Lightning in an Orange Sky

Mabel sat on her porch watching the storm clouds gather, their undersides painted that peculiar shade of orange that always reminded her of the summer she turned twelve. That was the year everything changed—though she hadn't known it then.

She'd won that goldfish at the carnival, a pathetic creature swimming in circles inside a tiny glass bowl. Her mother had sighed, "Another mouth to feed," but Mabel had named him Sparky anyway.

Then came the lightning storm—the kind that makes the hair stand up on your arms and the air taste like ozone. Mabel had huddled by the window, watching the sky crack open, when she saw Ruthie from next door running across the yard in her bare feet, clutching something wrapped in newspaper.

"My mother's making me get rid of them," Ruthie had panted, thrusting a bundle toward Mabel. "You take them."

Inside the newspaper were three tiny goldfish. They'd spent the rest of that stormy afternoon sitting on Mabel's bed, watching four fish swim together, eating orange slices from Mabel's pocket and pretending the thunder was applause for their secret friendship.

That had been sixty-three years ago. Ruthie was gone now, lost to cancer last autumn, but the friendship had never really ended. Mabel looked at the photograph on her end table—young girls in matching orange sweaters, arms linked, faces bright with possibility.

Some bonds are like that, Mabel reflected. They don't break just because the other person isn't there anymore. Love doesn't disappear; it just changes form, like water to steam, still present even when you can't see it.

The first raindrops began to fall, and Mabel smiled. Somewhere, somehow, she suspected Ruthie was still saving orange slices for her, still laughing at thunderstorms, still being the friend who had shown her that the best things in life aren't things at all.

They're the people who swim beside you through every kind of weather.