It had been a strange day.  The sky was grey like a ceiling over the world, and everything was wet.  Wet and cold.  There was pressure everywhere, my "safe-haven" wasn't safe anymore.  My grandpa started telling me how I was going to screw up my life if I didn't start applying for FASFA and getting my college education completed. I was stressed out and wearing thin as I got in my '96 Ford and drove away, the rain sporadically hitting my windshield.  I didn't want to go home yet.  I couldn't.  So I called him.  "What are you doing?" I asked softly. "Homework," he said.  It figured, ever dilligent boy.  "Can I take you to the falls?" I asked. "Yes."  Ten minutes later he slid into my car.  "Hello there," he grinned.  "Let's go on an adventure," I said.  We pulled out of his driveway and into the great unknown.  I stopped for gas.  He thought it was funny that I always liked to park at pump number eight.  I liked that he got out of the car to talk to me while I pumped my gas.  He was a good friend--taking time out of his life to chill with somebody who just needed some down-time. We drove out to the falls which were closed due to some recent bad weather, and we walked down the hiking trail to the river beneath the cliff.  He took my hand as we carefully stepped over the big rocks, making certain that I didn't slip--ever-ready to catch me if I was going to fall.  We were quiet.  We didn't talk much.  We just walked.  The mist from the waterfall was thick and grey, the muddy water turned at our feet as we stood on the rock, the closest we could get to the powerful crashing water.  I felt the thundering all around me because it was more then something you could just hear, you could FEEL it--it was big and terrible, and tremendous, and somehow the moment swallowed small little me.  He and I entered a niche in time that would be ever-captured in my mind, the memory of us.  Not "us" because we were dating, or our togetherness, but "us" because that stormy afternoon he and I were driven by the same silence to a moment that we would share forever.