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.

What the fuck?

I left Ava and followed the girl downstairs as a seven-foot tall guy I recognized from school trailed me.

“Is Skylar your friend?” I called from behind the girl.

“Yes. I need to find her,” she said before asking someone, “Have you seen Skylar?”

Some guy pointed to the door. “She just left a minute ago.”

I put my hand on the girl’s shoulder to stop her from leaving. “Please. Let me go find her.” I ran outside before she could respond.

It was really foggy out, and I had to pick a direction. I chose left because it was toward her house.

After a few minutes of running, I was almost ready to turn around. That was when I noticed her stopped further down the road. When she heard me approaching, she turned around. I slowed down and was out of breath when I finally caught up to her.

“You always could run like hell.” When she didn’t say anything, I continued, “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

She looked up at the sky and let out a single sarcastic laugh. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

She was so pretty.

My heart was pounding. “I guess you’re right.” I was really taken aback by how different she looked. Long, wavy auburn hair wet from the drizzly rain replaced the two braids I remembered she always wore. She was still petite but definitely wasn’t a little girl anymore. I was all too aware of that.

Even though it was dark, the streetlights shined on her face, illuminating her green eyes. She was waiting for me to speak, but I was too busy studying her.

She broke my stare when she said, “This is the part where you open your mouth and say something. Maybe explain why you never called or wrote to me. Maybe explain why you show up five years later screwing some whore at a party on my turf.”

“Whoa…wait. I wasn’t screwing her,” I said defensively. It bothered me how much I needed her to know that.

“It’s none of my business anyway. I—”

“I wasn’t going to have sex with her,” I said with my eyes peering into hers.

“Fine. TMI. Like I said, it’s none of my business.”

“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me right now,” I said.

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like you’re disappointed in me.”

Why the f**k did it matter so much what this girl thought of me? It shouldn’t have, but it did. It was why I had waited in the first place to tell her I was back here.

She closed her eyes and sighed. Her expression softened. “I’m just a little shocked to see you, okay?”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I let out a deep breath before telling her, “I live here now, Skylar.”

“What? Since when?”

“Since last week.”

“I don’t understand…”

“My mother lost her job and has really been strapped for cash over the past year. Since my grandmother moved to Florida and owns her old house outright, she offered it to us so that we could live rent-free. My Dad doesn’t give a shit about what we do anymore. So, we moved.”

“How did I not see you move in?”

“We didn’t have a truck or anything. The house is all furnished. We drove up half our stuff a week ago and go back for the rest next weekend.”

“You’ve been living across the street from me for a week?”