She was absolutely beautiful. Her straight, light-brown hair fell across her shoulders while the sun played on her natural blond streaks. When she smiled, her brilliant blue eyes sparkled. Her laugh, which trickled out of her mouth, could brighten the whole room, if not the whole world. Her name, Victoria, just rolled off your tongue. She was perfect, as far as I was concerned, and I felt that she would one day take over the world. Wherever she was around, I could hardly take my eyes off her. She was the only thing that existed in my world. I was head over heels in love.

             I tried every way I could think of to get her attention, but nothing seemed to work. I hung around her friends, I made eye contact with her whenever I could, I sat near her in every class we had together. Any chance I got; I even made a fool of myself in front of her, just to catch her eye, but she was oblivious to the fact that I even existed. Once, I was lucky enough to sit behind her in a history class. I finally got up the nerve to tap her on the shoulder. After many repeated tapping attempts, she finally turned around.

            “Would you happen to have an extra pencil that I could borrow?” I asked politely, hoping to strike up a conversation. She quickly shook her head no, looking a bit confused. She turned back around as the teacher started to lecture about the Civil War. I brokenheartedly pulled my own pencil out of my backpack and began to take notes.

            By pure luck, I managed to find out where she lived. How, you ask? To tell you the truth, I simply followed her and a friend home from school one day. They walked the majority of the way home, then split at a park and went their separate ways. I spent the whole rest of the walk behind her worried about what I would do if she should turn around and see me following. By the time we arrived at her house, the butterflies in my stomach had become unbearable and I just gave up and went home. About a week later, I finally got up the guts to go back to her house. I even bought flowers for the occasion, desperate to do anything to impress her. She only lived a couple of blocks away from me, so it was a short walk from my house to hers. I rushed home after school, cleaned up, grabbed the flowers, and ran over to her house before my nervousness could get the best of me. I went up her driveway and onto the wide, wooden porch that spanned the front of the house. Before I could chicken out, I hurriedly knocked on the front door. A tall woman, who I assumed was her mother, answered the door. Now I surely knew where Victoria got her good looks from. Appalled by her beauty, it took me a moment to find the right words.

            “Hi... I’m Teddy. I go to school with Victoria,” I paused, “and I’ve always had a bit of a crush on her,” I blurted out before I could think about what I was saying. The words spilled effortlessly out of my mouth, as if on a mission to embarrass me.

            “Come in Teddy,” said the woman, smiling softly. She stepped back to give me room to enter the house. I did, and she closed the door tightly behind me. “So Teddy, you know Victoria from school, do you?” she asked as she politely took the flowers from me and walked quickly towards the kitchen. I followed, scrambling to keep up.

            “Yes,” I answered. “I would have just talked to her there, but every time I tried to speak to her, she seems to just blow me off,” I informed her politely.

            “Speak to her?” the woman asked as she arranged the flowers in a vase she had gotten from a cupboard, seeming amused. Needless to say, I was not nearly as entertained by this as she was.

            When the confused look on my face revealed that I hadn’t a clue what she meant, she smiled and began to snicker silently. When she did so, I noticed that her eyes lit up the same way that Victoria’s did. She then paused and said, “Bless your heart. The reason that Victoria doesn’t talk to you is because she’s deaf.” My eyes immediately widened with stunned surprise. I now saw the humor of the situation. All those times that I had watched her, and not once had I noticed the signing, the hearing aid, or the constant note-writing. To me, she seemed like a perfectly normal girl, capable of conquering the world if that was what she desired to do.

            I heard the front door open and close, and before I knew what was happening, Victoria entered the room. Finally, here we were, face to face. I wanted to say so much to her, but I had no idea how. Her mother, noticing my discomfort, stepped in to help. “This is Teddy from your school,” she signed to Victoria while speaking the words aloud so that I also could understand what she was saying. “He was interested in meeting you, he even brought you flowers,” she continued. Victoria nodded that she understood and she stuck out her hand to me. I grabbed it and shook it. When I let go, she signed something to me, something that I couldn’t understand. I turned to her mom for help and she informed me that Victoria had just signed “Hello my name is Victoria.” With her mother’s help, I managed to sign “Hello my name is Teddy.” I spent the whole afternoon with Victoria and her mother, but the time just flew by. They taught me a lot of sign language, but I enjoyed just being in her company more then anything. I spent many more afternoons over at her house, learning how to speak a new language, without my mouth ever uttering a single word.

            Now, I said before that I believed that Victoria is a perfectly normal girl, capable of conquering the world. And I must say I still believe this to be true. She stole my heart back then, our freshmen year of high school, and she tightly holds onto it now. We are still together five years later. It seems like we have been through everything together, all the little ups and downs that life has to offer. I feel like I’ve known her my whole life. I can tell her anything and, I must say, these have been the best five years of my life. So much so, in fact, that tonight I plan on proposing to her, on our five year anniversary. And I dearly hope she says yes. Well, she doesn’t actually have to say anything, a simple nod will do.