Ray Treague
It was 7:15 and raining per usual. Adrian strolled a lengthy trail to his 8 hours of education. Each step taken, imprinted into the muddy trail from the rain that occurred yesterday and the previous day. His backpack was crammed with the pages of homework his five teachers expected to be complete the next morning, putting a massive strain on Adrian’s slouched back. In the early cloudy morning of today, Adrian begged to get out of the hassle of the dewy walk to his education by faking ill. Although his mother wasn’t a certified doctor, she always took a terrifyingly accurate guess when Adrian wasn’t convincing and knew 95% of the time when he was faking it. A stifled cough never seemed to do the job for Adrian, and he was forced to run the rainy, muddied trail for the 1000th time at 7:10 AM. He knew very well Jason was just waiting to rain on his parade… literally.
Ever since Jason became an honorary student with the ability to control the weather, he has waited every morning for Adrian. As daylight drew closer to seven AM, Adrian knew he had to push through his intrusive thoughts of hiding in his comfy bedroom, to prevent the twenty minute walk to school in the pouring, cold rain. Forcefully, he put on his weighted backpack made up his homework and his necessities for school, tightly wrapped in towels surrounding his backpack, then waved goodbye to his mom. She was very absorbed in her syrupy, finely-powdered, strawberry-topped, french toast. As he continued walking, nearing the visibly wet murky trail, Adrian could already feel a slight dampness. He knew very well that Jason was there right on schedule as usual. Adrian had tried so many times to apologize to Jason about their unfortunate misunderstanding that ended their year relationship with each other. Judging from the constant down pour of rain, Adrian assumed his apologies never seemed to change Jason’s view of him.
About twenty minutes after Adrian ran through the misty downpour on the trail, he was drenched from his head to his feet. He muttered a swear under his shaky breath, no louder than a whisper of a mouse, and entered the castle-sized red-bricked building of his high school. He bumped into everyone in the crowded hallways, as other adolescents stared laughing and ridiculing him, calling him the “strange rain boy.” Adrian not fond of his peers remarks, scurried to find the nearest bathroom so he could change his soaked clothes and avoid being scorned by his principal, who was always roaming the halls before school began. The principal was in charge of trying to find teenage culprits in action of doing some sort of destruction. This includes the daily activity of finding the adolescent responsible for making a complete mess of the bathroom, drenching all the sparkling white into an assortment of many unpleasant colors. The routine of having to change the first chance he got at his school is nothing new to Adrian and expected, with the exception of when Jason took a day off, or was feeling generous. He entered the bathroom like always to change his drenched clothes, with his cheeks a beet red from embarrassment. He knew that right after he got out of the bathroom, his best friend Theo would be waiting for him to walk to chemistry class together. He was the only one who truly treated Adrian with respect. Ever since the fallout between him and Jason, Jason completely changed from a loving, caring, funny person with a kind personality, to someone who only focused on popularity. Often Adrian passed in the halls only to see Jason staring at him menacingly as the two got to class, Adrian knowing that Jason felt hatred towards him. Ever since Adrian and Jason broke up with each other out of nowhere, Adrian felt absolutely devastated and destroyed, but he knew he had to hide how he truly felt inside to prevent being called names by his peers. Although it has already been around a month, Adrian still has to admit that he still has feelings for his ex and wishes Jason would feel the same. It wasn’t like Adrian tried to abandon Jason. Truth be told he would often try to check up on him, only for him to be pushed aside and ignored like a helpless puppy.
When Adrian made his exit out of the boy’s bathroom, Theo was right across from the bathroom in his usual spot waiting for him. As the boys walked to the other side of the school making their way to chemistry, they put one another’s arm on the others shoulder and began to talk about the usual stuff like final exams and all the tea in the school. Suddenly, Theo brought up a subject Adrian rather not talk about: Jason.
“You know both of you should really try to make up for the better of the school,” Theo said to Adrian. “You know that’s all people have talked about and it’s starting to take a toll on me.”
“The only problem Theo, is that I have tried to make up, but yet Jason won’t accept my apology and has continued to make it rain on my route to school,” Adrian responded. As he spoke, he met Jason’s cold gaze from the other side of the hall.
“Well you just gotta pray that you and Jason will come to some truce to avoid this drama,” said Theo. “You can’t just be showing up to school everyday drenched in rain, you don’t want to be known as the strange rain kid your whole life do you?”
“I suppose so,” said Adrian irritated but still looking at Jason as he and Theo entered the chemistry classroom.
As they entered, the two boys were greeted with a frown from the always malicious Mrs. Beck, who greeted the two with the question, of “how was your weekend?” and after the two responded with the usual comment of “good,” they took their seats waiting for the bell to ring. They tried to ignore Jason who also unfortunately was in most of Adrian’s classes, but they were unsuccessful and Jason began to glare at them.
When the bell finally rung, Mrs. Beck announced to the entire class, (whom of which only got a few hours of sleep due to working on the eight pages of homework last night) that everyone would be paired up for a chemistry project worth a lot of each student’s grade. The final project that Mrs. Beck told the class about one month in advance, is that everyone would be doing a slideshow about sickle cell anemia and that it was worth seventy points in the gradebook. The teacher then told the class that she had picked all the partners for the final project beforehand, and that there would be no exceptions, causing a groaning response of all twenty-four students in the room. All were unhappy to not be working with their friends, very well knowing that the teacher kept tabs of who was friends with who, and who was enemies with who, and would often pair up students that usually don’t get along. Given this information, it came as no surprise when Arian was paired up with his enemy, Jason, both of which expected this turn of events. This made Adrian half march, half run to Mrs. Beck to complain. “Mrs. Beck please don’t pair me with this nutjob.” complained Adrian, followed by the response of Jason’s pleas to “please not pair me with the strange rain boy.” Mrs. Beck however, was used to the bullcrap of the class, and made no exceptions for anyone unless their chance of survival was threatened, and believed in the practice of pairing rivals with each other in order for a friendship to begin. So the two forcefully took their stuff to another table to work, making sure to keep their eyes down to the wooden brown table at all times. It was finally twenty minutes into that class when Jason suddenly broke the silence and said in a snarky tone, “it seems like you and lover boy are getting along real well, just try not to get so involved with each other,” he said to Adrian.
Adrian not understanding what Jason meant, asked Jason to clarify, but no response came, and soon it was the end of the class period.
The hours continued as basic and not-too-out-of-the-ordinary for Adrian, except for the thought of what Jason said. This made Adrian wonder throughout the day of school, whether that was in ELA or in PE, if Jason was jealous of his friend.
When it was finally time for Adrian to walk the same damp, muddy trail, he surprisingly couldn’t pick up on drips of dewy rain water. He knew Jason had to have been here, due to him only having football practice on Wednesday, and today was a Tuesday afternoon. So when Adrian noticed a grayish-blackish dart of color flash right in front of his eyes as he walked, he knew that today’s walk was not as ordinary as he once thought. Animals don’t just dart so close to you that you could almost grab them with the tips of your delicate fingers. Although this was such an unordinary encounter, Adrian knew that he had to continue on home before the rain picked up.
It wasn’t until five minutes later that Adrian knew that something had to be horribly wrong with Jason. There wasn’t a drop of raindew in sight, and he knew how much Jason absolutely grew fond of making the rain hit Adrian precisely everywhere until he was completely drenched from his head to toe. He knew that Jason wouldn’t dilly-dally on waiting for him, given how early he walks out to the trail just to destroy any chance of him having a pleasant day. Given his instincts, he decided to keep his guard up and his ears open as he walked the lengthy gravel, muddy trail to his homebase.
Approximately one minute later, Adrian was relentlessly walking the muddy, brown colored rocky trail, when he suddenly heard a faint cry of despair. It was about 50 feet away in the green, refreshing-looking pine trees which were covered by the surrounding brown grainy-looking soil. It took him a good second or two to perk up and realize that his suspicions were indeed accurate. Adrian was stuck between the two options of fight or flight. Although Adrian wanted to choose flight desperately, he knew that if it were a human’s scream he should try to help. With Adrian’s mind made up, he slowly approached the echo of the source of the scream. Through all the green needles, and the many trees blocking him, was what looked like the grayish/blackish flash attacking something that he could make up to be a very humanlike appearance. What he could see looked to be dark black hair, and a slender build of a person, with their eyes almost the color of coffee. It was as if Adrian could just jump right into their eyes and drink up the brown color. Adrian knew who this was. This was Jason.
Adrian, now without a fear in the world, rushed to Jason’s aid. Upon closer inspection, the flash to his surprise looked to be a frisky raccoon. Its bloodshot eyes staring deeply into Jason, deep with hatred, clinging onto the individual for dear life. This was followed by Jason’s horror-stricken cries, and desperate screams to please help him. Adrian seeing this horrendous scene, took quick action and dismounted his backpack, aiming it at the fretful creature, and swung at it. The end result: the raccoon flung right off of Jason’s leg and onto the brown-earthed ground, making the raccoon bellow out one of the worst noises he’s ever heard, and scrambling to find higher ground away from the two. The shock imprinted on Jason’s face was priceless. The two walked in silence for a while until it became very clear that the walk was becoming awkward for the two. Jason decided to break the awkward silence with the mutter of, “Sorry I shouldn’t have said that remark during chemistry about you and your friend, it’s totally okay if you want to pretend like I don’t exist.”
“It’s okay, was this why you were so upset about me?” Adrian asked.
“Yeah.”
After the incident, the two walked together until the trail ended and Adrian reached his house. Adrian waved goodbye to Jason, who seemed to be on the same terms as him.
The next morning on the walk to his education, Adrian awoke to a beautiful sunny morning sky, and a just as beautiful sunny trail. As he walked the twenty minutes to school, he held hands with Jason and they caught up on all their missed conversations. Grateful for the day of the ferocious raccoon attack.