Note: Strongly based off All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury.
While we're young and beautiful, living free and easy. Here without a worry, dancing in our bare feet because when the summer's done we might not be so young and beautiful. ~Unknown.
~ALL SUMMER IN A DAY~
Imagine living on a planet where rain falls continuously, except for two hours every seven years, when the sun comes out. Such is life on the planet Venus as science fiction writer Ray Bradbury imagines it. Although life on Venus is much different from that on Earth, the people he describes are the same as any of us.
"Ready?"
"Is it starting!?"
"Soon"
"Did the scientists really predict it would be today?"
"Look, look; see for yourself!"
The group of children huddled against each other like peas in a pod or a bouquet of roses. They each pushed and shoved each other for a look at the forever hidden sun.
It still rained.
It has been raining for 7 years straight without stopping; thousands and thousands of days have passed without a single shred of sunlight. With endless hurricanes and thunder upon the thousand forests. And this was just everyday life on the planet of Venus, and this was the school room of the space men and women's children who had come to the forever raining world for civilization and to live out their lives.
"Look; it's stopping, it's stopping!"
"Yes, yes!"
But Artemis Crock stood apart from these children who couldn't remember a time without rain. They were all 9 years old and probably couldn't remember a day without rain, rain and more rain. If there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night she could hear them all stirring in their sleep about the world with the flaming ball of fire appearing every morning and setting in every night. But as soon as they began to awaken from their slumber it would all be gone. As if it had never happened.
All day yesterday the children had learned and read about the orange shaped star and about how extremely hot it was. They're assignment that night was to write a short poem about the sun.
I think the sun is a flower;
That blooms for just one hour:
That was the poem Artemis had written, she read aloud to the class in her rather loud voice which didn't quite fit her cold attitude.
"There is no way you could have wrote that!" one boy outburst as he sprang from his seat. He had fiery orange hair, similar to the sun. To Artemis he looked quite attractive but that was just her secret opinion. He had soft green eyes that seemed to dance with humor every day and resembled the grass she had once known on earth. She couldn't help but find herself slightly falling for him even at this young age.
"I did" Artemis said confidently. "I did"
"Wally!" the teacher scowled.
But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.
"Where's teach?"
"She said she would be back in a second!"
"She's gonna miss it!"
They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes.
Artemis stood alone. She was a frail girl who looked as if she had been kept in a leaking garage for years till all the color from her brilliant gray eyes that were tinted blue and the red from her mouth had faded. She was like an old fashioned picture put in a dusted photo album that had turned pale, whitened away, and if she spoke it was rough and ghost like. Even her beautiful tan skin had gone much whiter. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.
"What are you looking at?" asked Wally.
Artemis said nothing in reply.
"Speak when you're spoken to." He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved only by him and nothing else.
They backed away from the girl; they would not look at her even when she was begging for attention. She felt them move away. She was the girl who, when she was tagged, stood there and blinked at them to continue reading her book about the sun. When the class sang about happiness and life her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows.
And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Gotham. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was. But Artemis remembered.
"It's like an orange," she said once, eyes closed.
"No it's not!" the children cried.
"It's like a flame," she said.
"You're lying, you don't remember!" cried the children.
But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly; she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away.
There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to Earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale slightly tan face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future.
"Get away!" The boy gave her another push. "What're you waiting for?"
Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes. A glare of hatred was evident in her eyes.
"Well, don't wait around here!" cried the boy savagely: "You won't see anything!"
Her lips moved.
"Nothing!" he cried. "It was all a joke, wasn't it?" He turned to the other children. "Nothing's happening today: Is it?"
They all blinked at him and then, understanding laughed and shook their heads. "Nothing, nothing!"
"Oh, but," Artemis whispered, her eyes helpless. "But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say, they know, the sun. . ."
"All a joke!" said the boy, and seized her roughly. "Hey, everyone, let's put her in a closet before teacher comes!"
"No," said Artemis, falling back.
They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.
"Ready everyone?" the teacher asked.
"Yes!" they cheered loudly.
"Is everyone here?"
"Yes!" the children lied.
The rain slackened still more.
They crowded to the huge door.
The rain stopped.
It was as if, in the midst of a film, concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a peaceful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting world came in to them.
The sun came out.
It was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling, into the springtime.
"Now, don't go too far," called the teacher after them. "You've only two hours, you know. You wouldn't want to get caught out!"
But they were running and turning their faces up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm iron; they were taking off their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms.
"Oh, it's better than the sunlamps, isn't it?"
"Much, much better!"
They stopped running and stood in the great jungle that covered Venus that grew and never stopped growing, tumultuously, even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of flesh-like weed, wavering, flowering this brief spring. It was the color of rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color of stones and white cheeses and ink, and it was the color of the moon.
The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them, resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hide-and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces, they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion. They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles. They ran for an hour and did not stop running.
And then-
In the midst of their running one of the girls wailed. She had long autumn colored hair and pale snow skin with light freckles dusting her face.
Everyone stopped.
The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand.
"Oh, look, look," she said trembling.
They came slowly to look at her opened palm. In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single raindrop.
She began to cry; looking at it.
They glanced quietly at the sky.
"Oh, Oh."
A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cool around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away as quickly as the rain had begun.
A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran. Lightning struck ten miles away, five miles away, a mile, a half mile. The sky darkened into midnight in a flash.
They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever.
"Will it be seven more years?"
"Yes. Seven."
Then Wally let out a small cry.
"Arty!"
"What?"
"She's still in the closet where we locked her."
"Artemis."
They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away: They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily. They could not meet each other's glances. Their faces were solemn and pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.
"Artemis"
One of the girls said quietly. "Well?..." no one moved.
"Go on" whispered the girl.
They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in the sound of the storm and thunder, lightning on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked over to the closet door slowly and stood by it.
Behind the closet door was only silence.
They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Artemis out.
The end.
~ALL SUMMER IN A DAY~
While we're young and beautiful, living free and easy. Here without a worry, dancing in our bare feet because when the summer's done we might not be so young and beautiful. ~Unknown.