Rain

• Irene Teh Yan Ling, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2016

I want to see it falling down on grass. To see the blades bend under the weight of each raindrop. Passing by in the car, I see the wind send waves rippling through the green and torrents of water smashing against the windscreen. Inside I am safe to watch passing trucks carve up waves in puddles and potholes. Lay my head on the cold window and watch the water trickle past my eyes.
I want to be a child.
I want to watch two raindrops.
Make
Them
Race
Down
My
Window.
Cheer silently in my head as the little bead wins, skirting down the glass surface. Race some more.
Go faster
Faster. You can do it!
Hush. My parents shush me. “Listen to it,” they say. And I do.
I hear the syncopated patter of heavy drops on the metal roof of a moving vehicle and the low rumble of wheels on the highway. The rain is getting heavier. Thunder is calling after its silent brother — lightning, it is a conversation. Believe me. They speak in voices we can’t understand; to us it sounds just like noise. Noise like a babbling brook.
What on earth does it babble about?
So
Just
Listen.
I want to feel the rain. Pinpricks of cold against my skin. It is a luxury to see this much water and hold it in my hand. I think of all the children in the world who have never seen more than a glass of water at a time. How thirsty they must be.
I am a child again.
I am trying to catch the rain in my hand. Tasting it on my tongue and feeling the chill biting my nose. “Get back,” says mother. The child in me cries out in defiance but I know I must listen to my mother. She is always right. And so I roll up the window with the slightest remorse.
Oh, look!
A raindrop has found its way to the tip of my finger. My body shakes, the little water bead is startled. He begins to run.
Down my finger
My wrist
My arm
Off my elbow
Onto the car seat. Rolling off the edge.
Gone.
Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted. I mustn’t be childish. Watching raindrops race is for babies. So is tasting raindrops and catching rain in my hand. I am not a child.
And yet...
I want to see the lights. See them fragment and dissipate in the water on my window. Watch them glow steadily from office windows on the tallest skyscrapers of New York. Passing by shops aglow with green and red and yellow lights distorted in my vision. The rain’s fault. Always the rain.
I am home now.
We get out of the car and come to a tall building with lights spilling through a glass doorway and raindrops casting speckled beams on the doorman’s uniform. “Merry Christmas,” he says.
I’d like to see snow.