Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin

Author:Emily Austin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

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My family has a home video of Eli and I talking about what we want to be when we grow up. I am eight years old in the video and I am wearing all purple. Purple pants, purple shirt, and purple socks.

I answer confidently: “An animal doctor.”

Eli’s answer is: “Grandma.”

My parents find Eli’s answer hysterical. Their laughing overtakes the audio of the video.

My dad tells my mom: “We’ll have to tell your mother he said that.”

“He just loves his grandma.” My mom chuckles.

The video flashes to a new clip of Eli and me. We’re a little older, and we’re in the backyard. The sprinkler is on. We don’t know our parents are watching, or that we’re being filmed. We’re wearing bathing suits and plastic sunglasses. Eli has one hand on his hip, and one hand holding a juice box.

I am jumping through the sprinkler. There is a rainbow in the grass under the sprinkler. I do a cartwheel over it.

“Why is there a rainbow?” Eli points. He has a little-kid lisp.

I must have learned about rainbows in school, because I reply knowledgeably.

“When sunlight goes through something like water,” I explain, “it slows it down. If it goes through it on a slant, it bends it, and that makes a rainbow.”

Eli is no longer listening. He’s picking up a rock.

“Sunlight,” I continue my lesson despite having no student, “looks like it has no color, but it actually has all the colors. White is every color. That’s why sunlight can make a rainbow. All colors are in sunlight. It refracts.”

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