Every time it rained, she would lie on her back in the middle of the street. The water drenched her black hoodie and gray sweatpants until their shadows clothed her. It pooled in her sneakers and soaked her socks. But she stayed there, gazing up at the lightning, with a thousand droplets anointing her eyes and street lights sparkling on the asphalt all around her. It was as if she’d flipped the sky, so that she was floating in a sea of stars.
Her mother would stand just inside the garage and beg her to stop. There were shouted threats of lightning strikes, or worse, car wheels. Sometimes she ignored the interruption. Other times she spouted statistics. The chances of getting struck by lightning, she said, were one in 500,000. And the chances of a car driving down their edge-of-town street, she added, were even more astronomically low. Especially so late at night. Especially in the rain. There was no changing her mind. She would stay in the street until she was satisfied with her experience. Eventually, the mother would go back inside.
There was a kind of ritual to it, which grew more and more complex as the summer storms grew stronger. A spreading of the arms, embracing the sky. Some song-like vocalizations. A bow to the gutters as she stood beside the curb and let the first torrents wash over her white sneakers. The graceful lowering of self to the ground. Breathing in, breathing out.
Each flash of lightning sharpened her shadow. She never saw me. But I observed the ritual, every time. Always the same black hoodie, and gray sweatpants billowing dry, until the sails were saturated and stuck to her legs. The rain always darkened them. I thought it darkened her face, too. She gave a part of her loneliness to the rain. I saw it trickle like tears down her eyelashes.
I thought one day I might join her. But there was something sacred in it, and I feared disturbing her solitary ceremony.
The last storm of the summer was quiet. The lightning was constant, the thunder only a distant rumble miles above. But the rain fell hard. Big droplets soaked her sneakers before she even reached the street. The sky fractured like glass. No mother’s call tonight. Perhaps she had realized the futility of her protests. Only I saw the ritual change.
A closing of the eyes. A wish. A silent plea for solidarity, or change.
And the storm complied.
The melting was hardly noticeable at first. It seemed a trick of the eyes that each raindrop was taking a bit of her with it as it slid down her face. But in the tiny rivers in the asphalt, her essence ran, butter on slanted toast. It leaked out from her sleeves. The street lamp flickered, but it was too late to save her. She dissolved quietly into the starry sea. There was a murky trail of her trickling down and away. She mingled with the rainwater, shining like oil on the wet street. She poured into the gutter, slowly at first, then all at once. It swallowed her in a single slurp. Soon all that remained were her empty black hoodie and sweatpants, and white sneakers collecting the torrents like buckets.
She had been anything but a witch. I think she was just lonely.