Young Clouds

a story I might continue

“So our story begins.” said the small, blonde headed girl of no more than seven years of age, on the bridge as she looked into the sea-like eyes of the pale boy who appeared to be around the same age.

They stood, arms weakly lay across the top of the bridge with heads lying in the crease of each others arms as they rest on the bridge. The river flowed gently beneath them and ran onto the sand covered banks.

            "What do you mean?" questions the chocolate haired boy and tilts his head to the girl and shows her the freckles that lines across his nose.

            " Our journey," replies the girl. The boy continues to tilt his head in confusion. Now aggravated, she rolls her eyes, sighs, and flips her long blond hair as she faces the boy.

“Our friendship!” she yells. “We get to hold hands, hug, run, jump, kick, scream, we get to do all of this together! The best part about it is, we can get married!” The boy stares with wide eyes and runs his hand through his blonde bowl cut hair and shakes his head as he starts to finally understand. He puts the pieces together, realizes the situation and blurts out the answer she had been wanting to hear.

“You’re crazy," he explains.

“No!” bellows the girl. “You’re a guy, you just don’t understand.” As she steps to the side and flips her arms up and down in exaggeration and begins to count with her fingers, she continues with,”...all girls want a prince, no, a king! We’ll have a castle, maids, horses! What are the decorative towel things called?” she wondered.

“Doilies?” he replies as a look of "dumbfounded" appears on his face.

“Yes! Our walls will be covered in doilies and hung with love,” she exclaims. The boy stares out into the clouds, and again brushes his hair back again as he tugs on his red and blue striped shirt.

“ I don’t like that word," he mumbles.

“Stop mumbling," she demands and stomps her foot to further explain her hate.

“I don’t like that word!” he says and turns his head to his right and does not look out at the cloud, nor the girl.

“What word? Covered?” she wonders.

“No,” the boy replies.

“Hung?” she tries again.

“No!” the boy turns to her as his cheeks get red.

“Love?” she guesses.

“For pete sake!” the boy pushes his head down into the sleeves of his arms that now rest on the bridge. The girl had not even realized she had said the word. She started to wonder if that what love was, being able to say the word to someone and mean it, without realizing that you said it. But, she brushed the thought aside and realized love is warm pancakes on Sunday morning with mommy and daddy or when you have bugs in your stomach or something along those lines. What ever love is, she was not too sure, but she knew she felt it now.

She scootched her way over next to the boy, whose face was no longer in his sleeve but still red. She grabbed his hand.

“Come on, let’s go.” she said.

“Go where?” he questioned as he was starting to be dragged away.

“Doesn’t matter where you go when you have that feeling of pancakes on Sunday,” she replied as she dragged the now awfully confused boy down the stone covered walkway of the bridge as he continued to look at the clouds for help.