his neck. Someone pulling him into a picture. Someone shouting for him to open another gift. He belonged to everyone that day. Still, he kept looking at me. Not for long. Only enough to make me wonder whether I had imagined it. The storm grew louder. Like it was calling something. Urging it to come home. By evening, the party began to die down. The older relatives left first. Then the neighbors. Our friends disappeared one by one until only their voices remained in the walls. Tiny murmurs filled the house. His mother washing dishes in the kitchen. Someone laughing near the front door. The low hum of music playing from a speaker no one had remembered to turn off. I found him standing near the back window. He was looking toward the tree house. We had spent most of our childhood there. It was barely a tree house anymore. The wood had darkened with age. One side leaned slightly toward the yard, and the roof always leaked when it rained. We should not have gone outside. The wind was tearing leaves from the trees, and lightning kept splitting the sky open. But he looked at me. Then he opened the back door. So I followed. We ran through the rain, slipping across the wet grass. By the time we reached the tree, our clothes were soaked through. He climbed first. I followed him into the dark. The storm moved around us while the tree house swayed. Rain struck the roof in uneven bursts. Water slipped through the cracks and gathered between the wooden boards. We sat close because there was nowhere else to sit. Our knees touched. Neither of us moved. For a while, we did not speak. We only listened to each other breathe. Huddled close. Breathing in the same air. The moon appeared between the storm clouds for only a moment. Its light entered through the small window and gently graced his face. I swear I saw a glow trail across his skin where the moonlight had touched him. Not reflected light. Something beneath it. Something inside him answering. I stared. He noticed. “What?” he asked. “Nothing.” He smiled, but there was sadness in it. I wanted to ask him what was wrong. I wanted to ask why he had been looking at me all day like he was trying to remember me. Instead, I said, “Happy birthday.” He looked down at his hands. “Thank you.” Another silence opened between us. The tree house shook beneath the thunder. Then I smelled lilac. There were no lilacs in the yard. I knew that. Still, the scent surrounded me. Soft. Sweet. Familiar, although I could not remember where I had smelled it before. I looked at him again. He was already watching me. There are moments when the body understands something before the mind is willing to know it. My chest tightened. That same ache. Only this time, it did not feel like jealousy. It felt like fear. It felt like the edge of something. “Are you okay?” I asked. He opened his mouth but did not answer. The thunder came so violently that the entire tree seemed to bend. Light filled the windows. For one impossible second, I could see every detail of his face. The brightness in his eyes. The rain caught in his hair. The way his lips parted as though he had finally decided to say something. Then he reached for me. His hand touched the side of my neck. He kissed me. There was no hesitation in it. Only warmth. Safety. Lilac. I did not move. I did not breathe. For the first time in my life, the ache in my chest became something I could almost understand. Then thunder struck the tree house. The world became white. The force of it threw me backward. I remember screaming his name. I remember reaching for him. I remember the light swallowing everything. Then darkness. When I opened my eyes, I was alone. The rain continued falling through the broken roof. The tree house was still standing. I was still there. But he was gone. No body. No blood. No footprints descending the ladder. Nothing. Only the smell of lilac. For years, people told me what they believed happened. That the lightning took him. That he fell and we never found him. That fear changed my memory. That grief made me imagine the kiss. They said many things. None of them were true. I know because, just before he disappeared, I saw his face. He was not afraid. He looked like someone who had always known the storm was coming. And somewhere beneath the thunder, I heard him say: “I’m sorry.”

This narrative reflects on the final day the narrator spent with a close friend who mysteriously disappeared during a lightning strike on their eighteenth birthday. It delves into themes of unacknowledged romantic tension, the premonition of loss, and the lasting, phantom scent of lilacs that characterizes the narrator's grief and confusion over what really happened that night.

i had to sit with this for a while before i could respond. the way you write about looking away from him, about that ache you couldn't name at seventeen, it just hit different. like you were mourning him before he was even gone.

@kaihealing this is a short story. Not a personal experience. But thank you! I’m going to develop it into a larger narrative.

loved this. reading it brought me back to reality

Um that was awesome!! You have a gift!!!!

@tiffany thank you! I've also release the second part, which is another perspective of this narrative. “The day they called me home”

@brightmind939 thank you!! When you have a moment check out. “The day they called me home”