Imaginary Clouds

An imaginary friend realizes that his whole existence may not be as real as he thought. But is the bond he formed with his friend still there, even if he may not be?

Imaginary Clouds

Later on, after they told me I wasn’t real, that I didn’t exist, that’s when I knew it was over.   I’d been friends with Bobby McGruther, or as I liked to call him, just Bobert, since he was 10, maybe 11 years old.  It’s hard to really pin point the exact time since I kind of slowly appeared into his life.  I started hanging around soon after Bobert and his family moved to Mascot, Tennessee.  About 20 minutes out of Knoxville and a long plane ride away from the place Bobert called home, Jackson, New Jersey.  Emphasis on long, considering Bobert hated flying.  He had friends that played with toy airplanes when they were 3, 4 years old and, zooming them in and out of the air in front of their face, had the time of their lives.  Bobert grew up on the ground, rarely even looked up into the sky.  It was so never-ending.  If the world suddenly flipped, and everyone fell into the sky, it would be a long, long fall. He was always uncomfortable with the sky and its massiveness. When other people told him the clouds above looked like a sheep, or a turtle, he’d awkwardly put his head down towards the ground and mumble about getting home soon.  So naturally, Bobert on an airplane, even for just an hour and a half, didn’t add up very well. 

I didn’t just appear of course, it was a process.  He created me, gave me everything he could ever want in a friend, patched me together from parts of himself and parts of what he craved in himself.  Bobby was never the most popular in school, he didn’t have a lot of other friends before I came along.  Some of the girls at school would chase around Ryan Murphy during recess trying to kiss him, and in the end he would always let them win. And when the girls chased Ryan Murphy, there was plenty of room for chasing.  Mascot was flat, long, and the school yard was big, at least for the amount of kids.  The mountains in the distance didn’t do justice for just how long one could run without going uphill or downhill once.  Ryan was the kid that would come back summer after summer tanner than a leather wallet with sun dyed blonde hair and each year the girls would say he just keeps getting cuter and cuter.  He was the only boy in the grade to have had 2 girlfriends already, and had French kissed 2 or maybe even 3 girls.  Bobert envied him, so maybe that’s why in both his mind and mine, I bore a striking resemblance to Ryan Murphy. 

                Bobert wasn’t like Ryan Murphy.  He didn’t get tan, his mom wouldn’t let him outside in the hot Tennessee sun very often.  His mom would never allow hair dye, she always said it was terrible for the hair and the scalp.  Maybe it was because his mom was a little bit overbearing, I’ve seen it myself.  She didn’t want the other moms to think she didn’t care.  I understood, in a way. When Bobert was 5, back in Jackson, he was playing in his moms room while his mom was in the kitchen making lunch.  His parents were going out later that evening to a nice dinner and dancing on the town. They were young, in their mid twenties.  They hadn’t been planning on staying out very late. They were good parents, responsible.  His mom had been ironing his father’s shirt for the evening, and had left the iron on for just a few minutes while she went to go check the pasta that little Bobby would eat for dinner with the babysitter tonight.  He liked it slightly overcooked, and she spent 10 seconds too long in there. “Lady in Red” had come on the radio, by Chris De Bergh, and she swayed her hips side to side, getting lost in the song for just a minute.  She closed her eyes and put her hands in front of her, imagining her black dress red, the lights above, letting the steam from the boiling pasta envelope her face.  She heard a scream and crying from her bedroom, immediately snapping out of her trance, dropping the stirring spoon into the pot of boiling water, splashing a small amount onto her hands and even her face, burning her slightly, and ran like hell to check on her boy.  Bobby ran to her, his hands over his face, tears streaming down his cheeks.  She took one glance at the hot iron on the floor of her room, burning the carpet and broke down next to Bobby.

                Two reconstructive surgeries and months of facial physical therapy later, Bobby was alright, but with a disfiguring scar on his right cheek that will never heal.  The kind of scar that kept his life more limited than the other kids.

                He would play, he was happy most of the time, building blocks, reading books.  He was smarter than his parents thought he would be.  But Bobby always seemed distant, always rushing home from school to get home to the safety of his parents, never reaching out to make friends, perhaps because nobody ever really reached out to him.  In the beginning, nobody really minded that I was around.

“Well, in a way, Bobby has kind of made a friend, right?”

 His dad had said that, one night a few days after I had first hung out with Bobby. I was getting some milk in the kitchen, and I guess he just hadn’t noticed me, even though I was kind of tall, like Ryan Murphy.  Come to think of it, they hardly ever really noticed me.  His mom had shook her head at her husband’s comment that night with a concerned look on her face.  She looked stressed, and I always wondered why she seemed so confused by me and Bobert being friends, I mean, he never really had friends before, so how could this make his parents nervous?

Bobby was playing with matchbox cars when I first met him.  But it wasn’t like we needed to meet; it was like we were already friends.  I don’t remember how I got into his room, I just remember leaning down next to him and clicking one of the matchbox tracks into place, linking it together to complete the track so he could put the car in. 

                “Thanks…” 

                He looked at me, as if to ask my name, and then realized it was probably up to him to find me a name.  I hardly even noticed the scar running from his eye down his cheek into his chin.  I’m not sure why I hardly noticed it, it was exactly the kind of thing people noticed immediately. The kind of scar that little kids without censors in their brains ask their parents far too loud what is wrong with that boy.  The skin was raised at points, and shrunk into his face in other spots.  It was reddish, and white, and as noticeable as the one apple in the whole bunch of freshly picked bright red ones, completely brown, eaten out by worms and oxygen, destroyed by nature, the very thing that brought it there. It looked like it would be hot to the touch, years and years after the steaming metal had melted off his once smooth peach fuzzy cheek. 

“David... Pass me that red car, David.”  He spoke softly this time, as if trying out the name David with hesitation, leaving it up in the air for interpretation, then grabbing it and bringing it back down, seeming satisfied to the point of using it again at the end of his sentence.  I looked him straight into the eyes, my head bent slightly with a reassuring half smile. Not straight into the eyes with peripherals on his scar, but endearingly straight into his eyes.  I didn’t care about the scar, I didn’t care that he never looked at the sky, the same place in which the iron had seemed to fall from when he was just a boy.  I just cared that I had entered his life, bound as friends, one of us more human than the other, but in a way, both of us as imaginary as the other.

“You watching, David?” Bobert placed the red car on the track, and focused with scorching precision as he stared down the ramp, his hand still holding the car, one eye closed, a bead of sweat forming in the crease on his forehead.

“Yea, I’m watchin, Bobert.”  He let the car go a few tense seconds later and it slid down the inclined track at what seemed like a million miles per hour.  It whizzed straight underneath a chair and built speed for the jump it was about to take.  It rolled off of the jump at dazzling speed and flew through the air, high up toward the ceiling of Bobert’s room.  It passed the poster on the wall of Ken Griffey Jr.  swinging at a fast ball, and smashed into the wall, narrowly missing the window next to the cupboard with his old comic books in them.  Bobert looked at me with a gnarled smile, his surgeries taking away his ability to move the right side of his face more than slightly.  I smiled back, again looking into his eyes, and waited for him to laugh before I did.  He bellowed with laughter at the car on the floor across the room, one of the wheels broken off and probably flown underneath his bed in the crash. He turned onto his side on the ground, and grabbed my midsection as I yelled out in laughter, wrestling me onto the floor, sides splitting from the giggles we couldn’t hide. We wrestled and laughed for what felt like hours, his mom poking in every now and then to check on us.  He always seemed to win our wrestling matches.

“Hey buddy, you have fun with your cars?”  She would yell from the kitchen first.

“I’m having fun with David, Mom!!” Bobert would yell back as best he could, considering hardly any air was in his lungs from the wrestling and the laughing.  She would walk over, wet dish and rag in her hand, perplexed look on her face, taking a quick peek into the room, to the left, to the right.  Sometimes she would even look straight at me, and I’d give her a nice smile.  She never seemed to wave, or say hi to me, but I always thought it was easier that way.  Sometimes Bobert would ask her to wave at me, and she would, but it would never really feel like she was looking right at me.  Maybe she was a little cross eyed. 

                Bobert and I played together in his room for years.  We went pretty much everywhere together, even school.  School wasn’t as fun though, there weren’t any desks for me and I had to sit down next to Bobert’s desk and draw funny notes with him.  None of the other kids ever really talked to me, except when they would make fun of Bobert and me for being friends.  Nobody ever really noticed that I looked exactly like Ryan Murphy either.  Not even Ryan Murphy.  Me and Bobert got in trouble at school every now and then.  I once threw a piece of chalk at the teacher when she wasn’t looking, and the teacher blamed it on Bobert.

                “BOBBY, you admit that you threw this chalk at me or you will go straight to the Principals office!!  Every other student in class saw you throw it. I am NOT happy about this, and I am NOT happy about you lying about it saying it was your friend David.”

                I tried to tell her that it was me that threw the chalk, but nobody listened.  Bobert was sent home from school after his detention, and I followed him, crying the whole time.  I always regretted the things I did, but when Bobert got blamed for them, I always felt like dying. 

We would always get home, make a peanut butter and banana sandwich, one for him, none for me, I never really seemed to get hungry, go to his room, and have the time of our lives in there.  We would make forts out of his dark green sheets, pretending we were in the jungles of the Nile.  He would lead the exploration while I would follow. We would look at the trucks outside parked on the street, and pretend that the confederate flags on the windows were targets that we had to shoot with our machine guns inside.  Bobert was always a better shot than me.  We would look out onto the mountains in the distance of the flat town, wondering what was up there, Bobert always careful not to look too far up at the sky as he scaled the lower parts of the mountain with his eyes then changed the subject to video games or what to eat for dinner.  We always wrestled, and as the years went by, Bobert seemed to get stronger, while I always stayed exactly the same.  I would do bad things at school, get in fights, throw rocks, say something mean to a teacher, and Bobert would always get in trouble.  Year after year, it was always the same.  He never seemed to have any other friends, and his parents grew worried that I was still his friend, hanging around with him everywhere he went.  They never really said my name, only referring to me as “Bobby’s friend.” It had been years since we first met, at least 3, and I always knew this would be a long lasting friendship, but his parents were not thrilled about us still being best friends.

His parents made Bobby go to a doctor, they thought he and I might be getting too close, spending too much time together.  It made both me and Bobby upset, and his mom told him on the way there that I would not be allowed in the office.  Of course, I snuck in anyway, not exactly sure how, I just kind of realized I was sitting on the couch with Bobert, watching him draw a picture of Hogwarts Castle while the doctor asked him questions.

“Is David here right now, Bobby?”

“Uhh, duhh, he’s sitting right next to me.”  Bobby didn’t even look up. The answer to the question was too obvious for him to answer nicely.  The scar still affected with speaking abilities, without the right side of his mouth at 100 percent movement, his words were slightly muffled.  The doctor sat on his brown chair, squeaking every time he shifted in his seat.  He stared down at Bobert with his eyes into Bobby’s, but I could tell his peripherals directly squared on the right cheek of my friend.

“Oh, okay, may I talk to him?”

“No, only I can talk to him”

I wanted to tell the doctor that if he wanted to talk to me, I would talk to him, but I didn’t want Bobby to get upset.  So I stayed silent.  Although I was uncomfortable as they talked about me.

“How long have you been friends with David? What sort of things do you two do together? Does he ever tell you to do bad things?”

I wanted to jump in, tell him I would never tell Bobert to do bad things. Bobert was always good to me.  He gave me his baseball cards, his last bite of a sandwich; he gave me a band aid when I scraped my knee.  We were good kids, even though he seemed to be a lot older than me now as I looked at him. He had a few black hairs coming in above his upper lip, a few pimples on his forehead.  He had grown a few inches, and had put on a few pounds of fat.  Me, I still stayed exactly the same, still exactly the same as Ryan Murphy years ago, tan skin, bleach blonde hair. 

I had started to zone out when the doctor said something that I caught just barely.

“David isn’t real Bobby.  He’s imaginary.  He’s your imaginary friend, and he needs to go away before you get any older.”

I took a breath from my lungs that I knew weren’t there, out of the nose I knew didn’t exist, and closed my eyes that clearly never were eyes in the first place.  I always had a feeling I was just an imaginary friend, but I never really knew it for sure.  Bobby looked at the doctor and shook his head, unable to understand a thought like that.

For me, it all seemed to add up.  For my friend it was not so simple.  I never knew a life without Bobby, and I never really knew how I actually met him.  I only remember looking at him as he picked up the red matchbox car, staring straight into his eyes as he searched the back of his mind for a name to place on me, to create me.

We left the doctor’s office without saying a word to each other, and the car ride home was silent aside from Bobby’s dad playing “Hotel California” on repeat.  We looked at the mountains in the distance from the freeway, and I ogled the clouds as Bobby searched the grasslands for something he would never find.  I look at the clouds, something Bobert would never do, trying to figure out what they looked like.  Animals? No.  People? No. They just looked fake to me. Imaginary clouds.  Maybe tomorrow, I’d be up there, looking down on my friend, knowing he’d always be too afraid to look up at the clouds and imagine me again.

Author's Note

Still have work to do on it, possibly expanding it into a novel about the whole life of Bobert, or longer short story. Please be honest in your feelings, criticism, etc. I want to know what you think and how I can make this and all my writing better!

Reviews

[Beau-dee-loot]

The backwards logic and ideas are creative, courageous even; of course one has to entirely suspend disbelief, such that the first person voice is itself an imagining, the reader complicit in his existence - believing in him in order for the narrative to work - clever twist: the loneliness of the imagined friend, the grief on separation, nice touches, applaudable; as it is it is tender, powerful, subtle and sensitive in the unfolding of the nascent relationship and necessary parting. You could pad out this template easily, perhaps into a novella, though I wouldn't take the actual beginning and end points of the story further through fear of it becoming absurd. I could be wrong.

Good writing style and storytelling, honest and believable dialogue, shirking the urge to become tawdry and sensational, meted out nicely.

[James Moir]

Thank you sir, I just checked out Degger......Man oh man if he's not the definition of "can't look but can't look away" then I don't know what is. Looking forward to checking out some more of your pieces.

[Nikki Richardson]

I like it as it is. It has a nice plot line, and it has wonderful descriptions. I could imagine this expanded into a children's book. I think you've got something great on your hands, and it's wonderfully written.

[James Moir]

Thanks Nikki, I'll check out some of your writing this week! Looking forward to it.