Yellow Rain Jacket

She is different. Everyone knows it. From the way she walks to the way she talks to the way she dresses to the way she speaks up. From the way her bun is slightly crooked to the way her smile is brighter than the sun to the way she always wears a bright yellow rain jacket, even on the days where everybody can’t seem to even touch a sweatshirt.

I am ordinary. I am not horribly ugly or charmingly handsome. I am not stupid nor am I a genius. I am not brave, I am timid.

This is how the world works.

And on Thursdays, when schools out, she will walk home on the same route that I go on. And she will glance at me and smile and talk, and I will walk away, and she will frown and it will rain. Whenever she frowns, the clouds will rain. Like they are crying the tears that she can’t seem to muster herself.

And then the voices of the boys and girls who hang around each other in a pack will come, and I will flee, and she will stay.

And I will hear the sound of taunting. And I will hear the sound of screaming. And I will hear the sound of scissors, and the next day she will have shorter hair, all cut up and ruined like it had been through a blender.

And then her hair will grow a little longer, and on the next Thursday, I will run, she will frown, it will rain, they will come, I will flee, she will shout, and the next day her hair is a little shorter.

She still wears her smile, every week, every day. But I can see it. I can see it growing scared and fearful and hurt and angry. I can see her confidence crumbling as her hair grows shorter.

And on the second-to-last week of school, I decide to change.

“Hey,” she says, nudging me with her patch denim jacket and her torn elbow sleeve.

“Hey,” I mumble, trying to look at her electric blue eyes that make the sun seem dull.

She grins, and for some reason, the clouds seem to part and the sun starts to beam brighter.

“What do you think of Mrs. Fect?” I said after a brief moment of sunlight and silence.

She shrugged. “She’s nice and all. But I feel like…” she paused. “I feel like she hates me.”

I stopped. It all came rushing back so fast. Mrs. Fect had slapped her on the cheek so hard she had to go to the hospital. But I had blocked it out, because Mrs. Fect was my mother, even though I never told anyone, and my mother didn’t do things like slap students on the cheek.

“Oh. That-That’s not true,” I said quickly. I felt slightly dizzy as my steps rushed to catch up with her even, light ones.

“Sure it is,” she said calmly.

The clouds were growing thick and black now, the sun seeming to drown in the deep, inky blackness that consumed the sky.

“I-I don’t know your name,” I said, grabbing her wrist and forcing her to turn around.

And there they were. Tears. Big and blobby and shiny and where they didn’t belong. In her eyes. Her face. Streaming down, making her eyes red and puffy and bloodshot.

“I don’t really have one,” she said. Her voice wasn’t raspy or congested. It sounded like how she had sounded before the sky turned dark. There was this feeling of slight peace and apprehension in the sky. It scared me. It scared scared scared scared scared me.

“Oh. Oh, that’s okay,” I said. What could I do to make her feel better? To stop the tears? To bring the sun back out?

“Please. I need to go now.” There was a look of danger in her eyes, now.

“You sure you don’t want me to walk you home?” I hoped I could stall her, hope I could help her before something horrible happened.

“No thank you,” she said evenly, shaking her head ever so slightly.

I gulped. The sky was growing darker, thunder rumbling so loudly I could barely hear my own voice.

“I-Could you walk me home? I-I’m scared of storms,” I said. It was true. I could never handle the feeling of the sky cracking above me like broken glass.

“I’m sorry. Not today.”

I knew I only had at most a minute before the voices came.

“Please?” I said.

She shook her head. I knew I couldn’t do anything more. I was out of ideas.

“Oh. Okay. I guess-I guess I’ll go now.” She didn’t say anything as I left, trying not to look back.

Just as I began to walk down the hill that would separate both of us, I heard her. “Thanks, Joseph.”

And I ran. I ran toward her because I knew I knew I knew I knew that she still needed me, that I still needed her, that we still needed each other.

But I wasn’t fast enough.

I arrived. She was dead. The boys and girls who always taunted her were standing in a shocked circle around her.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” I roared. There was a knife in her heart, blood trickling down her mouth.

“It-It wasn’t us,” one of the girls said. “We swear. We didn’t do anything.”

The other kids nodded.

“She was like this when we-when we came.”

I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to believe them.

“THEN WHY IS SHE DEAD?” I shouted. The clouds were raining, harder than I had ever felt, the bullets of liquid landing on my head like a barrage of kicks.

But I knew what had happened. Her hand clutched the knife, gripping it with a strength that seemed inhuman.

“She killed herself…” one of the boys breathed.

“But…But why?” a girl stuttered, blinking hard.

They shrugged, and I felt like grabbing the knife and killing them all with it.

“It’s cause of us,” one of the taller girls said softly.

“No it’s not!” someone else exclaimed, sounding horrified beyond belief.

“Yes. It. Is,” I said through gritted teeth.

“But-we didn’t do anything!” said the same horrified voice. I heard the sound of knees collapsing on the ground.

“You tortured her. Took the joy of life and squeezed and broke and crushed it. Every single person went out their way to make her life miserable. She didn’t even have a name.”

My fingernails dug into my palm so hard I could feel blood trickling down my hand.

“I thought-I thought what I did was enough. But I was too late. Too late.”

I stared at her. The knife. The hand. The face. The eyes. The yellow rain jacket that told me everything I had done wrong.