A rainy day

He scurried along the road, as fast as his tiny legs would carry him, trying to block everything happening around him. He was just beginning to feel slightly light and dry when, in his haste, he tripped on a pebble by the sidewalk and fell face-first, nearly breaking his nose. With that familiar clap of thunder, the dark cloud above his head unleashed another downpour upon his already damp head.

He was tired of that obstinate rain cloud hovering above his head. Every time he managed to shake it off, something seemed to happen to provoke it to burst and pour once again. And he simply couldn’t figure out why it followed him around, never targeting any of the other people around him. It all began in the morning when he woke up to the sound of his mom yelling at him. That was when the grey fluffs had begun to gather above him. As he quickly shoved down his breakfast, there had ensued another mild scuffle with his older sister, and he had felt the first drizzle of the gathered clouds and had hurried on his way to school.

Feeling extremely ungainly and embarrassed, he picked himself up after tripping on the pebble and trudged along in the rain, and somehow made it to his classroom in the 2^nd grade, fortunately without further incident. The first class was his favourite, and the clouds progressively started turning from grey to white. By the time it was recess, even the white clouds had drifted a small distance away. He was running around and playing with a few kids, almost oblivious to the reappearing haze, when suddenly – lightning struck! It was the bully from 3^rd grade. The clouds came gliding back in unison, and with a boom of thunder, a fresh storm was under way. Before he knew it, he was drenched from head to toe, and singed by lightning. He sat in a corner of the playground, unable to escape the rain. Drenched and soaking wet, he watched miserably as the other kids played, with the sun shining merrily above them, bright as a day in summer. He shuddered slightly in the cold.

He stayed well out of harm’s way through the rest of the day and by evening, the torrents had reduced to a mild drizzle. He rushed out thankfully at the end-of-day bell, and started walking home alone. His solitary stroll did him good, and the rains stopped finally, and he started making plans for his evening at home. That was when the next blow struck – he had a test the next day and had completely forgotten about it until just then. He could almost hear the clouds whizzing back to place, and this time, the deluge brought him to the ground and he flopped down onto the pavement. He sat there for a while, wallowing in self-pity and his hurricane. The persistent clouds beat down on him relentlessly, until he felt like he could just give up and sit there forever. After a while, he stood up, shook himself, and resumed dragging his sodden self along the road towards his home again.