A cold wind passes through the room as he sits down to begin a tale of wonder and intrigue. He resists the urge to start with the same cliche he used in the last one, and the one before that. This time is different for a very basic reason; everything he is telling is true, happened to him and is in no way a fabrication. Thus begins the tale... It all began my first year of high school and, as these things tend to, involved a girl. I was walking home from what proved to be a normal day and there she was, in the parking lot waiting on her ride. She passed me a glance, and I stared back and soon it was like the heavens had opened up. The wind blew, the sound of my portable cd player faded and I was none the wiser. God, I could have lived inside that stare. It followed me the whole way home, and how I got there is a mystery unto itself. I should have wound up in an alley somewhere like a drunken transient with no sense of north or south, and yet when I sat down at my table and the buzz died down only one thought remained: who the hell was that? It took weeks of waiting outside of the school and badgering all of the friends I had made to eventually learn her name. But this would not be the last time she kept inadvertent secrets. Time went on, as it tends to when you're 14, and soon I was 15 and it was sophomore year and I still had no idea what to do about this girl. Her name, by the way, was Ashley. Funny, until then i'd thought nothing of it and every day since I have counted it among my top 4 favorite words in the english language, second only to "Her", "Name" and "Is". Those four words found themselves grouped together in every notebook and every moment of free thought I had. It was near an obsession, and had this been any other period in my life I would have been seen as the worst kind of stalker and devotee, but here in this short span of four years I was just another lovesick adolescent with too much time and not enough guts. It was the end of sophomore year when something amazing happened: she moved. No, not in the bad "i'll never see her again and now i'll have nothing to live for" move but the "oh my god the girl of my dreams just moved in right on my street" moved. Thats right, for the first time in my life since i'd won the spelling bee in 7th grade I was sure there was a god. Ashley and I would even beging to walk the same route to our school, two blocks away and every morning I wished it was longer. It began with the eyes again, and then a hello. Soon conversation began. She was a leo, and I an aries. Astrologers reading this would be quick to tell you what that means, but all I cared about was that she knew I was an aries. She knew that there was a kid named Steve and he was an Aries. And that validated every torn and crumpled ball of notebook paper that had suffered at my hand for the last two years. We grew to have jokes, have stories and even the occasional moment of advice and genuine care. But the greatest of times began when she saw me at school and didnt walk by me. These were the glory days, the days that I knew should have lasted forever were I to become a god. But my not being a diety meant that the end of sophomore year soon approached. Such fast work made in so little time and I was sure that my summer would be my unending hell. And it was, if made so by the simple fact that her father insisted upon a summer home. Summer homes, by the way, have plagued mankind since the dawn of the first schoolboy crush and this summer made no exception at my expense. Many notebooks perished that summer. Until the time came to buy more, back to school shopping and such, and thus the return of school. Junior year came and to my loathe and contempt there was no glory. This summer home in Vermont had taken in the object of my affection and in three short months returned to me another boys girlfriend, one with that same weak-at-the-knees stare but much less time for her would be escort to school... To Be Continued...