"The Boys in the Rain"
I want to tell you a story
A story about three boys
All about to enter eighth grade
Standing in the pouring rain
Under on a porch
Letting rain fall on them
The first boy is named Mark
It's his porch they're standing under
He lives in a worn-out old house
In the bad part
Of a less than notable town
With his grandmother
And his mother
Whenever she feels like coming home
And raising her children
Mark will finish middle school
Having been the special project
Of his Reading teacher
She will give him a typewriter
Her personal typewriter
Because he'll say he wants to be a writer
And she thinks it will inspire him
It will
But it won't matter
It'll be one of those things
Mark will go into high school
And go fairly unnoticed
Until his sophomore year
When he realizes
Like every other unnoticed kid in the country
That bringing in a note
Threatening to harm people
Will get you quite a lot of attention
Mark will be one of the many boys
In the Columbine generation
Long before it's okay
To even coin such a term
He will be able to return to school
And will regret not having pursued
A private education
At an all boys' high school
Where he surely would have gotten picked on
Even moreso than in public school
After graduation
He will disappear
Into plain sight
Where nobody will think
To look for him
Henry is the boy screaming in the rain
He hates getting wet
And the magazine he bought
At the mall that day
On what seemed like an adventure
To a mild boy such as him
The magazine will be drenched
And he'll be cross about this later
Until his grandmother buys him a new one
He loves looking at new magazines
And this fact about him
Will not change
He will have a fantastic eighth grade experience
As soon as he decides not to continue on with his friends
Into the public high school that Mark winds up at
No, that is not in Henry's future
He will go into a private school
Not the all-boys' highschool, however
It will take him far too long to ajdust
Almost into his senior year
And when he finally gets the hang of it
He will graduate
This will be the underlying trend
Of Henry's life
Upon graduating high school
He will go to a local college
And look for his two friends
The two boys with him in the rain
Until he is out of college
And decides that he wants to write about them
And what they meant to him
Even though he isn't exactly sure
If they meant anything at all
Jake is the third boy
The one everyone loves
Nobody loves Mark
Except Jake
And Henry loves Jake
But in a way he's not comfortable admitting
These are the boys in the rain
Jake will have a girlfriend in eighth grade
Then another
Then another
Then the first again
Then nobody
Henry will try to keep in touch
But he'll fail
Mark will remain friends with Jake
Even after Mark is nearly expelled
For his threatening note
But a stupid argument junior year
Will terminate their friendship
Permanently
This argument is brought on
By Jake's misery over his parents' divorce
A messy affair
With accusations of infidelity
And violence
With and involving everyone
And both his brothers
One younger, one older
Coming to terms with their sexuality
Leaving Jake feeling normal
And yet not normal at all
His house will be sold
A beautiful home
That he can never go back to
And he'll date an older girl
For all of his senior year
Living in her dorm room
At the nearby college
That Henry will attend a year later
Until they break up
And Jake lives out of his car
Until he moves in with his older brother
And his older brother's boyfriend
Gets him a job selling office supplies
Henry will look for Jake too
But when he finally finds him
One day in the dining hall
Of the college he attends
He'll be stunned into silence
Jake will see him
As he's sitting with his girlfriend
The one and only time they reconcile
And he'll wave him over
The two will talk
Neither having any news
About Mark
And that'll be that
Henry will walk out of the dining hall
Skip his next class
And get into his car
Noticing finally that he's wet
That he's soaked through
After not having noticed
That it was raining
He'll watch the rain come down
Onto the windshield of the car
He'll start the engine
But not turn on the wipers
He'll just sit there
Thinking of his magazine
Of how hard he tried
To keep it intact
How important it was
What a neat freak he became
How for a short while
The idea of keeping things pristine
Became an obsession
Until it overpowered him
And became too strong
Too control
Even as an addiction
He'll think of the three boys in the rain
Who didn't mind getting wet
Who knew they were being children
Who felt the moment escaping
Even as it was
Escaping
He thought of the boys in the rain
And wondered if what they say about air
Applies to rain as well
If it's all the same rain
Just recycled
And if so
Was the rain coming down
Hard on his car
In hard drops
In rivers
In oceans
In buckets
Was this rain the same rain
That poured on him
When he was one of those boys
And was it pouring on Mark somewhere?
And would it pour on Jake
When he left the dining hall?
And was it possible
For all three of them
To be under that rain
And be those boys again
For one fleeting instance?
Was it possible
To be boys again
And the rain didn't stop
And it wouldn't
For quite some time
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