The Sunlight Made Rainbows in the Water

   Everyone showed up for my funeral. Everyone wanted to see the Dead Kid.       

Mom and Dad were there, although it seemed like they were ghosts of themselves, like they were the ones who drowned. They always looked that way.

           Holly, Pat, and Christian were there, too—I didn’t expect to see them. They were swinging their feet in their plastic chairs and sipping from the black solo cups they had at the funeral home. I liked them better red. I think Holly was doodling flowers on Christian’s arm and suppressing a giggle in her hand, her nails painted with chipped, black polish. I don’t know why they were even there.

           “It’s not easy when a child dies,” The preacher drawled in his watery way, clutching a bible to his chest like a lifeline. “It’s not easy when anyone dies. What’s important is…”

           I didn’t like his voice.

           Mom sniffled routinely into a napkin, pausing, then sniffing, pausing, sniffing, and it almost sounded like machinery. She must have regretted missing my ninth birthday.

           “… as long as we keep his memory in our hearts, we keep him in our lives…”

           Dad just stood staring at my lifeless body, which was all peaceful and pale and dressed up. I hated wearing black, but they put me in it anyway. His face was set like stone and you could only see sadness in a slight wiggle of his left nostril. He handed mom another tissue.

           “… and as long as we keep him in our lives, in everything we do, we will know that…”

           There was a flash of red making its way up the aisle.

           Miss Rose.

           My dead heart could have stopped again.

           “Oh sweetie…” Miss Rose whispered over the noise of the preacher, her dark brow narrowed like always as she looked at me. I always loved her soft, worried voice. “Oh, sweetie.”

⸎

“Hi everyone, my name is Ann Rose. You can call me ‘Miss Rose.’” She said, beaming at her class of children through red painted lips. She was a tall, thin woman and had a gap between her two front teeth. “I hope we can all be good friends.”

           Kids started standing up and introducing themselves—their names, where they were from, their favorite hobbies—but I didn’t hear any of it. I was focused on the tiny leaves embroidered at the hem of Miss Rose’s long, blue skirt. The colors looked garish and loud on such an already-bright fabric, but it was interesting.

           She was staring at me.

           Abruptly, I stood, realizing it was my turn to speak. “Um, my name is David, I’m from an apartment down the street from here, and I like to eat and sleep a lot.”

           There were giggles throughout the classroom and I flushed with embarrassment. Dad had said to try to and be funny and I’d make friends.

           Miss Rose smiled. “That’s a good thing.”

           Class moved on.

But it wasn’t long before I ended up with a spitball on the back of my neck. It’s warm, slimy goo slid down my shirt and I screamed, jumping in my seat.

 “What’s going on?” Miss Rose asked, eyeing the snickering boy behind me. “David?”

           “Nothing.” I said, shifting my position so I couldn’t feel the spitball against my skin. I turned around as soon as she had her back to the class, smiling nervously at the boy behind me. Christian. “That was so gross, how’d you do that?”

           He rolled his eyes and pointed a finger gun at my head. I turned back around.

I was sitting in a blue, plastic chair, fidgeting my fingers as Miss Rose sat down across from me. She asked me to meet her for a few minutes after school. Cool, autumn breeze spilled from an open window at the far end of the classroom, and it smelled like honey.

           “So, David…” She started, smiling. Her dark hair was swept up in a bun, but pieces kept falling into her face anyway. She blew them out of her eyes. “I’ve noticed that you and the other kids don’t seem to really… get along. Is that right?”

           I nodded, but felt my face fill with shame. Maybe she saw the dead frog they had put in my lunchbox. I laughed but I don’t think it was supposed to be funny.

           She pursed her bright red lips. “Right.”

           We sat in silence for a moment and looked at the flowers she had piled on her desk. We were writing about flower petals today and she had brought some to show us. Their scent mingled with the honey breeze.

She finally spoke again.

           “Besides sleeping and eating, what do you like to do?”

           “I like to draw, sometimes, I guess.”

           “Really? You should show me.”

           “Okay.”

“That’s beautiful, David, that’s really beautiful.” Miss Rose said with narrowed brows, her hand fluttering to her mouth with every drawing I procured for her. She shook her head and beamed at me. “You’re an artist.”

           I smiled sheepishly, looking down at my folder of drawings. They were mostly just doodles of cars or people or things I saw on TV. Adults were always pretending to like what kids made, but I had never been called an ‘artist’ before.

           She pointed to a drawing of a woman wearing a long, crayon blue skirt with colorful leaves all over it. “Is that me? I embroidered that skirt.”

           “Yeah.”

           “That’s really lovely. Tell you what,” she clapped her hands together, spinning in her teacher’s chair and digging through her bag. She brought out a thin container. “These are called watercolors. You just use this brush and dab a little water to get the paint to work. Could you paint me something?”

           I nodded, feeling a smile spread across my face as I looked at the bright, round circles of color under the plastic lid.

           “And don’t be afraid to use some of my class time to draw if you want to,” she said, the gaps in her teeth showing as she smiled. She always had a hint of worry in her quiet voice, like she felt a deeper kind of sadness when she looked people in the eye. “You already do great with writing, and I want my painting!”

Classes got harder. My only solace was making Miss Rose more and more art.

           She had my drawings and paintings hung all around the classroom now, as if trying to prove my character to those who didn’t understand it through my cars and my trees. I ran out of the cheap watercolors in two weeks, and she gave me a better set. She even had my painting of red roses right on the front of her desk, under her name plaque.

           But it was like my classmates knew something about me that I didn’t.

           “You’re an idiot,” Christian said, “and you’re weird. And you always wear the same shirt and it smells.”

           I sniffed my collar. “I don’t know how to wash it.”

           “Doesn’t your mom do it?”

           “No.”

           “She should, because you smell so bad.”

           I pointed a finger gun and smiled, but he turned his head away.

“I made this for you, mom.”

           I hesitantly held up a painting of sunflowers. I traced some of the petals, but it was mostly free-handed, and Miss Rose said I should give this to my mom for Mother’s Day. I would be in Dad’s custody on that day, so I gave it to her now. The smell of McDonald’s wafted up to my nose as I held the painting out.

           She glanced down briefly, then back at her phone. “That’s great, sweetie. Looks a lot like Van Gogh.”

           I flushed. I had traced some of Van Gogh’s petals and she noticed. “Thanks.”

           Next week, it was still sitting on her car’s backseat where I had put it. It smelled like fast food.

⸎

I like to think it wasn’t the water that drowned me.

It wasn’t the sandy shore that suddenly disappeared beneath my feet, nor my mom who sat on the shore with headphones as I disappeared below the waves, thrashing. It wasn’t the colors that swirled above my head as the sunlight refracted rainbows through the water. It wasn’t any of that.

           It was Miss Rose.

           Her face was all I could see.

           As I began to breathe water I felt like a sea creature, dancing under the pull of the tide. And Miss Rose was there with me. I heard her laugh like a melody with the waves. She asked me to paint her a vase of flowers, or a glowing sunset, and talked with me as the rainbows fell to darkness. And even when it started to hurt, and my lungs were burning, and my screams sounded more and more like the sound of the water, she was smiling at me. She called me an artist.

           I don’t think I would mind if Miss Rose drowned me.