To Die For by Joyce Maynard Read Free Book Online Page A

she was already famous when she got pregnant, so were Jane Pauley and Deborah Norville. Nobody has kids first.
    I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t have to say anything, she just kept talking. How it was all a big mistake, getting married. She didn’t know it would be like this. They used to have a lot of fun, but now she just felt like this old married couple, that their life was behind them. He wants her to be home. But if she’s ever going to get ahead, now’s the time she has to really hustle. She’s in a very competitive business and you can’t afford to lose time, when you’re twenty-five years old, and you’re still just doing cable. And how this video project was supposed to be her big chance, but the boys are such losers she’ll never be able to make anything of it, and even if she did, what difference would that make, because Larry would never leave his folks’ restaurant, even if NBC called up and offered her “The Sunrise Report.” You don’t know it, she says to me, but right now is the best time in your life. It won’t ever be any better than it is right now, when everything’s still ahead of you. Which made me kind of sad myself because how it was right then was not very great. But also, I felt so, you know, special. That she’d be telling me this stuff. That she would talk to me like that, you know. Just like a couple of girlfriends. I would’ve done anything for her after that.

CHUCK HASKELL
    L ARRY AND ME GOT to be friends in third grade. He was my neighbor across the street. We hung out. Rode bikes, tossed a ball around, the usual. That guy was good at every sport he tried. Junior high, I started playing bass and Larry picked up the drums. I think he mostly figured it was a way to meet girls. He never was that good. But we had a lot of fun hanging out in his parents’ basement fooling around. Us and these two other guys, one on lead guitar and one on rhythm, and there were always a couple of girls hanging around, wanting to shake a tambourine or sing. We called ourselves The Suckers.
    Besides the band I couldn’t say he had any special interests. I mean, the guy liked to party, liked to go off-roading when he had the chance. He might light up a toke, but nothing major. He was just what you’d call a fun guy. Easygoing. Always ready for a good time. Loved his folks. Loved dogs.
    Sure he dated. The guy wasn’t queer. But no one serious in high school. He was just having a good time.
    After we graduated, Larry started working full time at his folks’ restaurant and I got kind of serious with my band. Playing clubs over at Little Paradise Beach, even in the city sometimes. I guess you’d call us your basic metal band. Man, you want chicks? Let me tell you. Get a guitar.
    He saw Suzanne at the mall one day, handing out perfume samples, and he said that was it, love at first sight. He still wore his hair long back then. She was real cute, that blond hair and all, although it always kind of freaked me out the way you’d be talking to her and you could see right up her nostrils. They started going out pretty steady right off.
    I remember this New Year’s Eve party they were at, just a couple weeks after he met her. She had this video camera with her, and she was going around asking people their New Year’s resolutions, like it was going to be on the news. Everybody was loaded, basically. Guys were saying stuff like, “Ball a lot of girls,” or, “Get laid in a convertible.” You get the idea. But Larry, his resolution was, “Find someone really special and settle down.” I remember because everybody laughed when he said that. It was such a weird thing for a guy to say, and especially Larry, who always seemed like such a party guy. And he kept going on about all this other stuff, how when he found the right girl, he’d buy her the biggest diamond and a sports car and he’d take her out dancing every Friday night. “I want to make Mrs. Larry Maretto the happiest woman in