from Footsteps in the Rain

12 October

Today it rained, and the water looked thin.

I think it was trying to tell me something, splattering against my windows. Not delicate, not a bit. The drops have to make themselves known.

I don’t think rain in Los Angeles knows how to be subtle. It groans and strains and all but announces its way out of the sky, not triumphant and arrogant like the always shining sun, but falling out of duty. Heavy. Here we go again.

Rivers were running down the sides of the street at school. A couple of kids begged to get out of study hall to splash in the puddles, as if it were as exciting as Chicago getting six feet of drifts.

“Please stay in your seats,” the teacher droned. Some substitute was taking Ms. Benford’s place. I didn’t even know her name. “Please remain quietly seated.”

It thundered during dinner. Sam jumped out of her seat and Mom almost dropped the peas. I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything. Please remain quietly seated.

People say it’s easier to sleep when it’s raining. Say the drops cool you down, slow your brain. I stay awake in the rain. It’s not soft or invisible, just loud and invariably there all the time. Clumsy. Never tries hard enough.

I want to teach it something. Slap it around. Shake the water and make it sway.

I wish it would snow.


16 October

There’s a leak in the roof of the art room. It’s been raining for three days, and it must have taken that long for them to notice, because class was finally canceled. Mr. Feathers said something about the canvases getting wet, when I asked. “I’m sorry, Kalen,” he said.

Rain in the desert. I wasn’t sorry. I knew what to blame.

Track practice was called off. The field was ruined. Wet.

My only options shot to hell because of water, I had to call Mom and tell her to pick me up early. She said I really needed to save for a car, she’d be there in five minutes, and hung up.

Amy wanted me to wait with her, but I wouldn’t go outside. The world looked like a waif. She made a face at me and grabbed the elbows of a few friends she eats lunch with. They opened the door to the patio next to the parking lot and bunched up under the overhang.

Coach Edwards snuck up behind me and slapped me on the shoulder. I don’t think he knew I saw him coming. His reflection in the window stood out.

“Kale,” he said, “can you believe this weather?”

I shook my head and scratched the right leg of my jeans. He’d been outside, and he smelled like wet laundry.

“If it doesn’t stop, the whole city’s going to drown. That’d be a slice of irony, eh?”

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t like the way our reflections balanced in the windows. He was too clean cut, and I hadn’t shaved. I was bottling my answers and sending them out with little notes inside, hoping he’d take the hint. He did.

“See you tomorrow.” He waved at me, and I waved back, watching my hand go back and forth.

Mom rattled on about the rain on the way home. So much water, and wow, you wouldn’t think it was the desert, how was school, honey, the mud is running down the hills and ruining my garden, the basement’s flooding, how’s Amy, how’s the team, how the hell am I going to keep the dog from tracking footprints on the rug.

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

I watched the rain and wished it were snow. So it would fall in flakes. So.

I made sure to scrape my shoes against the mat a thousand times. But when I checked there was still mud on the soles; they were growing mud, making more. I took off my shoes and left them at the back door, and I walked on my tiptoes all the way to my room, where I pulled a cigarette out of my desk drawer and lit the wrong end. I watched it burn.

It doesn’t snow in California.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t hungry for dinner and didn’t want to be.


© 2002 by morganlight.

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