Dream & Dare by Susan Fanetti Read Free Book Online

the…?”
     
    Then she saw a glittery silver envelope, and she remembered. “Oh, stars. I remember what this is. This is the stuff I gave Margot when she threw us a twenty-fifth anniversary party. God, that was almost eighteen years ago.”
     
    “You gave her all these family photos and she never gave them back?”
     
    Bibi shrugged. “Honey, you’ve seen our house, I got pictures to spare. They’re everywh—” Remembering that she had nothing, nothing , she cut off abruptly and put her hand over her mouth to block the sob that had threatened to explode from her lips.
     
    Faith reached out and put her hand over Bibi’s. Only that touch, no words.
     
    When Bibi was in control again, she nodded at the box and whispered, “This is all I have left now. Oh, God, Faithy, I’m so glad you found this.”
     
    Together, the emptied the box, spreading everything across the table. When the box was empty, without saying a word, they both began sorting the photos out. Faith picked up the envelope first. She opened it and slid out a pearly-white card. The party invitation.
     
    “Wow. This is fancy.”
     
    “It was a fancy party. Your mama loved to throw parties, and she did that one up big. At a hotel and everythin’.” Bibi laughed, remembering, and took the invitation from Faith’s hands. Embossed silver script on pearlized paper. “We got thrown out of the hotel around…two in the mornin’, I think? When the boys started to get rowdy. We finished the night at Denny’s and all crashed at the Motel 6 next door. That was a great party.”
     
    She set the invitation down and picked up a square, badly-framed color photo. From her old Kodak 110 camera. Her and Hoosier and Gina, in the living room of that grungy apartment. The wall in the background was covered in band posters, stickers, and LP covers. They’d done that like wallpaper over that room, stapling and nailing new things up all the time, right over what they’d put up before. Like the walls of the clubs they hung out at.
     
    She remembered the day that picture had been taken. Blue had been the one behind the camera.
     
    Faith leaned over and looked. “Is that you? Oh my God, that’s you! You were totally a punk! When were you a punk?”
     
    Bibi looked up to see Faith goggling at her. “Hooj never got it, either. But I liked that scene. I really did, for the most part.”
     
    Faith pulled an old eight-by-ten in a cardboard folder frame from a stack she’d made. She opened it. Bibi recognized the photo from the frame and cringed. When Faith held it out, Bibi knew what she was going to say.
     
    “This girl is not a punk. She’s adorable, though, with her Dorothy Hamill hair.”
     
    It was a homecoming dance photo. Standing under a white wicker arch covered with plastic ivy, Bibi wore an electric-blue taffeta dress, cocktail length, with sleeves so big and puffy they brushed her earrings. And dyed-to-match pumps. Joel, standing behind her with his arms stiffly around her waist, wore a white tuxedo, with tails, and a ruffled shirt in the same electric blue as her dress. They’d thought they were the bee’s knees. Oh, God, the late Seventies.
     
    She was wearing a gardenia wrist corsage, too. Mercy.
     
    “No, she wasn’t a punk. She was a good girl. More or less. Except for the fornicatin’, that is.” She grinned and winked, and Faith laughed.
     
    “I have to say, Beebs, I don’t see you in either of these. I mean, it’s you, and you’re gorgeous. But that’s not how I know you.”
     
    “People change.” She shrugged. “I guess maybe I changed more’n most. Most of my life, I was kind of…well, you know how a mushroom don’t really have a taste of its own? It just tastes like whatever you put it with. That’s what I was like. When I was little, with three big brothers, I was a tomboy. I wanted to fit in with them, so I did the stuff they did. Then I got to middle school and started noticin’ boys that weren’t my kin, and