The rain is slowly falling.
Drip, drop, drip, drop. The cool feeling splashes beside me and crashes down on my cheeks, my arms, my feet. Today I decided to go barefoot, and sleeveless, because I like to feel the emotion behind the weather. If I'm going to go outside in a rainstorm, I want to experience everything.
My beanie is trying to slide down my head as the weight of the water pushes it down. I don't care.
I'm laying on the sidewalk with my eyes closed, feeling the pulsing of the tears falling from the clouds that drum like a heartbeat around my ears. I don't care. I've been doing this in every rainstorm since I was 5. It's me, it's who I am, I love the rain. There's something calming about feeling Earth take hold of you, leaving all control behind and flowing with the stream.
"Hey you."
I didn't move or open my eyes, I ignored the voice. No way anyone could have found me here.
"Hey, girl."
I could feel someone getting close to my face and I really don't like being close to strangers (claustrophobia) so I opened my mouth and in the most polite tone I could muster while being as annoyed as I was, I responded, "Yeeessss?" My eyes stayed closed; I would've freaked if I had actually seen the person interrupting my bubble space.
"You like the water, too?"
This sparked my attention mostly because it was the strangest thing to say. Most people say, 'Hello,' or , 'What's your name,' but this guy was starting off with a very random question -- one that didn't have anything to do with my physical appearance. In any case, I opened one eye to prevent the rain from getting inside both of them and making me go blind. This was unnecessary due to the random teenage guy hovering above my face.
"What?" I was kind of speechless, and sounded like an idiot with this one word, but hey, what can I say? I'm blonde sometimes.
"I like lying in the rain. I thought I was alone." I don't know what kind of nerves got into this kid that made him think he could just lie down next to me and I'd be alright with it, but something told me to give it a chance -- to try and say something useful and thought-provoking like I was prone to doing.
"Do you have a name?" Oh, yeah, real nice. A very literate and well-educated inquiry.
"Jonathan. You?" I hesitated. What happened if he was some kind of stalker-ish freak that followed me around and hung out with me? Wait . . . isn't that the definition of a friend?
"Cheyenne."
And so it began.
