"Oh, I did. I had my own sewing machine. My Barbie was the best-dressed doll in all of Sweden," she proudly replies, but a second later, she presses her lips together.
I don't want that. I don't want her to be unhappy. I want her to laugh and enjoy the day.
"Surely your Barbie had a favorite dress," I quickly say.
"She was absolutely fashion-crazy. Of course, she loved everything I made for her," she responds, grinning.
I nudge her playfully as we walk. "Your friends' dolls were probably very jealous."
She lowers her eyes, her smile fading. "I didn't have many friends, actually just one," she admits. "But that was okay since I hardly had time to play anyway."
I maintain a questioning expression. Even though I'd love to know everything about her, I won't break my promise.
She shrugs and lets her gaze wander to the surrounding trees. "I spent every free minute atTouch av lyx."
"So that's where your knowledge of fashion comes from. I noticed it in Milan," I say. From the very first moment, she seemed like she had been doing it all her life. She used technical terms that nobody else knew and knew who had what role in the team.
"I love that company," she whispers so softly that I can barely hear her. Still, I sense that those words are associated with pain for Sky.
Instinctively, I pull her closer to me and gently stroke her arm. I should probably ask her now what exactly the label means to her and give her the chance to tell me about her father.
Jakob would want me to do that, but I remain silent.
"At the headquarters, there's a rooftop terrace," she breathes with a wistful smile in the silence between us. "In the summer, I used to sit there for hours with my sketchbook, dreaming of having my own show. I'd go up there in the winter to watch the stars."
In my imagination, I see a sad little girl with no friends, standing all alone on the rooftop terrace. Bundled up in the most beautiful designer pieces, arms tightly wrapped around her body, she looks up.
"I wanted to be like them." Sky takes a deep breath. "I wanted to shine."
"But you do," I say. And I'm sure she did back then too.
Anyone who looks at her even once must recognize that. I noticed it the first time I saw her atPolarnatt.
She was so... unique. And if she hadn't behaved so ridiculously during the course of this and the following evenings, I might have even fallen in love with her.
Back then.
Not anymore. Because when we first met, I had no idea what people were capable of.
I'm so lost in my thoughts that I don't notice Sky's reaction, or perhaps there isn't one, and she simply rests her head silently on my shoulder.
"Sometimes I imagined reaching up really high to pluck one of the stars from the sky. I hoped that if I held it in my hands, its radiance would rub off on me," she tells me.
No. Even if she could pluck a million stars from the sky, they would all pale compared to her own radiance.
Wait a minute. What am I thinking?
Have I gone crazy?
As if Sky senses my body stiffening, she lifts her head from my shoulder, slips out of my arms, and clears her throat awkwardly.
"Well, kids imagine many crazy things," she says hastily, wrapping the deep red scarf around her face, covering it up to just below her nose, and turning away.
Then she rushes away so quickly that I can hardly keep up with her. And I don't want to. Because I'm far too busy trying to understand what just happened to me.
