Raindrops fall like knives, hitting the roof. It’s been coming down in sheets for days now, while Mom sobs and Dad tells her she didn’t need the job, anyway. It was just making her tired. Puddles in the yard separate me and my sister from the lake, and Dad says the last thing Mom needs is a muddy floor, so we don’t play in the puddles or go outside—and Dad says the lake’s no place to catch the lightning, when he sees us wrapping aluminum foil around a cardboard paper towel rod.

We tell him we’ll be quiet. We’ll leave our shoes by the door, but he hands us sheets of paper, and we draw the rain for hours, coming down in slants, making boxes out of horizontal lines: Mom in the kitchen, Dad with us on the other side of the house in the living room, the lightning splitting the difference, making a box of us all.

The rain slows down to something like pellets, and Mom is singing now, and the kitchen smells like it used to—with cinnamon and apples, and she says it’s pie-baking season—no matter what. A strong wind whips past me and Dad and Mom as we sit down to eat the pie, and something like drops seep into our box on the plane—but we all take a slice and call to my sister up in her room—to come down and join us. And when she doesn’t, we don’t seek her out because we don’t want to miss out, either—until the wind slams the door shut, and we realize it’s been open this entire time—and the aluminum foil rod my sister and I made is gone. But oh, the sky! Fingers of lightning likely plucked my sister up by her hair and placed her face-down on the lake, where we found her in the morning—after we’d left the dishes in the sink.

Cecilia Kennedy is a writer who taught English and Spanish in Ohio for 20 years before moving to Washington state with her family. Since 2017, she has published stories in international literary magazines and anthologies. Her work has appeared in Bright Flash, Tiny Frights, Maudlin House, Tiny Molecules, Meadowlark Review, Vast Chasm Literary Magazine, Kandisha Press, Ghost Orchid Press, and others. Follow her on X @ckennedyhola or Insta: ceciliakennedy2349