Featherscape Tickle Story Collection

My Night With TicklAsh

I honestly never thought that I'd hear from Ashley Lyn Weathers again. You know how it goes: you graduate high school and spend the next decade or two in a confused daze of self-doubt and too much responsibility. You wander around not even knowing who you are. You make friends elsewhere, lose touch, and make new ones. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. So the idea of genuinely catching up with someone from high school, especially after you've long since moved out of that town, is almost unheard of. Not impossible, sure, but very, very rare.

The thing was though Ashley and I were not the best of friends. We didn't hate each other by any means, but I didn't consider us actual friends either. Ashley was the girl who would show up with Starbucks ten minutes late to class every morning and have cheerleading practice after. She was always dolled up. I can't imagine she ever left the house without putting at least an hour or two into her looks, even if it was just to go get the mail. I can't pick on her too much about it, I was just as much a cliche. You know, drama club, enamel pride pins everywhere, obnoxiously belting show tunes in the hallways while having the audacity to still call myself 'shy'. The point being that our paths didn't really cross a lot.

She was pretty though, I'll give her that. All the guys were super into her and it wasn't hard to see why. She had a natural beauty to her, a charm that didn't need to be so manufactured everyday. Maybe it was because she was still super friendly. And smart. And cute. Very cute. Short with wavy blonde hair usually pulled back in a ponytail that poured like silk. She had large, round eyes. Her petite frame gave her a doll-like appearance. She was always the one on the cheerleading squad either getting tossed on the football field or standing at the top of the pyramid. I'd imagine, at least. I was never one to willingly go to the school's sporting events. I just picture that that's what happens. I guess as a writer, it's my job to sell that image of her, so that's my point.

I suppose I should also say that I'm not usually one to write personal stories to share with others. It's a strange new thing that I'm trying, so if it comes off as weird, that's because it is. As such, I'm probably going to go about this like a 'story' story. For me, it's as close to a memory, or the journaling of one, as my mind can convey, but for everyone else it's a story, so the narrative will be more or less structured like one. Okay, I promise I'm getting to it. I know why you're all here, so I'll just jump on in. I just wanted you all to know that, but here we go!

Ashley Lyn Weathers reached out to me a couple months back. And yes, she went by her first and middle name pushed together. People went along with it. I suppose calling her Ashley Lyn was an easy way to distinguish her from the six or seven other Ashleys in our class. It didn't take long for the two names to sound more natural that way, though most of us just called her Ashlyn. I hadn't heard from her since graduating Jefferson High (go J-Hawks!). I'm not even sure that I heard from her then, but you get the picture. I may have talked to her once or twice in passing. Maybe about an assignment one time, I don't remember. But Ashley found me and messaged me online. She found me through my writing profile, of all places, and went by the username TicklAsh.

At first, she was just TicklAsh092, someone who was admittedly a fan of my portfolio as a tickle writer. It wasn't until we started talking that she finally told me who she was and how she knew me. She said that she found me through the interview I did a while back for Sterling Studies and asked if it was cool if we could meet to catch up. It was a little forward for someone I never really claimed to know, but having it be someone from home and so far back comforted me through a sense of nostalgia, I guess. It felt different, like it wasn't just another reader wanting to meet in person, but rather someone from my childhood wanting to reconnect. I was still surprised to find her with such a username, trailing my work. I was probably as blown back by the fact that Ashley Lyn was allegedly a ticklephile like myself as I was at her reaching out or remembering me at all.