I Remember

I remember the day we couldn’t set the water coming out of the faucet on fire. That was just the start.

Little Stevie had made the find. He came out and said, “I can’t set the water on fire.” Daddy said, “What are you saying?” I looked up from my texting to see if Stevie was joking, and then texted, ‘St says water won’t catch fire’. B, S and J all sent back ‘OMG’ and shocked emojis. ‘Really’ we all texted and texted ‘LOL’.

“The water won’t catch,” Stevie said. “I’ve been trying for like five minutes.”

Daddy snorted. “You must be doing it wrong, son.” He chuckled the way he does when he’s acting superior. Without looking up from her iPad, Mom said, “Go check on it, Heath.”

“Okay,” Daddy said. “Pause the movie for me, would you?” He stood up, stretching and groaning while Mom paused the movie. I followed Daddy into the kitchen. He was instructing Steve like he was a little kid, which he is, he’s just six, but it pissed Steve off, and Steve was saying, “Give me the lighter, I’ll show you.”

“I got it, I got it,” Daddy said, holding up the lit lighter to the faucet and turning on the water. The water didn’t catch. “Huh,” Daddy said. I laughed. “Shut up,” he said. I laughed again, and texted what had happened to my friends. They all sent LOLs.

Daddy bent down to the running water. “There’s no smell.” Standing up, he yelled, “Bev, the water won’t catch fire. And it doesn’t smell.”

“What?” Mom called back.

‘Water doesn’t smell’ I texted.

Turning off the water, Daddy went into the other room with me and Stevie. “Kid is right, the water won’t catch on fire,” Daddy said.

The earth stopped shaking and the wind fell still. Daddy froze in like mid-step. I tell you, it was unnatural. Then the rain stopped. All of us looked up at the ceiling and listened. “What’s that noise?” Mom asked.

“That’s it,” Daddy said. “There isn’t any noise.”

“You’re right,” Mom said.

I texted, ‘It stopped raining’. Nobody responded. ‘Hey’ I texted.

It was so quiet. Little Stevie said, “Mama, I’m scared.” Tears sparkled in his eyes and gobbed out and down over his cheeks. He’s such a babby. He moved to Mom and held onto her legs. I wanted to do the same but I’m older. I’m supposed to be cooler. “Stop being so clingy, Steve,” Mom said. “Honestly.”

We went to the windows and looked out. The rain had stopped. Weird. Mom’s iPhone rang. “Barb,” she said, meaning, Barb, her sister. She answered it. “Barb. Yeah, it stopped here.” She said to us, “Barb said it stopped raining there, too.”

Aunt Barb was about five miles away, out in the new subdivision by the mall. She lives above a Trader Joes. It’s really cool.

Daddy’s phone rang. “Dan,” he said, meaning his friend, “Dan.”

“Hey,” Dad said into his phone. “Big D.”

Dad calls Dan Big D because he’s a little guy but he has an important job. He’s a store manager but he’s talking about going into politics. Daddy says he should. I don’t know about that. Big D means Big Douche to me.

“I was just about to call you,” Daddy said to Dan and Mom said to Barb, “And Stevie said the water won’t catch on fire. No, Heath tried, too.”

Daddy said, “It’s not raining here, either. When is the last time you remember that happening?” I checked my phone to see if anyone had texted me because it hadn’t made any noise. Mom said something else to Barb on the phone and laughed.

“Why isn’t it raining?” I asked. “It’s June. It always rains and hurricanes in June.”

“Thank you, miss obv,” Daddy said as I finished, “Well, what’s going on?” As if they would know.

Mom said, “Come on, everyone, something is wrong. We better turn the channel and see what’s going on.”

“But I’m watching Caddy Shack,” Daddy said. To Big D, he said, “Yeah, it’s the new remake. Yeah, I’m watching it again. Yeah, it’s better than the last remake. I think it’s better than the original.”

Mom said, “It’ll still be there, Heath.”

“Okay, okay,” Daddy said. “Dan says he has CNN on and there’s nothing on it.”

Mom picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. Nobody was saying anything about this. Nobody was texting me either. ‘Hello’ I texted. ‘WU@?’. Nothing. I checked my signal. Five bars. ‘WTF’ I texted. Mom was looking at her iPad and talking to Barb on her iPhone but she said to us, “I don’t see anything on the Internet, either,” like the Internet would be able to tell us anything.

Then it started raining again, and we all sighed, because it sounded normal again. Then my phone pinged. My friends started telling me what was going on. It had stopped raining at their places, too. Mom was talking to Barb and Daddy was talking to Dan, and he started watching Caddy Shack again.

I remembered it all because it was just last week, either Monday or Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, one of those, I don’t remember which. Steve came out with a flaming glass of water to show us and I could smell it clear across the room, which made me feel better.

It was good having it all back to normal, but for that one day, everything was so weird.