The Weight of Rain by Mariah Dietz

hands into the pocket of my sweatshirt as I smile at her with assurance. “I don’t mind, but some people probably wouldn’t appreciate the question.” I kick a small rock with the toe of my shoe and watch as it sails a few feet in front of us and rolls to the side of the road. “My dad owns a cattle ranch, so money has always been kind of tight. Farming has changed a lot over the years.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “There’s a lot of competition now. People like my dad who own their own farms are being forced to lower their prices because there are so many commercially owned farms now. It makes things really hard for the smaller guys.”
    “Do you want to own a farm someday?”
    I shake my head and turn my face skyward, allowing a few cold drops to splash across my cheeks and forehead. “No I don’t.”
    “What do you want to be?”
    My hand slides up to readjust the hood of my sweatshirt and then falls back into my pocket as Mercedes and I skirt around another large puddle. “I want to do something with art. That’s what I’m going to school for.”
    “What kind of art?”
    “Ideally”—I look over to Mercedes, catching the way her attention is rapt for the first time, truly interested in my words—“I would like to become an independent artist and sell my work to galleries.”
    “Is that hard to do?”
    My eyebrows rise and my chin tilts as her question brings forth memories of my dad and the countless times I’ve heard him tell me that art is a hobby, not a career.
    “It’s difficult to break into the circle.”
    “So what are you going to do if you fail?”
    The word fail has the temperature of the air lowering as it coats my throat. “I guess we’ll see.” I don’t chance looking over at her when she doesn’t respond. Regardless of her expression, I am pretty certain I don’t want to see it.
    “Our bus will be here in just a few minutes,” I say, tracing the time schedule on the wall of the small enclosure.
    “So you ride this every day?”
    “Yup.”
    Mercedes keeps her hands shoved in her pockets and her face down as we wait along with a couple of guys who look to be in high school and whom I dutifully ignore, positioning my body between them and her.
    “They were checking you out,” Mercedes hisses as we find a couple of empty seats across from each other on the warm bus.
    “They were just talking.”
    “They were checking you out.”
    I pull off my hood and tighten my ponytail, ignoring her comment as the bus moves forward. She doesn’t mind. She moves her attention to the other passengers, sometimes staring too long at a person, bringing their attention to her. When this happens, she doesn’t look away. She keeps their gaze, and I watch as each person who meets her stare, smiles. It’s as though the gesture is inescapable. Today Mercedes’ long hair is once again winding down her back, dark as coal. Her skin is becoming a lighter shade of olive as we spend more and more time inside with the rain becoming a constant. It’s her eyes though that catch everyone off guard, with the clarity and rare color that is such a stark contrast against her dark complexion.
    “You’re staring again. It’s weird.” I blink a few times to stop focusing on details and take in her expression. When I attended my first art class that Nell signed me up for when I was ten, the teacher came over to me. Her hair was wiry and gray, falling to the small of her back, and she always smelled of coffee and stale cigarette smoke. Her voice was gravelly and her eyes were coated with too many shades of blue eye shadow, but there was something I innately liked about her, and when she leaned beside me and said, “You have the attentiveness of a true artist. I can see it in the way you watch people , ” I felt like she understood me.
    “I want to go to the mall first,” Mercedes says, looking out the bus window.
    “What do you want at the mall?”
    She shrugs and turns to look back to me. “Whatever