Rain     by Edward Kidd

    As I drove up and down the lazy Missouri hills, I daydreamed to pass the 
time. I also counted the dead animals along the roads, which wound like a roller 
coaster in the eastern part the state. I was heading home from school in Kansas 
City to St. Louis for the weekend, although it was only Thursday.
    I daydreamed about Jennifer, my first love, who had dumped me earlier in the 
week.  I vowed never to go near a blonde again. I couldn't concentrate on school 
so missing Friday's classes was not much of a sacrifice. I ached in my gut, 
thinking at one point I was seriously ill, until my roommate told me it was only 
lovesickness.
    Four hours is a long time to waste driving across the state with nothing to 
do. I thought about how to win back Jennifer, though deep down I knew I couldn't. 
In a fit of anger I called her a terrible name. She had seen my dark 
side and ran away crying. I was crying myself a few days later when it dawned on 
me she was not coming back. She didn't take long to get over me. I saw her in 
the library a few days later with a nice looking, athletic guy. I was just 
average looking, average looking with a bad temper.
    It wasn't long into my daydream when it started raining. It rains a lot in 
Missouri. The farmland doesn't look so nice when it's pouring outside and you're 
down. My only plan was to just keep going: keep driving, keep going to school, 
and keep breathing, until I could function again. I didn't want to give up my 
peace of mind for the sake of a girl. My mother taught me that, before she went 
on to a better place, dead at forty from cancer she got from breathing asbestos 
fibers where she worked. I sure missed her.

    Fifty miles west of Columbia, which was near the center of the state, I saw 
someone along the side of the road. They were soaked. I slowed down the car, and 
as the brake lights came on the stranger broke into a trot towards me.
    "Hi, I'm Kat," the stranger said, getting in and huffing slightly from the 
run, "You don't know how glad I am you stopped."
    "You're a girl," I replied.
    "Well, yeah, I'm glad you noticed. You're not a pervert are you?" She leaned 
closer to the door.
    "I might be if I were in the mood. You want to get out?"
    "No. You don't look too bad." She looked me over as I pulled away from the 
side of the road slowly, then she relaxed. I sensed it more than saw it. I 
stared at the monotonous road ahead.
    "Do you have a name?" she asked.
    "Yes."
    "Are you going to tell me your name?"
    "Yes."
    "Today?" she asked, playing along, like a child asking twenty questions.
    "Yes."
    "Does it start with a 'Z'?"
    "Yes," I continued in an emotionless monotone.
    "Is it 'Zebra'?"
    "Yes."
    "Is it "Zipper?"
    "Yes."
    She looked in the back seat and saw my duffel bag.
    "Do you have a towel in there?" she asked seriously.
    "Yes."
    "Can I use it to dry off?"
    "Yes."
    She reached into the back and dug around until she found an old gym towel. I 
hadn't the heart to tell her how many months it had languished in my gym locker, 
soaked in stale perspiration, until I threw it at the locker door one day and it 
stuck to it like a piece of cooked spaghetti. I think I washed it since then, 
but who could remember things like that.
    She toweled off her long auburn hair, like a goddess stepping out of the 
shower after a marathon love-making session. At least, that's what I imagined. 
Jennifer and I hadn't got that far when we were so rudely interrupted by my 
caustic immaturity.
    "You look like a hippy," I offered.
"I prefer the term 'flower child'." She continued to dry her
hair, which had been partially covered by her jacket hood. She looked out at the 
scenery. I glanced over and saw a mole just below her lower lip. She reminded me 
of Anne Francis, a gorgeous blonde on TV, I'd had a crush on. She had a mole, 
too.
    "There's not much to look at in Missouri," I ventured forth, feeling guilty 
for not being better company. 
    "Look," she sighed, turning to face me, "I don't want to go into my whole 
life story, just because you gave me a ride. Not that I don't appreciate it, I 
do. It's just that…"
    "Forget it," I whined, a little too indignantly, immediately feeling bad. 
"Sorry, my girlfriend broke up with me this week. I'm in a rotten mood."
    "You shouldn't let someone else dictate your life."
    I looked over at her and tipped my head a little, my standard look of 
disbelief.
    "All right," slipped out of her mouth, as she gave up on conversation and 
rested her head back against the seat. She closed her eyes.
    Stirring from sleep an hour later, she sat up groggily. I had enjoyed watching 
her sleep for that hour, even entertaining a fantasy or two about her. 
I wished she was at my school and she was my girlfriend.
    "I'm too old for you," she said, more awake than I figured.
    "I'm eighteen," I replied defensively.
    "I'm twenty. That makes me much older than you." 
    I gave her my tipped head look again.
    "I'll admit you're cute, in a goofy sort of way. Mind you I wouldn't go out 
with you, but maybe a younger sister, if I had one."
    "We don't even know each other and already you're breaking up with me," I 
complained.
    "Yeah, but you were thinking about me weren't you?"
    I blinked. That was my answer. I had absolutely no ability at lying so I 
stared ahead, always the careful driver.
    "It's okay. You're a guy. Eighteen-year-old-guys are hornier than a barnyard 
owl."
    "How much is that?" I queried.
    "Pretty damn much!" she laughed and I couldn't help cracking a smile.
    "I bet that hurts," she said, acting motherly all of a sudden, catching me 
off guard.
    "What?"
    "When you make that weird face. I think some people call it a smile," she 
teased. 
     I responded by shaking my head.
    "You liked it, admit it," she smiled and her mole turned upward a little, 
following her mouth. Her teeth were beautiful. I noticed things like that.
    "Yeah, yeah," I said, as matter-of-factly as I could, although I didn't feel as 
calm as I acted. 
    "I used to like sad men. I don't any more." Gone was her smile, replaced by 
a forlorn expression I hadn't seen before.
    "I'm not sad. I'll get over it," I defended, although I didn't have any 
conviction in the statement.
    "It's your life. I just think it's silly to spend all your time regretting."
    "A week isn't a lifetime."
    "But you see, it is. That's the whole point. A week turns into a lifetime. 
Then, you look in the mirror and your life is almost over and you realize you've 
been feeling sad your whole life, missing out on important things in the 
process."
    She sounded like my mother, just then, saying something only my mother would 
say. I pulled the car over on the shoulder and stopped. I began to cry.
    She didn't say anything, just rubbed my back and neck and shoulders while I 
let out five years of pain, pain at knowing my mother was gone forever and I was 
alone in the world. She handed me the old gym towel and I laughed, while still 
crying.
    "What's so funny?" she asked, looking at me like I was keeping a secret from 
her she ought to know.
    "Nothing," I answered, while sniffing as the torrent subsided.
    "Just breathe," she coached, making exaggerated breathing motions as if 
teaching me.
    I laughed again at her seriousness. She feigned insult by pulling her hair 
back and making a disapproving noise. But I knew she was pretending, and she 
knew I knew. 
    "You are much older than me," I said, as complimentarily as possible, emphasizing 
the 'are', as if it were some great revelation from ancient Egypt 
that I'd discovered single-handedly. I pulled back into the road.
    We didn't speak much after that, not because we didn't want to, but because 
we were comfortable in our silent bonding, our comfortable cocoon of mutual 
respect. God knows I didn't respect women, only chased after them as objects of 
lust and fantasy. I learned from Kat, that that was not good enough. 
    As I pulled up to a bus station, she knew what I was doing; making her take 
a bus so she wouldn't have to hitchhike. There were a lot of perverts out there. 
She meant something to me now and I intended to do some little something to keep 
her safer. 
    "Write to me at school, okay?" I asked, choking up a little.
    "I had a brother. He died when I was ten. He would be just like you if he'd 
lived. I'm sure of it."
    She touched my cheek gently where a single tear had begun to creep slowly 
downward, then slipped away, clutching her bag and a scrunched up piece of paper 
with my school address on it. 
    I watched as she took a seat near the window and looked out at me, staring 
at her long gone brother. Then, the bus pulled away, churning up the gravel on 
the roadside until I could no longer see it, but only smell the strong fumes of 
gas, which hovered like an invisible mist.
    It started to rain again.
     
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