When There Were No Clouds

The first rain of the season arrived. Well, the first in two decades. We’d prepared for this one. It had been 20 years, 10 days, and 13 hours since the final drop of rain had touched a roof in the country. 

The Last Clouds. That’s what they called the grayish cover in the sky that did its final tour over twenty years back. Temperatures were far too high for our earth to handle, and soon scientists warned we would be without clouds by the end of the summer. I did not exist back then, and I only arrived after disaster had struck. Four years after, to be precise. During the course of my sixteen years on this earth, I’d never seen rain, and water was so scarce that innovation had found other ways for us to operate around its lack. 

Our showers, for one, now worked with pressurized air. There was a lot more to it, but I couldn’t get into it without writing a three-part novel about the sudden discovery that air could be a solution to our most basic needs. Long hair was only a luxury the rich could afford— attempting to maintain and clean something that could so easily be shaved off never made sense to me.

What people called ‘pools’ did not exist either. They’d been banned for ‘unethical usage of a scarce resource.’ They were basically illegal, and I couldn’t see how they ever weren’t. My parents still scoffed at the news sometimes, but to me, all of it was perfectly normal— it’d been my reality since birth. 

Then, one day, I arrived from school, and my parents were not grimacing at our flat screen with dread but almost weeping and jumping with joy. Signs of clouds had begun to emerge in different parts of the world, and finally, it was expected that Washington would receive its first cloud sighting in the coming months. 

“It’s been so long, Frank; imagine seeing them up there again. Oh, and rain, imagine later on if that could happen?” My mom gushed from the couch to my dad, who stood closer to the TV with his arms crossed, the biggest smile on his face.

“It has been a long time. Chip can finally see one in person!” He exclaimed and immediately covered his mouth with emotion, looking back at me, standing slightly confused in the middle of our living room.

“Wait, clouds as in the thing we learn about in history books? They could be back?”

“Yes, darling!” Mum cheered and stood, turning to me too, “I can’t believe it; this could mean a lot of great things.”

 “Sure,” I agreed, though I had no clue what clouds even meant for our ecosystem since I’d never even seen one before. Nevertheless, I still matched my parent's energy and smiled. 

So, we now stood five months since the news hit outside our homes. Though most of our neighbors had set up small camps in their drives, I was less entertained by the sky. Instead, I looked down the street and spotted Lee Young, laughing at something his dad was saying. He was sixteen like me, and though we attended the same school, we’d never once spoken. Black slicked-back hair, gorgeous blue eyes, and long legs. He was the charming boy next door; he just never noticed me. Not that I’d ever made myself try to be noticed. 

“Look up Chip, never know when a cloud might come!” Dad called loudly. I felt my cheeks heat up fast.

“Dad, don’t call me that,” I protested softly, turning away from Lee to look at my dad in his beach chair. 

“Right, sorry, Alena,” Dad replied smugly, a knowing eye as he shifted his attention from me to the Young's behind me. A beat of silence as he just looked at me, begging the stars to hide me from the world, then he simply, “Hey Sam, how’s everything?” 

I almost tackled him to the ground in surprise, but Lee’s father behind me replied before I could react.

“Frankie, hey. All’s right, we have the tents with the transparent top, so we can lay down and see the sky at night,” Sam Young replied with one hand resting around his son’s shoulder. The interaction caused Lee to look my way, and I thought there was nothing better I could do but plop myself down into a beach chair and look away. Smooth.

“At least you haven’t gone all out like the Cooper’s with their million-dollar telescope,” My dad joked, sipping easy from his spiked orange juice mom had brought out. Sam laughed, and I could somehow feel Lee’s eyes burning into me.

“Yeah, I’m hoping we get cloud cover before it gets too dark. I remember clouds weren’t very visible during nighttime,” Sam replied, and I caught Lee walking towards us from my peripheral vision, which only made me close tighter into myself, my heart racing miles a minute. 

“Mhm, here’s to hoping.”

Their voices faded as I noticed Lee was now close enough that our faces would be inches apart if I turned.

“Hey, Alena,” Lee greeted politely, and his voice sounded like he was kneeling down to be at my level. 

I couldn’t lie and say my chest did not immediately contract with shock, but a gasp definitely left me in the sound of a pathetic squeak. The silence dragged on long enough that Lee continued the conversation, “Are you excited for the clouds?”

Clouds. Right, a conversation topic. I could do this. I wasn’t a total lost cause yet. Turning slowly, Lee was not, in fact, kneeling but rather sat on the grass by my chair, hands holding each other around his knees, and his face relaxed into a charming half-smile. His clear eyes locked on me as soon as I turned. 

“Oh yeah, though I can’t say if it’s the same as my parents,” I said weakly, my voice losing all its strength. Lee chuckled softly, and really everything about him was unassuming. 

“Yeah, I get what you mean. Mine have not stopped going on and on about how life-changing the rain will be. I can’t really imagine it, though, so I just smile and nod.”

I laughed then, and he laughed too, and the rest of the evening, our parents talked, and Lee and I sat on the grass and pointed at constellations when the sun began to set. 

“Hey, meet me later. There’s a hill behind our houses where the view is great. We can wait for clouds there.”

I fish-mouthed for only a second, “Uh, sure.”

So, then he retreated back to his side of the drive and disappeared inside his house. I believe I sat in the dry grass long enough to have a deep-set stain of dirt on my white shorts. I didn’t even realize with all the alarms going off in my head.

+

It was almost two a.m. when my parents finally succumbed to sleep and gave up waiting for the day. I managed to stealthily sneak out of my sleeping bag and from the tent without waking them up, and then I made a hasty climb up the rocky hill behind my house, where I found Lee with his legs stretched out, wearing only black joggers and a white shirt. He sat barefoot, looking at the sky, which remained clear and dark for the night.

“Are your parents asleep too?” we 

“Yeah, they claimed they would be able to stay up all night, but one too many wine glasses was all it took.”

Lee laughed, and I smiled, openly staring at him. I didn’t know how many more times I’d get to do that before life resumed in a few days, and we went back to being virtual strangers at school.

The wind rustled a few trees behind us, but there weren’t enough. Nature had run dry after the clouds ran out, and our water supplement could only be produced so often, so only a few trees per area was allowed. 

“I’d never noticed that we went to the same school before,” Lee admitted to me with an apologetic expression. I turned to him, surprised.

“Oh, yeah, since we were little, actually.”

“I’m sorry,” He pursed his lips and shook his head, “I’d always kept to myself because I was a really shy kid, so when we get older, I thought you’d think I was weird for suddenly approaching you.”

I could feel that my eyes were massively wide, but I was too blind-sided to do anything about it. “Hah, I don’t really mind. I noticed you because we would always wait for the same bus and stuff.” 

I tucked a hair behind my ear and smiled down to the ground. Lee turned to me, “Yeah, I’m sorry again.”

Minutes together turned into an hour, and by the time I checked my phone, it was four a.m.

“It’s pretty late. Do you want to go sleep?”

“Uh, sure I just—”

A drop.

I stopped mid-sentence as I suddenly felt a single drop land on top of my palm. I considered. Could it be sweat? A bug that felt like a drop? I looked down, but it was definitely water. Clear, crystal water on my hand.

“Oh my god.”

Another then hit me in the arm, and I looked at Lee. He was looking at his own arm, too, his other palm stretched out to the sky. I looked up, and suddenly another drop of water hit me right in the middle of the forehead. I gasped aloud. 

We laughed in disbelief. A faraway call turned into many voices over our houses’ roofs. The neighborhood was waking up. The sky was pitch black, and though I had never seen a cloud in my life, the sudden cover going over the stars was unmistakable. 

“It’s clouds!” I yelled, and Lee joined. Then, the drops multiplied and began to fall more continuously and closer together. Finally, I gasped as I felt my skin be hit with ten more drops suddenly.

We looked back at each other and nodded, “Let’s go,” Lee took my hand and pulled me from the hill fast. We ran against the wind and weaved through my backyard until we were back in my drive. 

“Mom, dad!” I called, and their silhouettes under the street lights ran to me. 

“Alena, it’s water!” 

“I know!”

Then the water got more intense, and suddenly, it was everywhere. It was raining.

“It’s raining!” My dad yelled from the top of his lungs. I laughed in a shrill cry, and mom grabbed me as more drops of rain fell on us. I looked around the street, and everyone around us was feeling the same general gist of emotions. 

The rain caught force as more clouds approached over our neighborhood, and the sound of water overwhelmed my every sense. I was beginning to understand my parent's excitement, the elation of feeling an almost extinct element return like a heartbeat after a flatline. 

Empty containers in people’s roofs began to fill up, and what once had only been a luxury the rich could afford suddenly became a vital factor every human had a right to. How did we get it so wrong? How did we ever reach a moment in time where this was not possible anymore?

We spent the entire dawn letting ourselves get ‘soaked,’ which was a term I’d never had to use before. We sat on the pavement and let the water seep through our shoes, hair, and shirts. It was everywhere. I caught glimpses of Lee during that day, but it was mostly a blur of people dancing in the middle of the empty road, and cheers and laughter, and loud music someone brought out to their porch. 

From that moment forward, the rain didn’t stop coming, which was a newfound fear most people experienced: the anxiety that it could stop, that it would never return, like before.

Scientists assured us they were prepared for any event, but they were positive it would not stop coming as long as our eco-footprint remained under reasonable limits. 

I lived most of my days in my suburban neighborhood, unable to believe it whenever there was rain. Very few people would stay inside when the rain came, and it taught our generations to never take things in nature for granted. I graduated school and studied to be an environmental lawyer, which made both my parents infinitely happy. Lee came to me on our graduation day and announced he’d begun training to become an astronaut. It was both equally impressive and surprising. 

Now, a few years since we last each other, he stands at my door, and rain comes in seasons, and it's liquid in the summer and solid in the winter. It’s winter now, and my fireplace is on, so the wood crackles and his mouth is covered by his turtleneck and scarf that protects him from the biting wind behind us.

“Hey Lee, it’s been a while,” I say, surprised. It had been a while since we’d properly talked and even longer since he’d come to my door. 

“Yeah, it has,” His baby-blue eyes were wistful, and I couldn’t help the bubbling nostalgia in my gut. I offered him a lopsided smile. 

“What have you been up to?” I asked quietly. The suburbs were asleep already, even though it was barely ten past eleven. 

“I’m leaving tomorrow, but it didn’t feel right to leave without seeing you or saying goodbye,” He smiled sheepishly, “So, here I am.”

“Wait,” I frowned, attempting to understand, “You’re… leaving, leaving?” I gestured to the sky in confusion, and Lee laughed with a genuine smile. 

“I am, leaving for actual space, like up there,” He, too, gestured upward, and I covered my mouth.

“Oh my god, Lee. Congratulations!” I gave him an excited hug, and he did not hesitate to return it. A few years before, we wouldn’t have hesitated at all. We were together for a year until we weren’t, and we grew distant, and we broke up, and I moved on. But, Lee was leaving on a ship to space— and those words sounded funny even in my head. But he was. “Are you nervous?”

“A bit, though it’s obviously an honor, it’s also the furthest you can get from a comfort zone.”

I laughed, and we sat on the stairs of my parent’s porch to catch up, and like every time before, life had a way of bringing us together. The sky had clouds, and clouds always reminded me of Lee.

“If it’s cloudy, I’ll think of you,” I said quietly when we fell into a pocket of silence.

Lee lifted his head and stared back at me. “Then, I’ll do the same.”

“It’s a deal,” I whispered and put forward my pinky finger. He smiled a full-toothed smile and joined our pinkies together. 

The next day the mission was successful, and Lee was up there, and I sat on my front porch without him next to me, looking through the clouds up at the stars and imagining any of them could be the space station. I laughed at myself afterward, but I was filled with odd emotions. 

From the first day, the clouds returned to our atmosphere, until then, when I sat looking up at the sky, and a light drizzle was not major news anymore, it all felt slightly poetic; If only in the mundane, everyday-life-can-also-be-a-fairytale kind of way.