i. when she was six years old, in the evenings she would open her window and lean against the white window ledge and see him jumping on his bed in his spaceship pyjamas and wait for him to notice and wave at her from his house next door.
ii. when she was seven years old they were in the same class at school together and they sat next to each other every day and they walked to school together and shared coloured pencils. her favourite colour was blue like the sky, and his was silver like the stars.
iii. when she was eight years old they made a telephone out of two tin cans and a piece of fishing wire and they stretched it across the empty space between their opposite bedrooms and every night they would talk about the stars before they said goodnight.
iv. when she was almost ten she went up to him at school and gave him a hug and invited him to her birthday party. he was with his friends who were boys and so he said that he didn’t want to come. she didn’t understand until later. boys can be silly.
v. when she was twelve she thought the boy was cute and wanted to hold his hand. he wanted to hold her hand too, he just didn’t know it yet.
vi. when they were fourteen the girl had had enough of wanting to hold his hand when he didn’t seem to want to hold hers, so she held other boys’ hands instead. the boy thought she was pretty but he didn't tell anyone.
vii. she was sixteen and her parents had gone out for a weekend in the summer. she brought another boy from school up to her bedroom and they were kissing fast and he started taking her clothes off and she started taking off his and sounds of love-making trailed through the window for the neighbour boy to hear and he looked at the naked silhouettes in her bedroom and slammed his window shut and locked it tight and drew his blinds and cried that night.
viii. when she was seventeen she spent a lot of her time crying over boys she got undressed with, and the boy next door noticed scars on her wrists and so one day when they were sitting on the grass together (they were still best friends, you see) and she was making daisy chains, he placed his hand atop of hers and told her she was beautiful.
ix. at eighteen they made love in his bedroom and afterwards, the girl told him she’d never made love before, and the boy didn’t understand. she told him that it didn’t feel like love with the others. they both feel asleep crying. neither of them really knew why.
x. at nineteen they moved away to go to university in different parts of the state, and they tried talk on the phone or on the computer most nights, "hey, remember when we were eight and we made that telephone out of tin cans and fishing wire?", but somehow it wasn't the same. they didn't talk as much after that.
xi. at twenty they came home for the summer and they hadn't talked in months. the boy and the girl sat on her front porch and the air was humid with the clutter of unsaid words and so she stepped off the porch and onto the grass and started playing with the daisies like they did five years ago. he sat down with her and they lied down on the warm grass and had their hands side by side. her scars were so faint now.
xii. the boy couldn't stop thinking about her again, but instead of waiting for so long like he did when they were younger, he packed a suitcase with the things he needed and threw it in the back of his beat-up car, and drove and drove and drove without thinking but when he finally arrived at her school he got so nervous and butterflies were rattling against his ribcage but he found her dorm room and the girl threw her arms around him and they hugged for the longest time.
xiii. at twenty-one they would visit each other most weekends, even though it was such a long drive. it was better than phone calls. they went for walks and held hands and kissed and laughed and made love and smiled and told secrets and fought and made up and looked in jewellery store windows.
xiv. at twenty-three they both finished school, and they spent the summer together travelling. the boy found the perfect place and kissed the girl on the cheek and got on one knee and asked her if she would like to marry him. she laughed and cried and smiled so hard her cheeks ached and finally said "of course." she had never been happier.
xv. at twenty-four the boy and the girl got married, right in her backyard. it was perfect. she felt beautiful in her dress and her scars were only visible if you looked really hard. the boy was so happy and so proud. she was so beautiful.
xvi. by thirty, the boy and the girl had a boy and a girl of their own.
xvii. at forty, the girl got very sick and all her hair was gone. the boy got very sick too, but in a different way, a sad way. a way that chemotherapy could not fix.
