Page 12 of We Redeemed the Rain

The end of May couldn’t come fast enough.

The only person I was sad to leave behind was Miss Simone. I found myself sitting in her office more times than I could count those final weeks. She always welcomed me. She had those squishy gel balls, and I played with one while we sat and chatted. Sometimes we talked about difficult things, and sometimes we just made small talk about school and our favorite colors and things you’d think wouldn’t matter to a thirteen-year-old boy. In my blur of existence, she was one person who made me feel seen.

My last day at Burton Falls Middle School, Miss Simone got misty-eyed. She gave me a huge box of paper, pens, journals, books about writing, a big fat thesaurus, and a dictionary. Over the last months, she and Miss Greta had come to know me as a writer. I didn’t even realize I was one. Not until Miss Greta handed me a pen and told me she believed in my words. Miss Simone tapped into that too, encouraging me to write my thoughts on days when I was overwhelmed.

She said,“When words feel big or too jumbled to speak, let paper be your safe space. It doesn’t have to be pretty—just let it be real.”

In a lot of ways, they gave me back my voice.

Maybe the rest of the world wouldn’t hear my words on paper.

But I heard them.

And that alone rebuilt a missing part of myself.

I had a voice, and I knew how to find it. It was muted by a lot of pain and loneliness, almost drowned out by all the storms in my life. But I could find it in a quiet space, on a blank page, leafing through a dictionary.

When I left Miss Simone’s office for the last time, she gave me a hug and whispered in my ear. “Write it out, sweet boy. Things will get better.”

So I did.

PART TWO

Your smile is a stained glass window,

Glorified by the light streaming through.

You chase out the dark like a sunrise.

I long for your radiant colors.

THREE

Tag

The sun had yet to break over the horizon, and the pre-dawn light washed the wraparound porch in purple hues. I leaned against the railing, wishing away the inevitable. Woke late and needed to get my day started, but I was tired of running myself into the ground for no reason, sour about my bank account, and pissed off at my brother, Cooper. And worst of all?

I had one of those dreams again.

Not like I should’ve been surprised. Dreams were nothing new. I’d been having them since I was a kid; my fair share of nightmares and then, of course, the weird ones that felt a bit like a dope high—normal stuff for the most part.

But then certain ones were a category all their own, and I hated them from the depths of my soul. Coming out of those dreams reminded me of a bad hangover: throbbing head, heavy limbs, inexplicable sadness, nauseating déjà vu—that sort of thing.

I propped my leg up on the railing, resting fully against the white post and hoping Jesse would delay a few more minutes. I took another long drag and the end of my cigarette pulled from ash gray to hotorange. Half-way gone, the cigarette barely slowed the shakes. I always got shaky after those dreams.

Footsteps moved my attention to the corner of the house.

Jesse.

Climbing the porch stairs, he quirked a brow at my cigarette but said nothing. He leaned onto the railing a few feet away, temp tested his mug of coffee, and finally murmured, “Good morning.”

I flicked some ashes into the bushes below. “It is morning. Can’t say it’s good though.”

Jesse lifted his mug to his lips. “Where is he?”

“Take a wild guess.”

Jesse cussed softly. He’d called this yesterday. “He left, didn’t he?”

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