✩ like shooting stars [damen]

Ellea Channelle Banks

Two years had passed since I lost contact with Ashton Oliver Kingsley. It's not as though we had fought or anything, it was more like we had grown apart. I had become increasingly busy with my studies and my volunteer work, and so our paper plane letters became less and less frequent. And eventually, they stopped altogether. For months afterwards I would continue to stare at his house, longing to get to know him more, longing to actually meet him. Now it was just like any other house dotted along the street. I was sitting in the park, just enjoying the nice breeze that sometimes blew through the district. I closed my eyes as to not notice the many oil rigs in the distance, and I dreamed I was in a meadow, reading a book, left all alone to myself. And then Ashton was there with me. It was an odd occurrence, having not had thought about the man for many months. But there he was, though I had never seen him before. Back when they talked, I had drawn up a sketch of what I believed he would look like. My dream man. His hands were coarse from working, muscles rippling through his body. His face was smooth yet stern, and he always had a smile on his face. Ashton Kinglsey morphed from a friend into a dream, and the curiosity was gnawing at my mind.

I patiently waited out on my front porch, reading a new book I had picked up from the library. My eyes frequently looked up to every sound, waiting until the right moment before I could make my move. And then she stepped out of the house. Her formal attire suggested that she was going to a party, and would be out for a while. I kept reading until she walked far enough away that I couldn't see her and shouted through the screen door. "Mom, Dad, I'm going out for a bit!" I knew that they would check which direction I was walking, so I stepped out into the streets of District 5 and turned left. After about five minutes of walking, I sidestepped into my friend's back yard. I had to make it to my backyard without my parents seeing me. With every small movement I froze, and then leaped over the next fence into someone else's yard. It was a lengthy process, but eventually I made it back to my house. My father kept a ladder outside for when he needed to fix a leaky roof, and I knew that I could probably muster up enough strength to carry it by myself. It was heavy, and it took longer than I anticipated to make it to the Kingsley household, but I had made it.

After taking a quick breather, I gently propped the ladder against the siding of his house. Positioning the ladder so that the edge lined up perfectly to his window, I gave the ladder a quick shake. Unsturdy. I'm going to get myself killed, I thought, but I had come too far to back off now. My shaky hands clutched a rung, and I deeply exhaled. My first foot collided with the rung, and then a second. I was on the ladder. I didn't look up and I didn't look down as I followed the same careful pattern of grasping the rungs with my hands and stepping up. The ladder wobbled, and for a second I was certain that it was going to tip over. I nearly shrieked in relief when I saw that I had made it to the top. I instructed myself to never look down, and my breathing became heavy. It took effort for me to remove my right hand from the ladder and curl it into a fist. I tapped on the window, praying that Ashton Oliver Kingsley would not let me fall.