Remember Me Read Free Page B

showed any deep feelings or concern for anything but "things."

    Mrs. Parish shrugged, squeezing a couple more glasses into the dishwasher.

    "Does he ever discuss the two of you?'

    "Yeah, sure," I lied.

    "You communicate well when you're alone together then.

    That's good. That was the only thing I was concerned about." She closed the door on the washer and turned it on.

    The water churned. So did my stomach. I pushed away the cake. I'd heard a car pulling up outside. It must be Daniel, I thought. I excused myself and hurried to the front door.

    I found him outside opening our garage. Graduation was a couple of weeks off, but my parents had already bought me my present. I can't say what it was without giving the impression I was spoiled rotten.

    It cost a fortune. It was fast. It was foreign.

    It was a Ferrari.

    Oh, my car. I loved it. I loved how red it was. I loved everything about it. Daniel loved it, too, apparently. He hardly noticed my shining presence when I came out to greet him. He fell in love with my car at first sight.

    He had taken longer to fall in love with me.

    I had officially met Daniel after a high school play in which he played the lead. I have an incredible memory for facts, but I cannot remember what the play was about. That says a lot. He blew me away, and he wasn't even that great.

    He had forgotten several lines, and he'd been totally miscast.

    None of that mattered, though. He just had to strut around up there under the lights, and I felt I just had to go backstage afterward and commend him on his artistry. Of course, Jo had to drag me kicking and screaming to his dressing room. I was sort of shy, sometimes.

    Since we went to the same school and were in the same grade, I naturally knew o/him before we met after the play.

    I would like to record for posterity that the reverse was also true, that he had noted with approval my existence the four years we had spent together at Hazzard High. But die first thing he asked when Jo introduced us was if I was new to the area. What a liar. He didn't want me to think I was too cute.

    But he asked me out, and that was the bottom line. He asked me out right there in front of his dressing room with Jo standing two feet away with her mouth uncharacteristically closed.
    Later, it seemed so amazing to me that I wondered if Jo hadn't set it all up beforehand. But she swore to the day I died that it wasn't so....

    I must talk about his dashing body. It was smooth and hard. It had great lines, like a great race car. Except Daniel wasn't red. He was tan. He hugged the road when he moved.

    He had legs, he had hips. He had independent rear suspension.

    We used to make out all the time in his bedroom with the music on real loud.

    And then, one warm and lustful evening, two weeks before Beth's birthday party, we took off our clothes and almost had sex.

    I loved to think about sex. I could fantasize six hours a day and not get tired, even if I was repeating the same fantasy with only slight variations. I was a master of slight variations.

    But one can think too much. When we got naked together in bed, things did not go well.
    Daniel couldn't...

    Oh, this will sound crude if I say it, so I'll say instead that I shouldn't have overdone it comparing him to my Ferrari. Yet, in a sense, he was as fast as the car. I left the room a virgin.

    He was so embarrassed. I didn't understand why. I was going to give him another fifty chances. I wasn't going to tell anyone. I didn't tell anyone, not really. Maybe Jo, sort of.

    But she couldn't have told anyone else and had enough details to sound like she knew what she was talking about.

    Unless she had added details of her own.

    Daniel and I had other things in common, other things we liked to do together.

    We both enjoyed going to movies, to the beach, out to eat. That may not sound like a lot, but when you're in high school, it often seems like that's all there is.

    Anyway, when I went outside to welcome Daniel,