Cloudy with a Chance of Boys by Megan McDonald Page A

Rims showed up. With muffins. And a party bag of ice. He was wearing a faded T-shirt that said TRAILER PARK SANTAS .
    Between bites of muffins, Wire Rims and I stood under an overcast sky, staring at the orange clown fish and pink starfish on the bottom of Joey’s old kiddie pool. The morning fog had never burned off, making the edges of things fuzzy. Kind of how I imagined it would be if you wore glasses but you were looking at the world without them.
    Every time I glanced back at the house, I saw Mom looking out the kitchen window. At us. Embarrassing!
    “Okay. Here’s the plan,” I said, trying not to think about Mom checking up on us. “When I throw in the last bucket of hot water, you get the camera ready to take a picture. Then I’ll quick grab the black towel and hold it up in the background, so our cloud will show up really good.”
    Wire Rims raised his eyebrows at me over his glasses.
    “Was I being too bossy?” I asked. “Sorry. I’m just saying.”
    “Okay. On the count of three. Ready?” said Wire Rims. “One, two, three.” I leaned over and poured the bucket of hot water into the pool. Then I grabbed the towel and held it high. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Wire Rims snapped a bunch of pictures.
    I let the towel drop. “Did you see what I saw? That was so not a cloud. That was barely a puff.”
    “I just took five shots of a big fat nothing,” said Wire Rims. “I’ve had bigger clouds on my glasses when they steam up.”
    “Okay, genius, what’d we do wrong?” I teased.
    “I did this with some kids at my old school and it worked. Honest!”
    Mom poked her head out the back door. “Stevie? Do you need more hot water? Or I can put the kettle on, if you think —”
    “Just a second, Mom,” I called, hoping to brush her off. She went back into the house.
    I flipped through my notebook, looking over my notes. “So. We know a cloud forms when rising air cools to the point where some of the molecules clump together.”
    “We do?” he asked.
    I couldn’t tell if he was teasing, but I thought so. “Yes. We do. But only if we were paying attention in class. C’mon, you know, like all that stuff about how warm air rises from the surface and meets colder air?”
    “If you say so,” said Wire Rims, grinning at me.
    “Get serious,” I said, reaching out to punch him on the arm. I took my hand back.
    “Get cirrus ?” Wire Rims joked.
    “I get it. Cloud joke. Nice. Very funny.” I chewed on the end of my pencil. “So, if the water’s warm, and we poured in a bunch of ice, it should have worked, right?”
    “Yeah. We poured in two buckets of hot water and one whole bag of ice,” said Wire Rims. “Party size.”
    “Maybe the water has to be hotter,” I said. “We should boil water this time, before we throw it in.”
    “And more ice,” said Wire Rims. “Do you have more ice? I think I remember last time we used way more ice to go for, you know, the contrast. It’s all about the contrast.”
    “Very scientific.” I smiled at Wire Rims.
    “You know what I mean,” he said, looking down and fiddling with the buttons on his camera.
    “Sure,” I said, staring at a lone ice cube bobbing on the surface.
    “How’s it going?” Mom asked, the back door slamming behind her. This time, she came out holding two different plates of strange-looking lumps.
    “What are those?” I asked. “They look weird.”
    “Cookies,” said Mom.
    “I’ll try one,” said Wire Rims, picking up a lump from the red plate and taking a big bite.
    “I’m experimenting with ways to use tofu in recipes for kids, but, you know, hide it so they don’t know they’re eating protein.”
    Wire Rims was eating his cookie and smacking his lips like he had peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth.
    “So, what do you think?” Mom asked.
    “Um, I’ll try one of these,” he said, brushing crumbs off his shirt and taking a cookie from the other plate.
    “Mom, please? We have to get back to our