The Girl Who Only Talked To Me

Chapter Three

The months passed with a lot of laughter and teasing and chocolate donuts, and Skyler never ceased to make me smile. We hung out constantly, and talked even more, over the phone, over texts, through our windows, however we wanted to. We even made one of those little "telephone" things with a string stretched in between two cups and put it between our windows to see if it would work, going back to our inner kindergarteners. That plan didn't work out so great, though, so we resorted to our real phones.

Skyler loved doing stupid stuff that we remembered from when we were little kids, like smushing marshmallows with our fingers until they turned into taffy, or building forts, or dressing up in stupid costumes to make each other laugh. But for all the kid stuff we did, we also had times when we were more serious and would just talk for hours on end about whatever came to mind. Sometimes we'd go see movies or watch a school football game, and sometimes we'd just sit in one of our houses and play board games or video games. It didn't matter what we did, because we always had fun and were happy.

My parents didn't mind the time I spent with Skyler, mostly because they were glad I'd actually made an effort in this town, unlike the past few places we had lived, where I had given up on making friends, knowing I'd just leave them in a couple months. I had a different feeling about this time, but I could never tell for sure.

I asked Skyler to the school's Christmas Dance a week before we got on winter break.

We had been at the park one evening, lying on our backs in the snow, exhausted from all the snow angels we had made.

The sky was growing darker and the stars were peeking out from the clouds as I turned my head to face her.

"Sky?" I asked softly.

"Yeah?" She responded, still keeping a lookout for shooting stars.

"Will you go to the dance with me?"

She rolled over onto her side, facing me with a bright smile across her face. "I'd love to," she said, her gloved hand finding mine.

So a week later I walked over to her house in a red button down shirt and black slacks, carrying a small bouquet of flowers. I rang the doorbell nervously, having never gone to a dance before, let alone with a date, and her mom answered it, telling me that Skyler would be down in a minute.

I talked to Mrs. Dawson for a couple minutes, telling her about the dance and politely not saying anything when she gushed about Skyler and I being a cute couple or whatever.

"Skyler told me she hasn't been to one of the Christmas dances before, either," I said at one point.

"Wait, Skyler talks to you?" the look of shock on Mrs. Dawson's face was unmatchable.

I looked at her in confusion and nodded. "Yeah, we talk all the time."

She finally answered after a long moment of stunned silence. "Skyler doesn't talk to anyone," she whispered, her eyes wide open. "She hasn't in over a year."

Skyler appeared at the top of the stairs, so beautiful she took my breath away. Mrs. Dawson stepped back from me and put on a wide smile, holding up her camera.

"I'm going to go get your dad, Skyler, I'll be back for pictures!" Mrs. Dawson called, hurrying out of the room.

I took the chance to walk over to the stairs where Skyler had reached the bottom. Her dress was dark green and fluttery and shimmered in the light. It brought out the green in her hazel eyes, and I smiled as I looked at her.

"You're so beautiful," I told her. Her cheeks turned pink and she turned to me, smiling, and whispered, "You look really nice, too. I hope my mom didn't say too many embarrassing things while I was upstairs."