Jasper turned left to right in front of the mirror inside the Hollister store, admiring the new clothes he was trying on. He wore a gray Hollister shirt and a black leather jacket I had picked out for him. “What do you think?” I asked him as I chewed anxiously on my lip.
“It’s awesome,” he replied. “Thank you.” He nodded towards me with a large grin on his face before he went back into the changing stall to put his normal clothes back on. I looked around at my surroundings as I waited for Jasper. Loud music blasted through the store while people hustled around. Many dummies stood in the middle of the store modeling different types of clothing. I glanced into one of the dummy’s eyes, but immediately looked away as a chill ran up my spine. All these dummies in the mall always creped me out. I don’t know why, but there was just something about them that used to give me nightmares when I was younger and I never got over it. I picked up a green and pink and red shirt and examined it for a few minutes. The shirt was cute, but I hated the colors. When Jasper came out of the changing stall, I walked with him to the counter to purchase the clothes. Afterwards we went back hand in hand out to the crazy busy mall still packed with people. Jasper lead me over to Forever 21. This large store wasn’t as packed and didn’t have any freaky dummies. Colorful clothing hung on racks or folded onto small shelves. I sighed, wondering what was Jasper doing dragging me into such a girly store.
“OK, now it’s my turn. You go wait in a changing stall and I’ll pick you out an outfit,” he demanded, a small grin spread across his face.
“OK,” I shrugged, knowing I probably wouldn’t like the any outfit in the store, but I wanted to please Jasper so I went into one of the changing stalls and waited five to ten minutes before Jasper finally came and tossed a turquoise short, flowy dress over the door.
“Jasper, this is a dress,” I called through the stall.
“So, put it on anyways,” he commanded.
I pressed my lips together and stared at the dress still hanging on door with my hands placed firmly on my hips. Besides the fact that this was a dress, it was also hideous, something Jen, my girly girl friend would wear. Sighing, I pulled off my blue Aeropostale shirt off and replaced it with the dress. Leaving my jeans on, I stalked grumpily out of the changing stall and in front of Jasper. He stared at me up and down for a minute. My hands back on my hips, I watched him as a wide grin appeared on his face.
“You look beautiful,” he complemented, still smiling.
Staring at him awkwardly, I tried to recall the last time someone said something like that to me, but I couldn‘t think of anything. “I’m not really,” I muttered, looking down at my black sneakers.
“Go look in the mirror and see for yourself,” he urged. I went over to one of the mirrors on the other side of the stalls, stared at myself for a minute, and turned around a few times, but I just couldn’t see it. Instead I saw a pale horrifying girl with blacked out eyes and jeans who didn’t know what she was doing in a dress like this. Jasper stood beside me, smiling. “So are you going to get it?” he asked. I thought about it for a minute. I usually never wore dresses or skirts of any kind. However, the way Jasper looked at me and talked about me while I was in it gave me a feeling that I never felt before. Something that made me want to shout out and blush until I was red in the face.
So I grimaced back at Jasper any mumbled, “Oh, all right.”
I watched as his smile grew even larger before I stalked back into the stall and slipped my shirt back on.
Once we were out of the store and back in the middle of the mall, my stomach began to growl, loudly.
“Hungry?” Jasper asked.
“Maybe just a little,” I admitted, blushing. “Come on, I know where we can get the best smoothies.” I grabbed Jasper by the hand and lead him halfway across the mall to a small café. There was no line so we went right up to the counter and ordered. “I would like a strawberry banana smoothie,” I told the lady at the counter with short dark brown hair and squared black glasses. I turned to Jasper.
“Uh, raspberry smoothie,” he muttered.
“Will that be all for you both?” the lady asked in a sweet tone. I nodded, pulling out my black wallet with colorful skulls on them. “Five twenty seven.” I handed the lady the money and she handed us our smoothies.
As I sipped mine, I pulled out my cell phone to check the time and saw that I had nine missed calls. I pressed the view now button and found that they were all from Jen. “Sorry I have to call my BF back,” I muttered to Jasper. “Aprarently she’s extremely eager to talk to me,” I mumbled under my breath. Rolling my eyes, I dialed Jen’s number.
“Liz? Where the heck are you?” Jen shouted frantically.
“Chill out! I’m at the mall with Jasper,” I told her. Jasper walked over to me and stood there sipping his smoothie impatiently. I made a quick glance at him and rolled my eyes.
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day. We were supposed to go over my house and work on our history report today.”
“Crap,” I muttered under my breath. “What time is it?”
“Six thirty.”
“Why don’t we just work on it tomorrow then?”
“Because I have a date tomorrow,” Jen hissed. “Look, Liz I’ll start it, but if you don’t get your butt over here and help, you’re doing the rest yourself.” Before I could say anything else, Jen hung up. I turned to Jasper who was still slowly sipping his smoothie. I shook my head at him and sighed, a large grin slipped out onto my face.
“I have to go work on a report at a friend’s,” I told him.
“Sure thing. I just want to get one more thing. Where do you get one of those music in a box?” he asked.
I grinned. “I’ll show you.” We walked out of the café and I took Jasper to the Radio Shack only a couple of stores down. Inside was like any other Radio Shack except smaller. Shinny cell phones, listening devices, CDs, movies, and other unique robotic toys sat on metal shelves throughout the store. I looked over at Jasper to see his facial expression, expecting it to be somewhat amazed at all these wonderful new electronics that supposedly he hasn’t ever seen before. However, Jasper looked the just the same when he walked into any other store. “Here are all the ipods,” I told him, waving my hand around all tiny portable radios in different sizes and colors. Jasper picked up a silver shuffle and examined it carefully. “Here, you probably want an ipod nano with at least two gigabytes,” I suggested, bending over, searching through the stacks of boxes for the right one. “Do you want silver, black, green, or blue?” I asked.
“Green,” he replied.
“You know these are like two hundred bucks?” I handed him a box with a green ipod nano inside.
“Thanks. Yeah, I think I got it.” We went ahead and got in line. As we waited a flat screen TV perched onto the wall above us played the movie, Elf. Jasper stared up at it and I could see the confused look on his face as his brain went wondering in every direction.
“It’s a TV,” I told him before he got a headache.
“But what are those people doing in it?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the television.
“ Um… Just don’t fret about it too much and you’ll be fine,” I said patting him gently on the back.
When it was our turn in line, I pulled Jasper away from the TV and up to the counter.
“Hey,” the large, chunky red headed man at the said to Jasper who seemed to be in the abyss.
Jasper shook his head away from his thoughts. “Hi,” he muttered handing the man the ipod. The man at the counter scanned it and placed it in a small plastic bag.
“one hundred and eighty five,” he commanded, smiling awkwardly at Jasper. Jasper handed the man the money and took the bag with the ipod in it. He took a few steps backwards and began staring up at the TV again. Laughing, I grabbed Jasper by the arm and dragged him out of the store.
We sat down on a nearby bench to finish the rest of our smoothies in an awkward silence. Once we had thrown our empty cups away, we walked out of the mall and into the cool nights air, a dark, clearless sky hovered over us. Cars were barley moving through the streets let alone the parking lot. Cars were at consistent honking wars, flashing lights scattered here and there. A long, harsh, cold blast of wind blew over us, forcing me to squint and huddle over.
I sighed. “Looks like we’re never going to get home.” I turned to Jasper as a brain wave went over me. “Hey, why don’t you run me over to Jen’s since your such a fast runner,” I suggested, excitedly.
Jasper shook his head. “No way, I already made that mistake once. I’m not going to make it again.”
Pouting, I folded my arms and stared at the cars which were now starting to actually move, waiting for Jasper to change his mind. I glanced over at Jasper without moving my head. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. When out of nowhere, he grabbed my arm and swung me onto his back. “You better hold on,” he told me, grinning slyly.
Grinning, I wrapped my arms around his neck. Jasper took off running the opposite way we came from. Once again, everything turned into a blur and the harsh wind blew through my hair and against my red face. I tried to look at the buildings ahead of me, but my eyes were weak from the hard wind. Suddenly, Jasper stopped running and his feet were lifted off the ground and into the air. Without moving a single muscle he soared higher and higher into the night sky. I took a deep breath a clutched tighter to Jasper’s neck. My stomach falling all the way to my bottom, I shut my eyes, hoping this was only a nightmare that was going to end soon. However, Jasper continued to fly through the air. Finally my feet were planted firmly on solid ground and the nightmare was over. When I opened my eyes, I found that I was standing on one of the tallest building in Colorado. I gasped and started to stumbled towards the edge. Jasper grabbed my waist and pulled me away. I took my eyes away from the tiny city below me and turned to Jasper.
“What did you do?” I hissed.
“You said you wanted a ride,” he chuckled.
“I didn’t mean for you to fly me up here! I didn’t even know you could fly!” I felt furious with Jasper and scared at being up so high at the same time. Heights were another thing I feared.
“Oh,” Jasper said with a sheepish grin on his face. He pulled me down so we were sitting in the middle of the building. “Just calm down and look up at the stars,”
I breathed slowly and looked up what used to be a clearless night sky, but was now covered with millions of tiny white sparkling dots. Once I turned back over to Jasper, my heart started to slow down a little. “So this is your big secret; you can fly?” I asked Jasper.
“Yeah,” Jasper mumbled.
“There’s more to you though. I can see it in your eyes.”
Jasper turned away. A harsh gust of wind blew past us and I quickly clutched to Jasper’s shoulder. He put his arm around me and pulled me closer to him, making me feel safer. He felt warm against my frozen body. “Who are you?” I asked him.
“Just a fast, sensitive, loveable guy who has the ability to fly,” he said, smirking.
“I know your much more than that and if you’re not going to tell me I’ll have to figure it out myself.”
“You go right ahead and do that.” Jasper said, rolling his eyes at me.
Sighing, I leaned my head on his shoulder. My eyes began to droop, but I quickly forced them back opened. Receiving the courage, I glanced down below me. I could see tiny lights off the cars, buildings, and houses. Everything else was black and hard to make out.
“Have you ever wondered if there was anything to live for in this world?” I muttered between yawns.
“Sometimes, but I really haven’t been here long enough to figure this world out,” Jasper replied.
“I don’t think we’ll live long enough to figure this world out, only to find our place in it.”
“Have you found your place in it?”
“I’ve been passed around into so many different lives I don’t think I ever will.”
Yawning again, my tired eyes fell. I tried to force them opened again, but I was too weak. The last thing I heard was another gust of wind before I blacked out.
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