I’m not sure why we were out there in the first place. Maybe because it hadn’t rained in months and the droplets from the charcoal-colored clouds caught us by surprise. Maybe because we’d driven two hours to get to the river and—determined to make the best of our fishing trip—decided the rain wasn’t so bad. We didn’t see the lightning.

Thunder boomed over our heads, rolling non-stop like God was talking to us, asking why a couple of teenagers were out fishing during one of those all-day, spring rainstorms. But we didn’t care. Neither did the snakes. I counted twenty cottonmouths, calling out each legless creature as they dove from the trees, slithering between the rippling waters, chasing our bobbers, trying to escape the lightning we didn’t see.

We brought a couple of frozen pizzas to cook in the cabin for when we grew hungry, but hooking bait was more important than a proper meal. I mushed on some candy corn growing soggy in my pocket instead, the mellow sweetness creamy between my teeth. After a while, we ran out of worms and had to catch grasshoppers with our bare hands. They were slow because of the rain and we were quick because of the thunder. The weather failed to chase us from those muddy banks and we felt invincible with God’s voice on our shoulders, our hair slick with precipitation, fishing rods in our arms. I don’t know why we were out there in the first place. Maybe we were bored. Maybe we were desperate. Maybe we were afraid to walk away from a memory we knew we might ache for one day. But we didn’t see the lightning.

I can’t remember how many fish we caught that day because we didn’t keep any of them. Neither of us were in the mood to filet them so we reeled them in and released their mouths from our hooks and threw them back in the river. We couldn’t believe how hungry and unafraid they were by the number of snakes swimming around. Everything, even the drought-stricken grounds, were feasting in the rainstorm. We snagged lines on hidden stumps and old tires buried in the muck and danced along the edges of the water to keep the ants off our feet. We cast our lines from every point of access and we laughed and popped squats behind oak trees and talked about how no one was going to catch as many blue gills and catfish as we were that day. We felt indestructible, like nothing could harm us. Not the snakes or the thunder that roared from the heavens. The rain was so soft and the candy corn so sweet and I don’t remember why we were there in the first place. I just remember we stayed.

And then we finally saw the lightning.

And it made everything shine so bright.

Shirley Dees received an MFA in fiction from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing in 2021. Her stories have appeared in The Bangalore Review, After Happy Hour, Bright Flash Literary, and others. When not writing, Shirley is busy parenting, reading beneath centuries-old oak trees, and volunteering in her small town. She lives in south Texas with her husband, daughter, and geriatric pet turtle.