The Rain That Took Her
The rain started as a whisper against the classroom windows sometime around two o'clock, and by the time Lila Johnson stepped outside at three, it had grown into something more insistent, a steady percussion on the sidewalks of Maple Street. She pulled her jacket hood up and hugged her backpack straps tighter, already running numbers in her head the way she always did on the walk home—seven times eight, fifty-six; seven times nine, sixty-three—an old habit that made the twenty-minute trek feel shorter, more like a puzzle to solve than a distance to cross.
She was good at numbers. Good at most things, really, though she'd never say so aloud, because her mother always told her that quiet confidence was worth more than loud boasting. *Let your work speak, baby. Let them see it before they hear about it.* And so Lila kept her head down and her mouth mostly shut, and let her grades and her science fair project speak for themselves.
The project sat heavy in her thoughts now, more exciting than any math table. A working model of a water filtration system, built from plastic bottles and gravel and sand she'd gathered from the creek behind the Hendersons' place. Mrs. Patterson, her…