Lost in the Clouds

          Cedric Sayer Davenport had a tendency to get himself lost among the clouds. This was a trait that numerous people believed he would grow out of with age when falling prey to make believe tended to disappear. A belief that his parents strongly held on to during those early years that brought them plenty of conferences and email exchanges with teachers, with the entire school. Instead his moments of being captive in his head only seemed to become worse. It came to a point where prying him away from wherever he went off to back to the present became an abandoned cause for most. For Cedric that was a long awaited and welcomed change in the behavior of the people around him.
          Staring at clouds had once cost him a relationship or two during his last official years of youth. Afterwards word finally traveled up and down the hallways of his school that he was a hopeless cause unless you preferred your boyfriend to be distant, withdrawn. These high school facts failed to travel with him when he left the small town behind for bigger and better adventures elsewhere. Out in the real world of college he became a studious recluse, a shadow hanging around long enough to leave a flickering impression. Thoughts of those years gone by now plagued his time pulled away from the living, leaving him wondering if perhaps he should have worked harder to connect to the world around him.
          "Do you ever wonder what's beyond all of this?" Rebecca Avery Dart asked for what she believed to be the thirtieth time as if continuously repeating herself would generate a response. For most this sort of constant inquiry would unhinge them enough to at least shout at her, but since Cedric had yet to do that the dear girl had gone and made a game out of it. It would end when one of them broke this exchange of noise for silence with Rebecca's bet cast rather heavily on herself being victorious.
          Cedric had been absorbed in himself for the first few times Rebecca asked, the exact amount of which he was uncertain of. At first he wasn't even aware that she had repeated herself until he had opened his mouth to reply only to be met with her inquiring yet again. That had set him up to wait patiently for her to tire of asking like many before her had. Fifteen times later Rebecca appeared to still be going strong, an act of tenacity that surprised him. "Poverty, crime, and hopelessness," he responded finally, giving into that lucky thirtieth time.
          Rebecca clapped her hands in excitement the Cedric finished with his answer, a broad smile on her face. Later on in the day she would probably congratulate herself with an ice cream treat for her victory, but for right now there was a conversation to seize a hold of. "That's around here too though," she countered while she plopped herself down on the grass in front of Cedric. "And that's not what I meant anyway. I'm talking more about beyond our daily grind, hanging out with those whims that most people don't have time for. You know, like, up there with the clouds."
          Cedric looked confused to begin with, the clapping taking him by surprise. A look that persisted on hanging around as he watched Rebecca make herself at home on the lawn area in front of his spot under the branches of a dogwood tree. "The manicured look of perfection could have fooled me," he muttered as he attempted to process the rest of what the strange girl had said. Through the years no one he knew had ever specifically asked him about the clouds and it seemed out of place now for some random person he doubted he would ever see again to do so. "All of the time," Cedric whispered at long last, stretching out his legs from the crossed position they had been in. "I'm still not sure specifically what's there or why it calls to me with such persistence as if it has something important to tell me."