Clouded River

What A Great Time

"Well, first day of school, back again.." I sighed to myself as I walked up a few steps of the new school and paused about halfway.

"Hey Rivie." I heard a familiar voice say. I turned around and saw my best friend, Cloud Pond, waving at me as he stood over by the shade of the trees, hanging out with a group of guys I'd never seen before. "Hey," I said as he walked over and hugged me," How've you been?" I said as he stepped back after he hug and faced me. "Oh, not much." He paused and combed his blonde-brown hair with his hand then said,"Sorry I didn't come over last weekend, I was busy with some people." "It's fine, don't worry." I said patting him on the shoulder. "Well, wanna go explore the school? We've got about... mmmm.. a little more than half an hour." I said pulling out my phone and checking the time. "Sure, haven't got to see any of it myself." He said as he put his hand on my shoulder and we walked in.

Since Cloud and I met, ( around kindergarten ) we've been like best friends since we saw each other. I don't know what pulled us together like magnets, but oh boy, it sure did impact us. He always came over every weekend, or I'd go to his house. I never really thought of Cloud being being like, I don't know, Attractively Cute?? But I remember this one time when we were younger, like 10, we went to the fair together and our parents gave us about $35 dollars to go play around. I remember it was right after we bought cotton candy and hopped onto the Ferris wheel, was the first time I felt something different about him. I had one of my arms under my chin looking down over all the people and my other hand on the seat, and randomly outta nowhere, I felt something on my hand and looked to my side and saw, for the first time ever, Cloud was holding my hand. Holding my hand! I felt so awkward about it although it wasn't a big deal. I mean, it's just his hand but did it mean anything? No idea, being me kinda just stared at him. Not weirdly or anything but I just stared at him with a nervous smile. I could tell he was too, obviously by the blush on his face. I've never really found him that attractive but that day, I remember so well, I felt that I liked him. Like, a lot.

Since then I kinda did feel a little more pulled towards him, and I kinda got used to the fact that he would do kinda weird things like hug me or sit really close to me and stuff. It didn't bother me much now that we were in high school though. Maple Wood High was a new school to both of us because we'd moved about a few weeks ago, to houses literally right next to each other. The good thing about that was, on the side on the house, the wood fence that went between our houses had 2 loose boards and would bend. That meant, we'd be able to come over anytime we wanted to or have more fun games of hide and seek. But now that we're older, I'm surprised Cloud still fits through, considering his height. To be honest though, Cloud wasn't like some of the 'popular people' at our old middle school. He did like sports, especially baseball and soccer, but he didn't cause drama or anything like that. He was kind of like one of those kids who like to hang out with another group of guys and either talk about video games, or just be strait out dank memers. Wanna hear his description? Yeah? Ok, well, this is how I see him: He has Blondish light brown hair, and his eyes sometimes change from light brown to green or blue and are always sparkling, and he's also pretty tall. Clouds very funny too. He makes some of the funniest jokes, and when he messes them up, it's even funnier.

This one time in language arts class in middle school he messed up a joke and made me laugh so bad. "I'm hungry.." I groaned quietly to Cloud who sat across from me at our language arts table. He looked at me and did this 'about to crack up' face then yelled," WELL THEN YOU BETTER GO CATCH IT!" And started laughing because he just then noticed he messed up. "Oh my gosh," he stopped and laughed," I meant to say Hi hungry, I'm Cloud!" Of course later he got told by the teacher to be more quiet and got a warning but we were still laughing.

As we walked into the school and looked around, we noticed this one poster on the wall and read it out loud. "Come to the-" "First school dance of the year," I said cutting him off and we both stared at the paper. I didn't really feel like going even though it was next Friday.I guess I just had a lazy moment and just didn't feel in the mood for a school dance. "Oh cool so it's like one of those dances from middle school but bigger?" He said smiling at me. "Yeah can't you read Cloud?" I said smiling and moved back my long light browned hair from my shoulder. "Well maybe, or-hopefully I'll have someone to go to it with." He said relooking the poster. I don't know if he was insisting on me going with him, but eh. I looked at my phone and checked the time. "Oh, well we have like 10 minutes, wanna just go back outside?" I said putting my phone in my back pocket. "Yeah, lets go." As we walked out the door, there was a Huge crowd. We were gone for like 15 minutes and everyone got there at the same time or something. As we tried to make our way through the crowd, we were separated. The last thing I saw of Cloud was him being taken into a large group of guys and I noticed I'd been pushed into a group of girls. "Soo, I hear your going to the dance with your boyfriend Cloudy boy huh." I heard one of them say. "He's not even your type, why don't you back off of him?" I started to get irritated by the fact a bunch of random popular girls were either jealous of me hanging out with Cloud, or just snobby and nosy of what we were doing inside. "Uhm, first of all, he's not my boyfriend." I said, annoyed. "Oooh then who is he, 'Rivie Wood'?" They all started to laugh and I said irritatedly,"My names River Wood. And Cloud, is my best friend, Not, my boyfriend." I repeated and rolled my eyes to some of the girls I noticed; Aiya, Anny, Tee, and a bunch of others. I still was confused on how they even got this information about me and him, I mean sure, we do hang out a lot, but still. Why me?