this is the first short story of my project i decided to write. how the character meets ella i have not yet figured out and some of the dialogue is missing because i don't know who ella is yet and i don't know who the character is either. plot is also undeveloped so just in case, i wrote a story that could go by itself.

plot
genuine feedback on this would be appreciated.
i want to write something that would be meaningful to read, immersing, exciting, not some boring novel you'd groan if you had to read and analyze in school. although reading and analyzing random stories can be painful, since not everybody likes every book.
either way, any ideas on how to improve this or just opinions themselves would really mean a lot to me.

---

SS1 // Part 8 // Merry Christmas, Ella
I never carry around an umbrella, and it gets messy on days like today when it rains, because it doesn’t rain like little cupcake sprinkles here. It’s the real thing.

Ella does, though. She takes out this beautiful umbrella with a painting of a girl on one side, and when she spins it I notice that it forms a short animation of the girl walking her dog. She tells me she made it herself.

It’s a little small for two people, though it outcasts every single other umbrella for looks. It’s the size where you could both fit if you’re close together, but both of your shoulders will still get wet. She gives me a crinkly-eyed smile when the first few raindrops hit her shoulder. She’s feeling the cold little pokes before it gets numb.

She’s cute and she’s good at flirting, and it hurts a little because I know I’ll remember her.

“This is where my sister would walk me to every day,” she says, stopping at a bus stop with a single bench. “I would have to ride the bus to get to the library, and I was too scared to walk alone.”

I won’t ever know what that feels like, but I’m assuming it’s hard to do the same thing every day, even if it’s a simple task, even if it’s for your sister. Especially since it’s for your sister. “That’s sweet.”

Ella grimaces. “Sort of. Sometimes when she got mad at me, she would get back at me by making me walk alone. She knew how anxious I got. There was no way in hell I couldn’t go, and she knew it. She was a college freshman herself.”

“First year of college is hard.”

“It’s not like it got any easier after that.”

We’re walking past a restaurant now, and the Christmas decorations outside are getting wet. There’s a big polar bear stuffed animal and someone had given it a beanie. I can tell it was originally white, but it must have sat out here for months. Its skin is sagging and graying, almost like it’s aging without being alive.

My eyes are drifting, and she lightly grabs my arm to guide me.

She wants to talk to me.

“Did you ever get over that fear?” I murmur, and her hand tightens.

“It got better once she stopped altogether. I feel like it was just this irrational fear I didn’t want to face, and Addie was just the guardian angel for whatever could happen. When the angel leaves you, you lose that sense of protection, and then afterwards you stop caring, you know. Once it gets numb, you don’t give a [crap].”

She’s teary-eyed, but in a sad way and not an angry way. I lean in and pat her shoulder. Sometimes words can be too much. Her grip on the umbrella is looser and I take it from her, spinning it slowly so that she can see every move, every detail, every step the girl takes. The girl in the umbrella’s steps are sad, contrasting from the dog’s, who’s carefree and skipping.

It makes her smile.

Ella’s a quick thinker. Every scene was drawn to convey to anyone detail-oriented enough to look that life [freaking] sucks.

We walk in silence a little more, though there’s a lot going on around us. Some teenage boys walk by and glance at me, and one yells, “Your girlfriend’s pretty [darn] hot” before being shushed by his friend. An old man crosses the street when the light is red and doesn’t seem to hear the shrill screaming around him. I know Ella’s apartment is close when I see the park. She told me about it and how the sand sinks every time it rains.

She’s still crying and I touch her face. She’s crying about everything now. Because she and Addie lost touch somehow, whether from some stupid argument or a river she drowned in. Because she didn’t make a wish when the clock showed 11:11 that her studies in high school would pay off. Because all of those all-nighters brought her back where she started, just more sleep deprived. Because the umbrella she made is so [freaking] sad and every time she looks at the girl she feels for her.

I wipe her eyes for her even though I can’t tell the difference between the rain and the tears. I do it anyway and when I look down my hand is smeared with makeup and I can see the swirls of my fingerprints.

She pushes me away but her reaction is slow. I take it as a flicker of trust, and I hope she can’t see the tears in my eyes because what I’m about to say has two meanings.

“Ella, can you take me home?” Ella’s apartment is on the fifth floor and the streets look so small from here but bright from all the Christmas decorations. It must have taken weeks for the transformation. There’s so much, and I can only see it now that I’m up higher.

“Sorry it’s so dark in here,” she says with a sigh. Her eyes are still red and she’s biting her lip as if she still wants to fall apart but doesn’t out of embarrassment. She lays her head on the windowsill.

She’s tired.

“I’ll make it brighter for you.”

At first she looks confused because I’m just standing there. It’s so easy to make it lighter by just flicking a switch. Then she catches on.

“It’s been years since I’ve put up decorations,” she says, but she’s not against it.

She guides me towards the end of the narrow hall and into the right, and it’s like a storage room. It takes her a minute to dig through the stack of boxes but she knows what she’s looking for. I carry the box for her and she tells me to open it since I’m the guest and we laugh.

She shows me the ornaments she drew that she used to hang up on the tree every year. Each one has a picture of a moment in her life, and she tells me she loves to take photos, not just for the satisfaction of printing a polaroid but for the nostalgia she feels when she looks back at them. It keeps her alive.

There are lights, so many of them, and I hang them up around the walls and around the pictures of her and her sister. It takes me over an hour because I’m making sure that they work properly without turning them on each time so that she can get the grand reveal without the colors being spoiled. The small figurines she made go on every flat surface in the tiny rooms, the coffee table, her work desk, her bed stand, the dinner table, the kitchen counters.

When I finally turn on the light, it’s like fireworks, and I look over at her and she’s in tears. The lights make the smiles on every picture brighter and it conceals how much dust there is because she’s been so tired lately. She leans forward to take a picture and her phone case is a mirror; she told me she’ll never change it since it’s so convenient. It’s subconsciously pointed towards me and I see myself smiling, a face I can’t recognize.

“It’s [bedsheet],” she sobs. “It’s been nine years.”

What her struggles are, what my struggles are, they could have a duel and neither side would win for hours. Maybe one day they could call a truce.

She leads me to the middle of the living room like it’s a dance floor and she grabs my shoulders, going from rocking them to shaking them uncontrollably in a couple of seconds. She embraces me and tells me I’m so kind, that she’s never gonna take the lights down for the rest of her life.

“Whatever reason you came for me that day, thank you.”

The way she chose her words hurts like hell.

She reaches into the bottom of the couch and pulls out a handmade booklet, and it’s dated fifteen years ago. “This was a book I wrote about Addie and me,” she says before turning the first page.

The first thing I notice about it is that it doesn’t have any words and it’s just pictures. It’s a bunch of squiggly lines that make up a messy version of Ella, and a petite older girl, her sister. They’re death-diving into a pool, then on the next page they’re doing trust falls. They’re walking through the snow together, then opening Instagram for the first time after their mom let them get the app and checking out all of the features. They’re adding each other first on their Close Friends list as if adding someone first means that they matter the most.

The entire time she’s silent but she’s smiling because the book brings back the memories, and how could someone care about the present when the past was so pretty?

“Promise me you’ll be okay,” I say.

She doesn’t answer and instead pulls out her phone. Her fingers are sluggish as if she hasn’t touched her phone in a while, but she pulls up a page and it’s full of her memories. It’s Ella in the winter at a ski lodge, Ella in the spring hugging the daffodils close, Ella in the summer, wearing a pink t-shirt and throwing pool water at the camera. She’s giving me her socials.

“You’ll see if I’m okay or not.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Call me.”

“Tell me if your sister’s ever a [beach].”

She laughs. “I will.”

I’m a bit stiff but she wraps her arms around me anyways and when I pull back and turn, I can still see her looking at me from the corner of my eye. I open the door and wait because it’s time now, tapping my foot on the hard tile in a rhythm as if I’m walking away.

“Lock your door.”

I don’t know if she heard me or not because her figure is still. When I peek back she’s still holding onto the book and turning its pages, slowly and silently, immersed.

“Ella.”

She’s unresponsive.

I approach her from behind.