The Boy Who Collected Clouds

Fletcher carried a notebook everywhere he went. It was blue, with a rubber band around it to keep it shut, and the corners were soft and bent from living in his back pocket. Inside, every single page was filled with drawings of clouds.

Not just any drawings. Detailed drawings. With labels.

There was Marjorie, a big puffy cumulus cloud he'd spotted on the first day of second grade. She looked exactly like a hippopotamus sitting in a bathtub. He'd drawn her carefully and written her name in his best handwriting, along with the date and time and which direction she'd been floating.

There was Reginald, a long wispy cirrus cloud that stretched across the whole sky like a cat yawning. There was Beatrice, a tiny cotton-ball cloud that had appeared all by herself on an otherwise perfectly blue Tuesday. There was a whole family he called The Hendersons — seven little clouds in a row that looked like they were walking to the grocery store.

Fletcher had collected one hundred and thirty-seven clouds so far.

He knew it was unusual.

At recess, the other kids played kickball or hung from the monkey bars or chased each other in complicated games with rules that changed every five minutes. Fletcher sometimes did those things too. But mostly, he sat on the small grassy hill near the fence, looked up, and waited.

"What are you doing?" asked Maya one Monday, standing over him with her hands on her hips. Maya was the kind of person who always had her hands on her hips.

"Collecting clouds," said Fletcher.

"You can't collect clouds," said Maya. "They're not rocks. They're not stamps. You can't put them in a box."

"I put them in here." Fletcher held up his notebook.

Maya squinted at him for a long moment, then walked away.

That afternoon, Fletcher spotted a remarkable cloud. It was shaped like an enormous dragon holding a tiny umbrella. The dragon part was dark and grey on the bottom, but the top was blazing white where the sun hit it, and the umbrella part was so perfect that Fletcher actually gasped.

He named her Gertrude.

He drew Gertrude with extra care, shading the dark belly of the dragon with the side of his pencil and leaving the bright parts white. He wrote: Gertrude. October 14th. 12:47 PM. Moving east. Magnificent.

The next day, a boy named Dominic saw the notebook.

"Let me see," said Dominic, and before Fletcher could answer, Dominic grabbed it and started flipping through the pages. His eyebrows scrunched together.

"These are just clouds," said Dominic.

"Yes," said Fletcher.

"You drew a cloud and named it Reginald?"

"He looked like a Reginald."

Dominic stared at Fletcher. Then he laughed — not a mean laugh exactly, but not a kind one either. The sort of laugh that sits right in the middle and stings a little anyway.

"That's so weird," said Dominic, and he handed the notebook back.

Fletcher's ears went hot. He put the rubber band around the notebook and shoved it deep into his back pocket. For the rest of recess, he played kickball. He didn't look up once.

That night, Fletcher lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. He thought about Dominic's laugh. He thought about Maya saying you can't collect clouds. He opened his notebook and looked at Gertrude the dragon cloud with her tiny umbrella, and she still looked magnificent, but something felt heavier now.

He closed the notebook and put it on his nightstand.

The next morning, Fletcher left the notebook at home.

Recess came. He played tag. He went on the swings. He did all the regular things. The sky above was full of clouds — great towering ones with golden edges and blue-grey shadows — but Fletcher kept his eyes on the ground.

It was a perfectly fine recess.

But walking home, Fletcher passed the big open field near his house, and he accidentally looked up.

And there, stretched across the entire sky, was the most incredible cloud he had ever seen.

It was shaped like a whale. An enormous, gentle, sky-filling whale, floating through an ocean of blue. Its tail curved gracefully to the south. Its eye — a small gap in the cloud where blue sky peeked through — seemed to be looking right down at him. And trailing behind the whale were dozens of tiny bubble-shaped clouds, like it was singing an endless, silent song.

Fletcher stood completely still in the field.

He didn't have his notebook.

He watched the whale drift slowly, slowly, slowly. The tail began to stretch and thin. The tiny bubbles spread apart. The eye shifted and closed. And piece by piece, the whale dissolved into wisps and threads and then into nothing at all.

It was gone. And he had no drawing. No name. No record that it had ever existed.

Fletcher ran all the way home, burst through the door, grabbed his notebook, and sat on the back porch with his pencil moving fast. He drew everything he could remember — the curve of the tail, the bubble trail, the perfect blue eye. He worked until the drawing felt right, until it felt like the whale was swimming across the page.

He wrote: Orville. October 16th. 3:32 PM. Moving northwest. The best one yet.

Then he sat back and looked at it, and the heavy feeling from before was completely gone. In its place was something warm and bright and steady, like a small lamp had been switched on inside his chest.

The next day at recess, Fletcher sat on his hill. He had his notebook open. He was looking up.

Maya walked over. Hands on hips, of course.

"You're doing the cloud thing again," she said.

"Yep," said Fletcher.

Maya stood there for a moment. Then, slowly, she sat down next to him.

"That one looks like a shoe," she said, pointing.

Fletcher tilted his head. "I was thinking more like a mailbox."

"It's definitely a shoe."

"Okay," said Fletcher. "What should we name it?"

Maya thought about this very seriously. "Leonard," she said.

Fletcher wrote it down. Leonard. October 17th. 12:35 PM. Discovered by Maya. Shoe-shaped. Possibly a mailbox.

Maya looked at what he'd written and smiled — just a little, like she was trying not to but couldn't help it.

"Can I see the others?" she asked.

Fletcher handed her the notebook. She turned the pages slowly. She spent a long time on Gertrude the dragon with the umbrella. She studied The Hendersons walking to the grocery store. When she got to Orville the whale, she stopped.

"Wow," she whispered.

"That's the best one," said Fletcher.

"He looks like he's really swimming."

"He was."

Maya handed the notebook back carefully, with both hands, the way you hold something important.

"Tomorrow," she said, "I'm bringing my colored pencils. Gertrude should be in color."

Fletcher felt that warm, bright, steady feeling again.

The next day, Maya brought colored pencils. And Dominic — the same Dominic who had laughed — wandered over and said, "What are you guys doing?"

"Collecting clouds," said Maya, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Dominic looked up at the sky. He looked at the notebook. He sat down.

"That one," he said, pointing at a lumpy, lopsided cloud near the horizon, "looks exactly like my dog, Biscuit."

Fletcher opened to a fresh page. "Spell Biscuit for me," he said.

And there on the hill, the three of them sat together, faces turned up toward an endless, ever-changing sky — finding shapes that no one else in the whole world would ever see in quite the same way, and writing down every single one.