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Because I imagined this to be so special a date. I returned to the vanity table and changed my lipstick color, again to fit my dress, my look. I kept the eye shadow and brushed my lashes. Once.. Mama had considered trimming my lashes, but in the end she'd decided they were all right. "After all," she said. "think of how many women are heard saying 'I wish I had his eyelashes' when they see a boy who has naturally long ones."

Yes, think of that.

I finished by spraying myself with one of Mama's colognes, and then I stood up and spun around, laughing at my image in the mirror, at my wonderful transformation,

'What now? I thought when I stopped.

I looked at the bedroom doorway. Do I dare? It had been years and years since I'd worn girl's clothing in this house. Only in the turret room in secret or in my own room and bathroom had I uncovered my female body since those days in the woods, at my secret place.

My excitement gave me courage, but my heart pounded as I started toward the doorway. What if Mama suddenly appeared and caught me? What if she had changed her mind, was too worried about us, or had even had an argument with Dave Fletcher and was on her way back? What if she walked through that front door and confronted me? The very possibility nailed my feet to the floor. I couldn't walk out. I couldn't

Then I looked back and saw myself caught in the vanity table mirror. I'm beautiful, I thought, I truly am. I shouldn't be hidden away.

More firmly determined, I left the room and went to the top of the stairway. After all, I imagined, hadn't I just heard our doorbell? It was my date. Mama had let him in and he was standing down there and looking up in anticipation of my descent. I started down slowly, a soft smile on my lips, the same soft smile I recalled on Mama's when Daddy was alive and they were alone and didn't know I was watching.

There he would stand, my imaginary handsome boyfriend, standing at the doorway and looking up at me.

"You're beautiful," I would surely hear him tell me in a breathless voice of admiration,

"I am not." I would say, and blush to keep my veil of innocence and humility over my face.

Mama would step back. In fact, she would disappear into the wall because she couldn't prevent this. It would be like standing in the creek and trying to hold back the water with your bare hands. I flowed around her and finally over her.

My boyfriend would hold out his arm for me to take and we would walk out and get into his fine sporty, flashy, red automobile.

It was all there, all happening right before me if I only let it happen. I descended the stairs.

Then I turned and walked into the living room and sat on the sofa as if it were the front seat of that car. I was in his car. I was.

"You drive carefully," we heard Mama call from the house.

His smile, my excitement, our anticipation, was an umbrella that kept the rest of the world away, kept it out there. Mama's words fell like rain and

disappeared in the ground. We could hear only our own voices. He reached out and took my hand into his and squeezed it gently.

"I'm so happy you decided to go out with me. Thank you," he said. Of course he would say that.

All I did was smile and look down, thinking, be modest, be coy.

We drove off. Where would we go? A fine restaurant? A movie? To a dance club? Just

somewhere beautiful where we could walk and be alone? No matter where we went, we longed to be alone. I could feel the need building inside me and I could see it building inside him. too.

We'd park, just as people on dates always did. He knew a place, a secluded place where no one would disturb us. When we drove in, he turned off the lights.

I did the same in the living room. I was sitting in the same sort of darkness now.

"I really like you. Celeste," he would say. "I've admired you for a long time and worked hard at getting up my courage to ask you out. If you had refused, it would have broken my heart, cracked it like an egg."

"Sure it would," I would say cynically. I was supposed to say that and then he was supposed to protest and vehemently assure me and reassure me that I was truly someone special in his eyes, the girl of his dreams.

"Not a night has gone by when I haven't closed my eves and seen you and fantasized that you and I were together like this. I've waited for this night and for this kiss," he would say, and he would kiss me, and yes, it was wonderful and even better than Mr. Fletcher and Mama's kiss, It tingled down inside me, deep, into my very soul so that I softened in his arms and let his hands explore my body, a body I turned into him eagerly. It was as though I had been waiting for him for a thousand years. My surrender excited him more, and the more excited he became, the more I did.

I felt myself sliding down on the back of the sofa just the way I would in the car. I f

elt his hands behind my back, unzipping my dress, lowering it until my breasts were uncovered and he could bring his lips to them, to my nipples, to nudge them and moan and swoon over me.

It was like sinking slowly into a warm bath. I didn't stop his hands from moving under my skirt to my panties. Soon naked beneath him. I heard him whimper with delight and I heard him say, "I love you."


Tags: V.C. Andrews Gemini Horror