The Name Beneath the Rain: story transcript
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The Name Beneath the Rain
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On her first morning at the new school, Juniper kept reaching for the place beside her where her old friend, Pip, used to walk. There was nobody there. She tightened her backpack straps. Perhaps, she thought, she could become somebody everybody wanted beside them.
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At the classroom door, Juniper tried being loud. "Good morning, everybody!" she called, much louder than she meant to. Several heads turned. Juniper grinned until her cheeks hurt. At her old school, Pip would have noticed the grin was work.
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During drawing time, a classmate began a joke about a pencil. Juniper tried being funny. She laughed before the ending, then laughed again when nobody else did. Her own laugh sounded strange to her. She wished she could take it back and put it away.
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At recess, a group invited Juniper to play chase across the yard. She disliked chase; it made her paws stumble and her thoughts scatter. But agreeable Juniper said, "I'd love to." She spent the whole game hoping someone would call them inside.
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By lunch, Juniper could hardly lift her sandwich. Being three different cats had taken all morning, and none of them felt much like her. Rain began tapping the tall dining-room windows. Across the table, Ash listened to it too.
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Ash, a classmate Juniper had noticed drawing quietly nearby, asked, "What do you really like doing?" Juniper looked down at her sandwich. The honest answer felt too small to carry across a table. "I make up names for rain sounds," she said.
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Ash's ears lifted. "Even that little one?" A drop slipped from the roof and struck the metal windowsill: tink. Juniper leaned closer. "That's a spoonbell," she said. Ash smiled. "What about the soft shushing against the glass?" Juniper had never named that one.
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They listened while the rain brushed the window. "Hushwhisk," Juniper suggested. Ash tried it aloud. "Hushwhisk." It fit so well that Juniper laughed without checking whether anyone else would. Then she took another bite of her sandwich. It tasted like lunch again.
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After school, Juniper walked home with a new word tucked safely in her mind. She still missed Pip terribly. She missed the familiar street and the corner where they used to wait for each other. At home, she found a sheet of paper.
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Dear Pip, she wrote, Today I met Ash. We named a sound together: hushwhisk. I wish you could hear it with us. She folded the letter beside the window. Rain moved softly over the glass, and Juniper listened long enough to hear both her friends.
