Rebecca Nestor double majored in Psychology and Creative writing at Southwestern Oregon Community College. She has a passion for creating stories that are deeply personal, yet entirely relatable. Her work has appeared in Red Weather Literary Journal and LEVITATE Literary Magazine.
The Will of the Rain
The dessert has a way of becoming a part of one’s very existence. The sun settles in your bones and claims your flesh as synonymous with the wind and sand. It was suffocating at first, but eventually my body conceded, and it even became euphoric. Pheonix had a way of pausing time in more ways than one. The Lonely cacti serve the perfect testament to this, waiting patiently for months for the monsoon rains to come. Every summer, I watched the dust and pollution settle in the crevices of the sidewalks and buildings in the city. This always made the first rain of the season smell like freshly unwrapped clay.
The first time I saw an Arizona sunset was when I had just moved to the city from a small town in Oregon. I had been out drinking and trying to give the big city life a try. I stumbled outside for a smoke and watched the entire sky bled. It was brilliant, and artistic, as if someone had carelessly painted it in hues of purple, pink, and gold. I stood watching it for what seemed like hours before I decided to walk home. On every street corner was another apartment complex. I could smell the chlorinated pools and laundry soap seeping from behind these gated communities. The heat seemed to magnify every scent to a degree that I had never experienced in Oregon. Perhaps my heightened senses are why everything felt more real in the dessert. It was as if everything had been a dream until that point.
I was still drunk by the time I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I dug through my pocket for my key and slumped on my futon in the living room. My new home was empty and bare. The only furniture I owned besides the futon, was an old tv missing the remote and a dresser. The tv sat on top of the dresser a few feet from me. Too drunk to move, I fell asleep staring at the black screen. That night I dreamt of the Oregon coast, a place I had called home for almost ten years. I was back at Bastendorff beach. The sand was cool and pleasant between my toes, but there were dark clouds on the horizon and the waves were getting more and more treacherous. I saw the wave in the distance. It was gaining speed and size too quickly. Behind me grew a massive rock wall too high to scale. There was nowhere to run. The ocean swallowed me whole and I drifted amongst the seaweed. My limbs felt too heavy to move and I knew I would soon drown. On the surface was something white, hot, and blinding but I couldn’t quite reach it. I gasped in salty water and choked. My throat was so dry. The salt made me so thirsty.
I woke to my throat feeling like sandpaper and my head throbbing. I staggered to the kitchen to fill my palms with tap water from the sink. I choked it down, coughing when the slight hint of rust reached my tongue. I rubbed my wet hands on my face, hoping it would cool me as it evaporated. The water hit my empty stomach like a ton of bricks and it cramped and heaved the cold water back into the sink. I felt like shit. I needed food, but I knew the cupboards were bare. I would have to walk to the local store. It was a beautiful day for a walk, hell, In Arizona it was always a beautiful day for a walk, but on the way I found myself wishing for rain I knew wouldn’t come.
The heat played tricks on my mind as it rose from the sidewalk and created the illusion of waves in the air and puddles in the distance that would always turn out to be more of the same cracked sidewalk. Along the way I saw numerous dead birds, downed by pure exhaustion. Dead animals in large numbers always reminded me of the Biology class I took in Oregon. One morning my teacher had opened a heavy metal door that lead outside, only to discover a sickening amount of squished tree frogs lining the door frame. I watched him scrape one of them off the door frame with a ruler and fling its corpse at a student that was talking during the lecture. I had been so deeply disturbed by it that I remained on my best behavior for the rest of the school year. I studied hard, but soon discovered that it wasn’t necessary to pass the tests. Mr. Shank had designed each test with a hidden pattern and to pass each test, one simply had to figure out the pattern. I found myself admiring how clever and analytical he had to be to come up with that. It was in his science class that I learned two things that weren’t on the curriculum, one being that there is a fine line between crazy and genius, and two that to be able to discover the patterns, I must be toeing that same line as Mr. Shank.
I finally reached the air-conditioned store and grabbed some granola bars, oranges, and a few bottled waters. I opened my wallet to pay. I was down to my last two hundred dollars, but rent was paid for the next month. I asked for an application before leaving. I paused outside the grocery store doors to break the seal on my water and take a big drink. Water spilled over the bottle lip onto my dry hands, leaving clean trails where copper colored dust had been. A clean slate. That was all I had wanted from this move. Part of me hoped that I wouldn’t settle like dust on this restless city. Part of me still hopes to carry the will of the monsoon rain that can carve rocks and wash away the past.