Carmela would stay by the windowsill in the attic where the glass pane offered the gloomiest aura whenever the rain poured, as she told us many times it’s exactly the way she likes it: dull, dark, and cold. She would plug headphones in her iPad, open Spotify, and listen to classical music, would say this is the best feeling in the world. She would hide behind the curtain with colors varying like a rainbow when the sun shone, say it’s too bright her eyes are burning before heading into her room, where everything was hidden from the morning light. She would braid my hair into pigtails with a noose hanging at the ends of it, roll on my bed while laughing her lungs out because I looked the way she intended me to look like: Wednesday from The Addams Family.

I stifled a painful laugh, plugged the wire from an amplifier into my phone, played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and stared at her favorite window before going out of the house to meet the pouring rain. A memory reeled, voice contrary to the pewter gray skies, said you’re the best sister. I laughed again, knowing it was a joke – her kind of jokes, weird – because I was her only sibling. The trickling of rain pierced right into my skin, harsh but soft at the same time, just like Carmela.

I waited for the rain to stop. With soppy clothes, I looked up at the sky – a rainbow flashing through faint glint of sun – and held the ends of my pigtails, minus the noose.

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Ada Pelonia tweets at @_adawrites