Ava and Drew’s Rainbow Walk

“Drew, come quick!” Ava called. “There’s a rainbow, but the trees are hiding it from you!”

Drew hurried across the park’s damp grass, his little rain boots making quiet squishes. Ava stood beside the playground, pointing past a row of tall maples. Between two branches, a bright stripe of red curved across the sky.

“I see red!” Drew said. “Where’s the rest?”

“It’s there,” Ava promised. “We just need to find a place where the trees aren’t in the way.”

Their mom was with them in the park, walking close by as they explored. The shower had passed only a few minutes earlier. Drops clung to the leaves, and the paths smelled like wet earth. Above the treetops, the clouds were beginning to part. Sunlight shone through water droplets in the air, making the rainbow. Ava knew its colors came in order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. She wanted Drew to see every one.

“Let’s take this path,” she said, choosing the narrow trail that curved between the maples.

They walked beneath branches that crossed overhead like a leafy roof. Drew looked up. “I see a little orange!”

Then the path bent, and a thick trunk stood right in front of them. Ava stepped around it. More branches filled the view.

“Maybe the rainbow moved,” Drew said.

“It didn’t,” Ava said, though she couldn’t see it now either. “We’ll try the next path.”

The next path looked almost exactly like the first: brown dirt, scattered leaves, and trees on both sides. Ava chose it with a confident nod. They followed it past a bench and around a patch of ferns. When they reached a gap between the trunks, Drew stretched up on his toes.

“Branches again,” he said.

Ava looked from one trail to another. The paths seemed to twist around the same trees, and each one led to another leafy wall. The rainbow would not wait forever. Its colors were already less bright than before.

Drew slipped his hand into hers. “Can we still find it?”

Ava squeezed his hand. She didn’t know which path to try next, but she wasn’t ready to give up. She glanced toward the pond, where raindrops made small rings on the water, and began to think of the park map in her mind.

Ava pictured the park as she had seen it from the entrance: the playground, the pond, the trees, and the wide picnic lawn beside the water.

“Wait,” she said. “There’s an open lawn by the pond. No trees in the way!”

Drew turned toward the water. “Can we get there?”

“Yes. We don’t have to keep going through the trees. We can follow the path around them.”

Ava looked for the broad walkway that curved along the edge of the tree line. She spotted it beyond the ferns, where the path opened into a sunny strip of grass. It was not the shortest-looking way, but it went around the branches instead of deeper beneath them.

“This way,” she said. “Stay close, and we’ll follow the curve.”

Their mom stayed nearby as they walked beside the trees. The path dipped around a muddy spot, and Ava guided Drew over a flat stone. A robin hopped ahead of them, then flew to a low fence. Drew waved hello. The trees still crowded the path on their left, but on their right, the view grew wider.

At last, the walkway curved past the pond. Beyond it lay the picnic lawn, open and green, with a red picnic table near the far edge. Ava and Drew stepped onto the grass together.

“There!” Ava pointed.

The rainbow stretched across the sky, clear from one end to the other. Drew’s mouth made a small round O. Red rested along the top of the arch, then orange and yellow. Green followed, then blue, with violet at the bottom.

“I can see all the colors!” he said. He pointed carefully, as if counting treasures. “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.”

“That’s the order,” Ava said. “You found them!”

“I found them with you.”

They stood on the lawn and watched. The pond held a wobbly reflection of the clouds, but the rainbow stayed high above it. A breeze moved through the grass. The colors grew paler, one by one, until the violet was hard to pick out.

Drew leaned against Ava’s arm. “I’m glad you remembered the lawn.”

“Me too,” she said. “And I’m glad we kept looking.”

When the last colors began to fade, Ava took Drew’s hand again. With their mom beside them, they turned from the pond and followed the curving path toward the park gate.

The walk home was quieter than the walk through the park. Their boots made soft taps on the sidewalk, and little drops of water shook from the bushes whenever the breeze brushed past.

Drew held Ava’s hand as their mom walked with them. He looked back once, toward the trees, but the rainbow was no longer visible from the street.

“Which color did you like best?” Ava asked.

“Green,” Drew said. “It was in the middle, like a bridge made just for the sky.”

Ava smiled. “I liked the orange. It looked like a bright little stripe between red and yellow.”

Drew thought about that as they passed the neighborhood garden. A sparrow rustled among the wet leaves. At the corner, their mom stopped with them at the crosswalk. She held their hands, and they all looked both ways. They waited for a car to pass and checked again. When the road was clear, Mom led them across together.

“Do rainbows always come after rain?” Drew asked.

“Not always,” Ava said. “But a rainbow can appear when sunlight shines through water droplets in the air. The shower left lots of tiny drops for the sunlight to pass through.”

“So the sky made it for us?”

“Maybe the sky made it,” Ava said. “And we found a good place to see it.”

When they reached home, their mom opened the door and helped them leave their damp boots by the mat. Drew told her about the paths that led to branches, and how Ava remembered the picnic lawn by the pond. He used his fingers to count the colors again, getting to violet with a proud little nod.

After dinner, Ava and Drew sat by the window while the clouds moved slowly beyond the rooftops. There was no rainbow now, only a clear patch of evening sky. Drew rested his head against Ava’s shoulder.

“Next time it rains,” he murmured, “we can look from the lawn first.”

“And if we can’t see it there?” Ava asked.

“We’ll find another way.”

Ava tucked a blanket around them both. As Drew pictured the rainbow’s wide curve above the pond and its green band near the center, sleep began to creep in. Ava stayed beside him, listening to the house settle into its nighttime quiet, while the day’s last raindrops dried on the leaves outside.