When The Dry Spell Ends or: The Myth of Maggie

I first met Maggie in the summer before high school. I was schlepping across the quad, leaving my mother to buy textbooks and uniforms in my place as I went to check the thing I dreaded the most… my first ever class schedule. 

Knowing this was severely make-or-break only added to the pubescent anxiety, and the black clothing meant to shield me from the perception of my peers was working against me in the sweatiest way possible. Deep in my own thoughts and fears, I was not paying very close attention to others.

Enter: Maggie. 

The drought had dried up the pool that summer, and Maggie was the captain of the swim team. She thought she’d try something new that year, and hadn’t decided what yet when she showed up to sign up for extra curriculars. Being that she was already dare-devilishly spontaneous, Maggie decided to give each a try and see which she liked the most right then and there. Eventually, cross country was next on her list and as she made her way around the office building corner and down the center of the quad, I could not see her coming. I made my way to cross in front of her.

After she collided with my shoulder, bystanders would swear up and down that I got a few feet in the air for years. Though this was true, and though she knocked me down harder than a linebacker, she felt horrible. We got to talking after that, I learned I would see her in class, and we became fast friends.

I watched her rich brown hair turn to honey in that dry heat every summer afterward. She grew taller, got better at running. Always adventurous, one step ahead, boiling over with fun, and eager for something more. I like to think she was running toward it. I was set to go off to Medical School post senior year, while she was off training with an olympic dream. 

Homecoming Sophomore year, she was my first kiss. She told me I stepped on her feet, yet still somehow managed to sweep her off of them. She was the first girl to say she loved me. Junior year, her mother died. Her father was inconsolable, and she stayed on our living room couch for months. In retrospect, I admire her even more for making it through the dark moments, for she never stopped offering to contribute to our household. Nor did she stop training for her college track scholarship, which she maintained all perfect grades for as well. Adults are rarely this determined, let alone teenagers. Day after day in the scorching concrete heat, chasing after something like a bat out of hell because that’s all you have to escape.

We still hadn’t seen rain those three years later- senior year. Maggie picked me up one summer afternoon, knowing it was one of the last we had together. The wind was hot, like a blow dryer left on high. The floor of her car was always covered in red dust from running on the track or up and down the dirt roads. She’d been preferring to run out in the country instead of staying in the neighborhoods. There was more clean air and considerably less people, and according to her, that was ideal (though I still find this to be the case). The nature was very far from scenic, as it had been devoid of rain for years- most of it too brittle to even withstand the gentle breeze. One could say it lent itself to being quite ominous, even.

“How refreshing,” she would say, “to be away from the place where everyone knows your name!” Being under a small-town lens never worked for her or me, the both of us too pure for the toxic suburban venom cultivated in our peers. Maggie craved the clarity the meadows and hills gave her, and often found herself looking forward to the time of day when she was alone in nature. She knew there had not been rain for some time, yet she loved the dry, dull plants all the same. Maggie knew the beauty in being different; she knew how to nourish when someone felt withered. 

We rambled about school and classmates, teachers we would miss (and the ones we wished misfortune on). She would laugh with a toothy grin, her cheeks apple red. The evening began to roll in, turning the sky a beautiful reddish purple. Golden sun seemed to gently cup her face, as if to say “this is the most brilliant young woman in the world, never let her go”. Still, the warm air gently blew around us through her car windows as we pulled up to a clearing- a hillside lookout. Again, anxious teenage thoughts raced through my mind and I perspired at an alarming rate. 

Why did she bring me here? Does she want to mess around? Do I smell good enough for that? 

Surely, I did not. Maggie and I wandered over to the lookout, where a wooden bench faced the view beautifully. Fine, red dirt kicked up in the wind. She told me to sit, and then a somber look fell over her face. Instantly, my heart rate shot up to unprecedented numbers. 

“I’ve been coming here almost every day since my mom died.” Spoken slowly, deliberately. 

“Sometimes I think I took up running as an excuse to see this place so often… I could stand up here for hours- I do! Not even running, just standing and admiring. And it used to be so flush and alive! My mom took me here to talk on hard days. Every day without her has been hard… so I come back.” Maggie stares out at the hills leading into town, the origin of everything she’d loved in her life at the time. Being young always feels so high-stakes, and I can imagine she was feeling the weight of that.

She continues, “Though recently, I've been feeling lots of pain when I visit. It’s like a big reminder that the once beautiful, flourishing life I had- the perfect family, the solid life direction, so many guaranteed first steps- it’s transitioning again. This version of my life is finally dying, and soon I’ll be in another period of uncertainty. Is it normal? Sure. Is it scary? More than I can even explain. But if I have to leave this part behind, I want to leave it better than it is now. I mean, I’m half expecting a tumbleweed to pass by as we sit here.”

“So then, why are we out here- why am I here?” I spout, beside myself with nerves. Maggie raises her eyes to meet mine. They’re as fiery as ever, with a storm brewing behind them. 

To make this sad part of the story short, I’ll spare you the tiresome adolescent breakup spiel. She was leaving for move-in day across the country in a few days time, and doing this at any other time would’ve simply been poor planning on her part. No time to grieve is dangerous. And sure, I’d need time to grieve, but I’d be doing so from the sanctity of my childhood bedroom. Maggie would be in a new place with new people- though I suppose she was looking forward to this to a degree. 

She then told me (what I thought at the time was) a crazy tale. Maggie said she could make rain come to town by the time she was leaving for school. Yes. As in summoning rain from the heavens like a superhero. Of course I laughed her off, trying to gauge her reaction very carefully. Fanciful and downright science fiction, I didn’t quite know how to believe her. The nonplussed, almost pained look told me the sincerity of her claim. 

There is no correct way to react when your ex-girlfriend tells you she can summon rain in a drought like magic. Especially when she tells the truth and disappears forever, only to leave behind the most beautiful, vibrant, buzzing countryside you’d ever see. Though I am sure many have a story similar to mine, I doubt none can say their first love solved the town drought.  

The day she left for good, there were clouds and humid air. It was the perfect recipe for a summer storm and huge flash floods- and they sure came. The levee broke that year for the first time in decades, and when the next spring came, the wildlife rejoiced like never before. On my drives over to the hospital, when it’s early in the morning, I can swear I can see a teenage couple looking up at the sky out of the corner of my eye. Though I glance again, and the bench is sitting alone, facing the hills that lead to town.