Dancing in the Rain

Max stared at the returned social studies exam in his hands. He was leaning forward on a bench, backpack pressed against the backrest. He shivered when a chilly wind brushed his arm and made his hair stand up. It was hard to see what he had written with how little light pushed past the blanket of clouds.

He read the same paragraph of his essay over and over, scanning every element of the writing. The perfect grammar. The sloppy handwriting. The correct analysis. But of the wrong information.

He tightened his grip on the paper. He couldn’t tell if his hands were shaking from the cold or how hard he tensed his fists. He wished so hard he could crumple it. If only. He had to show it to his mother later. Other people shuffled by him in a hurry but he didn’t notice them.

A sudden spot of wetness appeared near the bottom of the paper. He had been so focused, scanning right, left, right, left, that the spot confused him. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and checked his knuckles. Dry. As it dawned on him where the water had come from, his head shot upwards, taking in the expanse of dark clouds covering the sky.

He reached for his backpack before remembering his father had told him not to bring an umbrella. A head shake followed by “You’ll live” had been the extent of their interaction that morning.

A drop hit his forehead. Max jumped up from the bench, pressed the paper against his chest, and started walking home briskly. The drop started rolling down his face, making him grimace.

Ew, he thought, as more beads of water joined the original across his body. The wind continued picking up, howling as it scurried past the trees in the park. Suddenly, as if a magician snapped his fingers, a downpour began.

Max started running. He was reaching the edge of the park when he saw something moving in the corner of his eye. He slowed down and glanced towards it. He noticed how empty the park was; everyone had fled when they noticed the looming storm. Everyone except for a boy dancing in the middle of the soccer field. The boy threw his arms towards the sky, spun around, and did cartwheels.

Squinting, Max recognized the boy as someone from his grade. He stopped walking altogether and, for a few seconds, stared through the curtain of raindrops. He chuckled to himself and continued home. Cute, he thought. What a joyous spectacle he had witnessed.

Luckily, the signal at the intersection changed from stop to go as he approached it. But he didn’t cross the street. He didn’t want to go home. What awaited him there? Getting yelled at? Another lecture? He glanced at the grade at the top of his paper, written in a fierce red and circled perfectly. He was already late and wet. What was a little more?

He turned around and hesitantly crossed the field, measuring out one step at a time. The boy glanced at him but kept dancing. The rain started letting up, reducing to an aggressive drizzle.

“Are you here to dance too?” the boy asked when Max was a few steps away. Max noticed an umbrella at the boy’s feet.

“I’m good, thank you.” The boy stopped dancing and stared at Max, one eyebrow raised.

“Why’d you come up then? I was getting excited that someone wanted to join me.”

“I—” Max started but trailed off.

Squinting, the boy changed the topic. “What’s that paper you have there? I don’t know if you noticed,” he said, looking up, “but it might get a little wet.” Max, who had forgotten he was holding the exam, clutched it harder to his chest, upset to be thinking about it again.

There was a momentary pause. The boy said, “Gimme,” then pounced at Max, hands flying for the paper. Max stepped back and smiled.

He thought the joke was over, but the boy kept charging at him. Max turned and started sprinting, crashing into the raindrops coming down from the light drizzle. He kept glancing back. The boy was fast, gaining on him. But Max was faster. He looked up at the sky and laughed as he ran. He had loved his running team and had felt torn apart when his parents took it away from him for his “low” grades.

Suddenly, a loud groan came from behind Max. He pivoted, his smile dropping. The boy was on one knee, clutching his chest, his face contorted. Max ran up to him, releasing the exam when he got close. He crouched by the boy’s side and threw an arm over his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Max asked, panic in his voice. The boy’s shoulders were rising and falling at an alarming rate. His breath was audibly shaky.

“A B+?” the boy responded in a weak voice, staring at the paper in front of him.

“Did you hear me? Are you okay?”

“How’d you do so well on the test?” Max, caught off guard, looked at the paper sitting in front of him, forgetting entirely about the boy’s pain.

“So well?” he chuckled, shaking his head. “No. It’s terrible. I spent too long on the multiple choice questions. I always do that. You’d think I’d learn by now,” he said, mostly to himself. “Do you know how much I’ll get yelled at for this? I’m a failure. A goddamn failure.” Max felt the familiar pit in his stomach. He wanted to cry. But no. He had to remember what he had been taught—that wasn’t him. Boys don’t cry. Choke down the tears like a man.

The boy reached out and hugged Max. A sudden warmth ran through him, counteracting the void in his soul and the chill from the rain. His shoulders relaxed.

Coming out of the hug, the boy grabbed Max’s hands and started shaking them around, slowly at first, then more and more vigorously. Max didn’t resist, letting his arms be thrown around. After a minute, he started moving them in the direction they were getting pulled. After a few minutes, he was laughing, adding to the dance with his own crazy movements. It was so imperfect. It irked him out, but he pushed down the feeling. When the boy released his hands, Max remembered that he had been in pain earlier.

“You didn’t answer my question. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” the boy responded, a glowing smile on his face. Even though he knew it wasn’t true, Max let the smile reassure him. “I have to get home now. But this was fun. If you ever see me in school, come up and say hi.” The boy turned to walk away, then added, “I’ll see you around.”

He walked home slowly, grunting on each step. Max took a step forward,ready to rush forward and help, but didn’t move. He stood there for a while. His hair was soaked, creating a choppy veil over his eyes, and his clothes clung to his skin. The exam was starting to rip from how wet it had gotten, the red ink in the corner of the page bleeding onto the ground. But he didn’t notice any of that. He just kept staring in the boy’s direction, a hand placed weakly on his chest.

For the next few days, Max couldn’t focus on anything but his encounter in the park. It had been a departure from the routines he followed day after day after day and got his mind branching off into the past, present, and future.

There were so many things he would usually be thinking about that didn’t even cross his mind. He didn’t think about the lesson in front of him in school. He didn’t think about the test he was taking; he hastily bubbled in answers his gut told him were correct, trying to buy himself more time to daydream. He didn’t even think about how much his mom had yelled at him for getting a B+, for coming home soaking wet, for not bringing an umbrella.

Instead, he thought about the boy. He remembered how warm the hug had been. He remembered having fun running around and dancing. Above all, he dreamed about seeing the boy in the hallway, coming up to him confidently, and introducing himself properly.

One day, Max saw the boy standing in a group of people. They were all looking at him, laughing at one of his jokes. He seemed so free, with that big smile on his face. Max felt a knot tying up in his heart. He was… jealous.

The boy peeled away from the group and started walking down the hallway. As soon as he turned away from his friends, he winced, then grimaced, his smile disappearing. He walked down the hall clutching his chest.

This was Max’s chance. He knew it was. And yet, he stood frozen, his eyes following the boy until he turned a corner. He was clutching his fists tighter than he had ever clutched them before, but didn’t follow. Coward, he told himself, the knot in his heart curling almost as tight as his fists. You’re a coward.

When a memorial was erected for the boy in the school, Max was the first to pay respects. Since his parents didn’t give him any money, he stole a rose from his mother’s bouquet standing in a vase on the kitchen table. He laid it down gently at the foot of the memorial and closed his eyes, offering a moment of silence.

The boy had died of a heart condition, the school announcement had said. Though Max didn’t know the boy’s name, he had had a feeling of who the announcement referred to. Standing in front of the memorial, he felt regret welling up inside of him.

He walked home solemnly in the pouring rain. He held his closed umbrella at his side, his gaze on the ground in front of him. He stopped at the entrance to the soccer field where he had met the boy. He turned his head, which was being pummeled by raindrops, and stared quietly, his breath speeding up.

Suddenly, much to his own surprise, he dropped his umbrella to the ground, threw his backpack down, and sprinted to the middle of the field. When he reached the center, he looked up at the sky, raised his arms as high as he could, and spun around. He laughed and laughed and laughed, then fell to the ground and cried. Tears steamed down his face as he started punching the ground, ignoring the gross squelch that accompanied each hit.

As the rain lightened up, he looked in the direction of his backpack, in the direction of home, as he steadied himself with deep breaths. Then, very carefully, as if doing something forbidden, he stood up, walked to the edge of the field, and started jogging. Then sprinting. Then running, for the next hour, for once feeling free.