I had, like, a sad-spaz on this chapter. Because I'm a sap for romance and GAH WE JUST ALL KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN SO WE'RE ALL LIKE, "NO, DAMN YOU SALLY FOR NOT GOING DAMN YOU DAMN YOU DAMN YOU GIRL YOU COULDA SAVED HIM WAAAAA!" Anywho, review~

Oh, and I sadly do not own that hilarious song down there. That is The Once-ler's Traveling Madness which, if you have no heard, must Youtube.

~!~Sally's POV~!~

"Okay, are you sure you have everything?" I anxiously ask. The Once-ler nods with a roll of his eyes.

"I'm sure, mother," he says.

"I act like a mother because you need one," I say, as I always do when he calls me 'mother'.

"I need a girlfriend that'll kiss me goodbye, not a mother," he says. I smile.

"I guess I can do that." I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down to my level, pressing my lips firmly against his. We stay glued together like that for a bit before I remember something suddenly and shove him back. "Oh, stay here!" I run over to my house, since we're in his front yard, and run upstairs, returning a minute later with a package in my hands. "Here!" I say, thrusting it at him. He looks at me oddly. "A going away present!"

"Sally, you didn't have to get me anything," he tells me.

"I'll take this back, then!" I say, reaching out my hands to take it. He takes a step back and says, "But I'll take it anyway!" I laugh and he kneels down, resting the box on the ground. He glances up at me before taking the lid off. His jaw drops.

"Oh...oh my...my..." He holds up the black electric guitar, holding it as if it would shatter. "It's...oh, God, you..." He looks up at me. "I love you!" He places it back down and jumps to his feet, lifting me into his arms and kissing me passionately. He pulls back. "I love you." He kisses me again. "I love you so, so much." He kisses me again. "God, I'll miss you." He kisses me again. "Come with me?" He keeps one hand against my back, putting the other on the side of my face, looking into my eyes seriously. "Please?"

"Oncie," I say, leaning my forehead on his, "you know I can't."

"Why?" His voice is nearly a whimper.

"I need to finish school."

"You hate school."

"But I need it." Keeping my legs tight around his waist, I moved my hands up into his hair, pulling his face closer. "I'll finish senior year, and then I'll come, okay?"

"I can't wait that long." He kisses me lightly. "Christmas break?" Every year, we have a two and a half week break from school at Christmas time. And if we don't spend that together, I'll have to wait nearly a year to see him, and it'd be the first Christmas we spent apart. With that though, I nod.

"Christmas break. I promise." I kiss him softly. "I love you, Once-ler."

"I love you too, Sally."

~!~!~!~

"Eat, Sally!" Yo-Yo says, shoving an apple under my nose. "You haven't touched your food!"

I'm sitting in my chair, staring down at my lap, my eyes trained on the diamond ring I haven't taken off since I got it over a year ago. "I don't want to eat," I say in a small voice. "I want my Oncie." Yo-Yo groans. The Once-ler left yesterday, and I haven't been able to smile since.

"Look, Pinwheel," Yo-Yo says, slapping the apple back down onto her tray and grabbing me by the shoulders. She roughly turns me towards her. "Perv is gone. Moping won't change that. He's still gone. So shut up!"

I'm staring blankly at her. Nothing she says makes any sense. Probably because I'm not listening. I'm just imagining that the Once-ler used to sit in the seat she's in.

"You're hopeless," she says. "Just plain hopeless." She lets go of me and turns back to her tray, shoving her cookie into her mouth. I look back down at my promise ring. Forever, it says.

Forever, I repeat in my head. He's still mine. And I only have two more months until I see him. And then our forever will continue.

~!~Oncie's POV~!~

I strum on my new guitar, the flap of my hat blowing slightly in the wind. I've been gone for, what, four hours? Four hours and I'm homesick. Well, Sally-sick, I guess. I hate being away from her.

"Melvin?" I say to my mule, looking down at him. "You know what?" He whinnies, which I never quite understood fully. I mean, I know a mule is a horse and a donkey crossed, but whinnying...

"I'm very bored." He whinnies again. "I'm gonna sing." I start strumming my guitar again. A tune forms before I know it. A catchy one, too. So I sing.

"Nah, nah, nah nah nah nah. a-nah nah nah nah nah nah." That's boring. "Woop-boh, woop-a-doo-boo, going off to make a thneed." I look around. No one can hear me. No one at all. I shrug and go on. "I've got a cramp in my back. And another cramp in my right rump cheek."

~!~!~!~

"You and I will have separate grandchildren," I say to Melvin, sitting sideways at the front of the wagon, "and we will say to them-" I slip, so I'm now upside down. My hand falls across the strings. "Melvin, look, I'm playing my guitar upside down." I strum a bit more and Melvin just turns his head and looks hard at me. "Don't look at me like that," I say. "It's just something to do." I pause. "Oh, wait, I forgot the words." I think for a second. "Nah-nah...naaaahh, naaahh...naaahhh..."

Sally's voice flits through my head from something she said to me two years ago, so I voice is. "Do you ever thing really hard about boredom?" Melvin looks back to the front and I sit back up. Another part of that day comes into my head. I strum. "Is that annoying?" I strum again. "Is that annoying?" I strum more. "Is this annoying?"

~!~!~!~

"Look," I sing, looking up at the sky as my hands continue to strum, "it's some circling birds, I bet you that that they're going to eat our corpses!" I look down. "And then the worms will come out of the ground." An armadillo runs by. "And some other little critter's gonna come and...make furniture out of our bones." Melvin looks at me once again. "And sit on it. And have lovely dinners." He turns away. "And this whole thing will be a disaster! Nah, nah, nah, ah-nah nah nah nah!" I suddenly remember my lack of sleep, and yawn, "Nah, nah, nah...a-nah, nah, nah, nah nah..." Sleep takes me.

~!~Sally's POV~!~

"Hey." Mike sits beside me in study hall. I nod slightly at him before going back to my math homework. It's so hard! I wish Oncie were here to help, and by help, I mean to let me copy his. "Where's the Once-ler?"

"He left," I say shortly, flipping a page in my math book. "Had to find something."

"Oh." He scoots his chair a bit closer to mine. "In that case, we should have dinner sometime." I glare at him.

"My boyfriend wouldn't appreciate me going out with someone while he's gone." I look back at my math book.

"Oh, I just though...since he was gone you two had-"

"Maybe you shouldn't think, Mike," I snap, not looking up from the book. "It would do you a lot of good!" I look up and sigh. "I'm sorry. I'm not good at coping without him. I mean, I've literally never spent a day without seeing him."

"It's okay, Sally," he says.

So, yeah, uh, review!