My Skylar (3 page)

of missed shots, we ended up knowing practically everything about each other: our likes, dislikes,

embarrassing truths and fears.

It turned out
my
biggest fear came true earlier than expected when one day in mid-August,

two weeks before Mitch was scheduled to go back to Long Island, there was a knock at the door.

Mitch looked morose when I opened it, his hair stuffed under a Yankees cap.

“Skylar, my Dad’s here. He’s taking me home. He made me pack all my stuff just now. My

parents didn’t agree on how long I should be here, and I guess he got his way, so now I have to

leave with him.”

It felt like a sucker punch. “Now? We were gonna do that goodbye party thing, and I still

haven’t made you your gift and—”

“I know. I’m really sorry. I don’t want to leave. I didn’t want to come here in the beginning.

But since I met you, now I wish I could stay…like forever.”

“Can you come in?”

“He’s waiting out in the car.”

The car horn beeped, and Mitch turned around. “Give me a second, Dad. Jeez.”

I was frantic. “I don’t want you to leave, Mitch.”

The tone in his voice broke my heart. “I don’t know how I’m gonna handle everything back

home. I wish I had you there with me. You always make me feel better about everything.”

“Will you keep in touch? Let me know what happens with your parents?”

“I will.”

I felt tears forming in my eyes. “What do we do now?”

His voice was low. “I guess we say goodbye.”

“I don’t want to,” I said as the first teardrop fell.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a large envelope he had tucked under his arm. “Here,

I made you something. I was going to give it to you at the end of the summer. Open it later, okay?”

I nodded through tears, “Okay.”

The horn beeped again. “Mitch! I don’t want to hit rush hour.”

Mitch leaned in and pulled me into a hug. Hot tears streamed down my cheek and onto his

shoulder.

He sniffled, but I couldn’t tell if he was about to cry. “Thank you, Skylar.”

“For what?”

“For giving me something happy to think about when I need it.”

That was the last thing he said before walking away and getting into the car. His face was

barely visible under the cap as he waved goodbye one last time before the car disappeared from

sight into the glare of the sun.

My mother’s wind chimes blew in the breeze as I stared out into the empty street and across to

our desolate basketball court. I was crushed.

I took the envelope straight to my room. Inside was one of the comic books he made. But this

one was different. The characters were…us. It was titled
The Adventures of S&M
. (The alternate meaning of which would not occur to me until several years later.) S had two long braids, could fly and had other special powers. M was an ordinary boy in a Yankees cap. M kept getting into

trouble and S would rescue him from harm in various situations. He had ended the book with
To

Be Continued.

I never heard from him again after that day.

In the five years that followed, the boy with the Yankees cap and the big, blue eyes became

nothing more than a mere fond memory tucked inside my heart.

During that time, Mrs. Mazza moved to Florida, and her house was rented out to new tenants.

I assumed that meant I would never see Mitch Nichols again.

But life is full of surprises, and as promised at the end of the comic, our story was far from over.

CHAPTER 3

SKYLAR

“Angie, can’t you go anywhere without that thing?”

Click. Flash.

My best friend Angie wouldn’t leave the house without her SLR camera strapped around her

neck
.
Sometimes, people thought we were with the press.

“Are you kidding? This place is a mecca for photo ops,” she said.

Angie was odd, but she was a good friend. Because I could pick up on a person’s energy, it was

hard for me to connect with someone unless they were truly genuine. I could always see through

people, and there were very few you could trust with your heart.

Angie didn’t have a bad bone in her body and as annoying as the constant clicking of the

camera was, she took photos because she truly appreciated everything life had to offer, never

wanting to miss an opportunity to capture the unexpected. As embarrassing as it was being the

other half of “camera girl” as she became known, I admired the fact that she didn’t give a crap

what people thought.

Tonight, we were at the high school equivalent of a frat party. Angie and I were freshman at St.

Clare’s, an all-girls Catholic school. So, we had to depend on parties run by the public school kids for any co-ed mingling.

There were always really cute, older boys at Marcus West’s parties, which was why it would

have really been helpful if my friend weren’t geeking out with her massive camera.

Click. Flash.

“Did you see that? That drunk kid just wiped out on the stairs. I snapped it.”

“Annie Liebovitz would be proud, Ang.”

Marcus was a junior and a friend of Angie’s older brother, so we always got invited to the

parties he’d throw when his parents went away. We told our mothers that we were going to the

mall, so we’d have to leave by nine.

We never drank. As much as we liked being around the wild stuff, we both had pretty good

heads on our shoulders and never put ourselves in situations where we could be taken advantage

of.

This party was the same as all the rest. Some cold food from the sub shop that no one touched

sat out on an island in the kitchen. In one room, a group of kids would be smoking pot. In

another, there would be some dumb drinking game going on. In the main living area, Marcus had

his iPod connected to a speaker, and people were either dancing or making out on the couches.

And of course, some of those people would head upstairs to do God knows what.

Angie and I mostly just stood in the living room and people-watched. None of the good-

looking, older boys ever approached us, but if we hung out in one spot long enough, inevitably

some drunk kid with beer breath would come over, put his arm around me and give me some

dumb pick-up line.

Tonight it was, “Where have you been all my life?”

“Running from you,” I said as I slipped from under his arm.

At one point, Angie left me alone, and I went to find the bathroom. There was one right off the

kitchen. When I opened the door, a guy and a girl were making out inside, so I quickly shut it.

Once upstairs to find a different one, I passed another couple kissing in the hallway before

rolling my eyes and entering the bathroom.

I splashed some water on my face and decided I was ready to leave. I wasn’t feeling it here

tonight and wanted to go home to my bed.

On my way out, I approached the same guy and girl who hadn’t moved from the spot where he

had her pinned against the wall as his mouth hovered over hers.

Right after I passed them, it occurred to me that the guy was wearing a Yankees cap. I thought

nothing of it until on my way down the stairs, I heard the girl say, “Mitch, we can’t stay here. Let’s go to one of the bedrooms.”

Mitch? He was wearing a Yankees cap, and his name was Mitch? What were the chances?

I continued down the stairs despite an uneasy feeling. It couldn’t have been
my
Mitch because he didn’t live around here. But at the same time, I hadn’t really gotten a look at his face. It had to be a coincidence, though.
Right?

The smell of booze and weed saturated the air in the hot, crowded living area.

Angie was now in the corner of the room happily talking to a guy who looked about seven-feet

tall. Normally, I would have been thrilled for her, but I wanted to leave.

As I sat alone, I couldn’t get the guy named Mitch out of my mind. With each passing minute,

my curiosity grew. Butterflies set in as I impulsively made my way back up the stairs.

A door at the end of the hall was cracked open. My heart pounded as I walked over to it,

peeked in and saw the guy in the baseball cap lying with the girl on the bed, still fully clothed. I didn’t know what to do but felt like I needed to confirm that it wasn’t him. There was no way I

would sleep tonight if I couldn’t.

The room was dark except for a night-light, so it was impossible to see facial features. Who

knew how long I would have to wait before they came out? And then, how would I explain my

standing outside the room like a creeper?

I went back downstairs where Angie was still in the same corner talking to that really tall guy.

“Angie, I need your help with something.”

She gestured to her new friend. “Skylar, this is Cody.”

I looked up to meet his face. “Hi, Cody. Can I steal her for a minute?”

“Sure. I’ll wait right here,” he said. His voice was surprisingly high and undeveloped for a guy

who had clearly hit puberty. In fact, if I closed my eyes, it could have been mistaken for a girl’s.

I pulled Angie away and led her toward the stairs.

She sighed. “This better be good. I was getting ready to wrap myself around that beanstalk like

a vine.”

“He
is
really tall.” I laughed. “Okay, listen. I’ll let you get back to him, but I just need you to do one thing for me.”

“Okay…what?”

“I’m a little freaked out right now. Remember my friend Mitch from when I was ten?”

“The one who basically disappeared?”

“Yeah. Well, there’s a guy upstairs making out with a girl in one of the rooms. He’s wearing a

Yankees cap. Mitch used to always wear one. Anyway, I thought nothing of it until I heard her call

him Mitch.”

“You think it’s the same Mitch?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out. I couldn’t see his face. I need you to just knock

on the door and ask, ‘Is there a Mitch Nichols in here?’”

Angie had no problem making a fool out of herself, so I knew she’d do it.

“What do I do if he says yes?”

“Chances are, it’s not him. So, don’t worry about that. I just need to rule it out 100-percent.”

She shrugged her shoulders like it was nothing. “Okay.”

I let out a deep breath as Angie approached the room. I stayed several feet back closer to the

stairs. She looked back at me, and I nodded, giving her the go ahead.

She cleared her throat. “Is there a Mitch Nichols in here?”

I was standing too far away to hear his reply. But when Angie turned to look back at me, the

troubled expression on her face made my heart drop.

I lost my breath when he appeared at the doorway.

“I said
I’m
Mitch Nichols. Who wants to know?”

Angie was speechless. “Ugh…”

“What’s with the camera?” he asked.

I was too frozen in shock to help my poor friend out. I just stood there unable to believe my

eyes. It
was
Mitch. I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t move. He hadn’t noticed me yet. I turned my head away.

When I peeked over again, the girl came out of the room, her blonde hair mussed and her

clothing wrinkled. “What the hell is going on?”

“I have no friggin’ idea,” Mitch said to her.

A girl’s voice yelled from the stairs. “Skylar, where did Angie go?”

I turned around. It wasn’t a girl. It was Angie’s guy, Cody with the high voice. He came

upstairs. “What’s going on?”

When I looked back toward the bedroom, I finally let myself look at him. A familiar set of blue

eyes stared back at me, and everything else seemed to vanish. He whispered my name in a deep,

smooth, unfamiliar voice. “Skylar?”

He was handsome.
So handsome.
And tall. My Mitch…but he wasn’t.

A mixture of emotions consumed me, with anger at the forefront. It would have been easier if

he just pretended not to recognize me. That would have been better than knowing he’d been here

in town and not bothered to contact me. I couldn’t handle this. I needed air. So, I turned around

and made my way down the stairs.

When I exited the front door, I just kept running down the road away from the house. My

mind was in a haze, and my throat felt frozen from swallowing the frigid air as I ran.

Up until this moment, Mitch Nichols represented pleasant childhood memories that I

cherished. In seconds, all of that was destroyed. He would no longer be immortalized in my mind

as an innocent and vulnerable boy. Now, he’d forever be a cheap manwhore who took girls to back

rooms at parties.

It was starting to drizzle, and I found myself running into thick layers of fog. I stopped about

three blocks away to catch my breath when I received a text from Angie.

Where are u? He ran after you.

The opaque fog made it impossible to see anything behind me. Then, I heard footsteps

running toward me in the distance.

CHAPTER 4

MITCH

She wasn’t supposed to find out like that, and I damn well never thought she’d be at this

stupid party.

After someone shouted, “Skylar,” I looked over toward the stairs and nearly lost my ability to

breath. I knew it was her, but at the same time, the person standing there wasn’t exactly the

skinny girl in braids I remembered. She was grown up, really pretty in a classy way, unlike Ava,

the girl I came here with. After I called out Skylar’s name, I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and then she was gone.

“Mitch? What’s going on? Who was that girl?” Ava asked.

I just stared speechless at the empty stairs.

The girl with the camera snapped a picture of me before running to chase after Skylar.