I sprint off the chatter- filled school bus, and quickly run up my wooden porch steps, shedding my red backpack as soon as I run through the front door. The jostle of my books hitting the floor echoes, as I skip back outside to the meadow in my backyard. Twirling through the long yellow grasses, I run my fingers along the stalks, laughing with the sun’s rays. I fall into lightly moist grass when dizziness crowds my mind, my dark locks of hair splaying around my head. Still giggling from euphoria, I look up into the fluffy white clouds that glide across the blue globe. Off in the near distance, I hear a soft rustle, and yell out, “I know you’re there Alex.” He appears seconds later through the orange hued foliage, smiling.
“So, how was your day of school Blu?” he asks, as he does every day.
“Boring,” I reply; it’s my automatic reply, but I always go into details right after. “Today, my teacher taught us addition and subtraction with double digit numbers.”
“I learned that yesterday,” he says trying to outdo me. “Now I’m learning addition with three numbers! First grade is really fun, but I feel so old now. My mom said I am becoming more responsible.” He says with pride and looks at the clouds along with me, as we relate our daily school adventures.
“It sure is fun! I know what you mean; we’re not kindergarteners anymore, and in a couple months, we’ll be second graders! I’m so excited. I hope Mrs. Gonzales is my teacher, because my friend Emily said she’s really nice and gives out stickers, and she likes country music, like you and I both do.”
“Do you think we’ll always be friends, Blu?” He asks quietly, as if he’s nervous for my reply.
“Well, why wouldn’t we? I mean, we’ve been friends from the moment I saw you crying at the end of your driveway, your head down, and I asked you to dance in the fresh rain puddles with me.”
Alex smiles at the memory. “You and your red polka-dot rain boots, because red’s your favorite color. I remember you told me that that the previous night’s rain left enough water in the streets, and I didn’t need to create more.”
We’re both grinning at the boldness I had, even back then when I was two and a half years old. “And then I grabbed your hand, and pulled you into the nearest puddle.”
“You know, you never asked me why I was crying, and I liked that. You just splashed me into life.”
I laugh, gazing back into the sky. “You ask if we’ll always be friends, as if we could just stop.” I focus on the cloud to my left. “Hey, Alex, look at that cloud,” I say pointing. “It looks like a duck.”
“A duck? You’re crazy; it’s a lemon tree, like the one in my grandpa’s backyard, the one we climbed last week against all the sharp thorns, just for the sake of picking the lemons off the top. See the branches?” He paints the tree’s branches with his long sun- tanned fingers, and makes circular finger motions for the lemons.
“It’s most definitely a duck,” I say pointing to the short wings, the thin legs, and the pointed beak.
“Sure, sure,” he says laughing beside me. I can feel his laughter vibrating through the grass beneath us, and I can’t help but catch his contagious smiles.
Everything turns quiet then, the birds in the surrounding trees stop their chirping melody, the wind stops whispering, and the crickets silence their ringing chorus. Alex and I lay in a comfortable silence, basking under the duck and lemon tree shaped clouds.
