The little rusty fan on the corner of his desk squeaked as it valiantly tried to stir up some vestige of a light breeze, even just a wisp of air. He glanced at it fondly for its effort, even though all it probably did was create more heat just by running. “Least you’re trying,” he told it, patting its base. “It’s better than what I’m doing.”

He sighed and tipped his chair back, balancing on the two back legs. His paper sat on the desk in front of him, empty except for his name scrawled messily in the upper right corner. The pen was stabbed into his eraser and sitting on his window sill, slightly rain-splattered by the few drops that made it past the overhang and into his room.

He suddenly rocked forward again, slamming the chair back into an upright position. “This is stupid,” he voiced aloud, and bit his lip, running fingers through his hair and lifting it away from his neck. “I can’t do this.” It would drive him crazy if he had to stare at the paper for one more minute. His gaze fell out the window, the rain sleeting down in ridiculously straight lines perpendicular to the ground. No wind. He stood to get a better view of the ground below, dimly lit by the streetlamps in the dusk. They were mostly empty. Other people, he reflected wistfully, were sitting at home with the air conditioning on, sipping cold sodas.

Cold soda…the mental image of a shiny, colorful can misted over with condensation and larger beads of water running down the sides imposed itself on his mind so strongly that he almost reached for it. “Stupid,” he scolded himself, setting his hands down on the windowsill and knocking his pen and eraser into the street below. He stood and stared down after it blankly, then whirled, frustration etched on his face by the lines on his forehead, and crumpled the paper on his desk into a ball that quickly followed his pen out the window. Then he just leaned against the wall, forehead pressed to the window frame.

“You know what?” he told his fan after a minute of staring into space or the grey building across from him. “I might as well go outside and get a soda. I can’t work on this or my head will explode.” He reached over and turned the knob to the left. “Thanks for trying though. Maybe it’ll be cooler outside with the rain…” He turned and slipped on shoes. “Better than sitting here.”

The jerky old elevator creaked all the way down and was stiflingly hot inside. He stood in a corner and tried discreetly to flap his shirt and get some air circulation, but that only made him sweat harder.

It was no cooler in the rain. He was soaked within seconds, and instead of being just hot and sweaty, he was soaked and still hot. He pulled his hair away from his neck again and wished for an elastic as he trudged to the gas station a few blocks away. Some car driving by tore through a puddle so fast the muddy liquid sloshed up the sidewalk and soaked his pant legs quite thoroughly, and his lips tightened as he shook water and soaked bangs out of his eyes.

“Drowned Rat Invades Corner Store,” he said out loud, staring at the pavement under his feet as he stepped over each crack. “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back,” he chanted, and came to a stop outside the doors of the gas station store. He stood under the canvas overhang and wrung water out of his dripping hair, decided there was nothing he could do about the clothing, and opened the door to be met with a swirling, heavenly breeze of stale coolness. He closed his eyes blissfully, surrounded by cold, until the person behind the counter snapped, “Come in or stay out, don’t let out all the cold air!” Then he quickly stepped through and ducked behind the magazine rack, duly reprimanded and red.

The fridges were the corner, selling whipped cream, of all things, along with some cheese spread, juice, and energy drinks galore. The pop was in the corner, and he reached for the familiar green bottle that his mental image quickly hurried to replace the can with. The bottle began to form the first mists of condensation when he put it down on the counter and reached into his pockets. “Two-eighteen,” the cashier intoned, bored, returning to his magazine.

He searched around the lint in his pockets, the tissue, a twist tie, and emerged with three pennies and a dime, and a receipt for milk from a week ago. “I – ” he struggled to say around the feeling of incompetence. “Sorry, I thought I had money – ” His cheeks flushed no matter how hard he tried to will himself to stay cool and composed at the cashier’s disdainful look. “I guess I won’t be – ”

Two dollars and a nickel were dropped onto the counter over the lottery tickets. “Two-oh-five,” said the girl beside him, “two-oh-eight, two-eighteen. And I’ll take the Snapple, please. Thanks.”

He was still staring at the counter in shock when gentle hands pushed him out the door and put the cold bottle in his hand. Then he whirled, wet hair plastering itself against his cheek in a most unattractive manner. He pushed it out of the way, staring wide-eyed at the girl in khaki shorts and a tank top in dark blue – green? He couldn’t tell in the dim light. “I – ” he sputtered, ever graceful.

“What,” she said teasingly, eyes bright, “you don’t accept charity? I didn’t have to? You didn’t want to be rescued by a girl? You had it covered?”

Much to his chagrin, he kept blushing, and his tongue had suddenly swollen, because why else couldn’t he talk properly? “I – you – didn’t have to,” he said weakly. “But thank you.”

She laughed. “You’re welcome.” She twisted the top off her tea and held the bottle up. “Cheers!”

He fumbled to do the same, wincing when he almost dropped the cap and echoed her “Cheers” with a feebler one of his own.

“So,” she asked. “Why the long face? I thought you were about to cry when you realized you didn’t have any money, and you’d looked upset the moment you walked in through the door.”

A mouthful of Sprite joined the deluge of rain, and then he was hacking fizzy sugar water from his lungs for the next half minute while the girl kept apologizing. Finally he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and waved off the girl’s hands with a little grin. “I’m fine,” he mumbled, and then, with injured dignity, stated, “I was not about to cry.”

“Sorry to insult your masculinity,” she chuckled, and entered the park a block away from the gas station. He followed her in, realizing that he’d been following her as she walked for the past two minutes. She stopped at a iron park bench underneath a tree and gave him a mischievous grin.

He smiled back uncomfortably and sat down, taking a swallow of the soda and closing his eyes as the liquid coolness slid down his throat and spread cool tendrils through his chest. Another chuckle made his eyes snap open and blood rush to his cheeks. “Never seen someone take so much pleasure from a bottle of Sprite,” she said, pulling the elastics from her braids and shaking out her hair. “You must have really wanted that. What’s your name?”

“Uh…” He lowered his head, pressing the cool plastic bottle to his cheek. “Don’t laugh. It’s Rain.”

The girl laughed nonetheless and clapped her hands once. “Rain! That’s so fitting! Do you like rain?”

“Uh, sure,” he said, staring out at the sheets of rain that now poured down from the dark sky. “It’s soothing…if it doesn’t churn the ground into mud.”

“Well,” the girl said, standing abruptly and capping her drink. She set the glass bottle on the bench and stepped out from under the cover of the tree. “This is concrete, so it won’t be muddy. Come on!”

He stared at her in complete bewilderment. “What are you doing?” he said hesitantly, putting his soda down on the ground.

“Dancing in the rain, duh,” she said, and grabbed his wrist, hauling him out into the rain. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when it’s raining?”

“I don’t know how to dance!” he blurted in a panicked voice as she grabbed both of his hands.

She stuck her tongue out impishly and shrugged. “D’you think I can? Just spin or something!”

And then the next few moments were filled with no thought and only the sensation of warm rain on his face and arms and his whole world spinning around him, or he was spinning around it, and either way he thought he might go so fast he’d fly off and enter orbit around the earth as the stars watched on and the rain below continued its steady downpour…

…He came back to earth lying on his back on the wet concrete, gasping for air and squinting as rain drummed against his face and squinting eyes. “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” he wheezed, and turned his head to the side as giggling followed his words. The girl was lying on her back a few feet from him, black hair splayed across the concrete. “Do you always randomly buy strangers drinks and then go spin with them in a park in the rain in the evening?” he asked wryly.

“Nah,” she said, rolling over and sitting up. “Only when I feel like it. And when the stranger looks like he needs it. Why were you in such a horrid mood?”

“Oh. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal. English paper for our poetry section due tomorrow…couldn’t write a word,” he said, waving vaguely. “And it was way too hot to think… My poor fan doesn’t do much good no matter how hard it tries…”

“No AC, you unlucky boy?”

“One word,” he said with a half-laugh, half-grimace. “Student. But I’ll live. Bad days are inevitable.”

“You’re pretty positive,” she said, tilting her head up with her eyes closed. He couldn’t help but smile.

“I try…”

“Keep finding the little jewels in all the mud and sludge, yeah?” she said, looking over at him. “There’s always some in every puddle.” She stood and unsuccessfully tried to brush some of the water off her arms, then offered him a hand. “You should probably be getting home to that paper.”

“Oh. …Yeah.” He retrieved his soda. “I guess so…” he said reluctantly. He didn’t want to leave, he realized.

“Don’t worry,” the girl called. “There will always be more jewels. You’ll just have to look for them.”

“Yeah,” he found himself nodding, and took a few steps before turning around. “Thank you – ah…”

There was no one there. He blinked, shook his head several times, shaded his eyes with his hand to make sure it wasn’t the rain. “Um, hello?” he called, feeling foolish that he hadn’t even asked her name.

There was no one and no answer. He swallowed, mouth dry, and stepped under the tree to the park bench where the girl’s Snapple still sat there, half full. He picked it up and found an elastic looped around the wide neck of the bottle.

“Rain, rain, go away…come again some other day…”

He blinked, then smiled and tied his dripping hair back. “Okay,” he promised the empty park, and turned around for home.

A/N: "Rain, rain, go away..." That was stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Rain didn't turn out the way I had originally planned him to, but he wanted a Sprite...