Roswell Fanatics

Suddenly a phone was ringing and Joey stared at her backpack with horror. “What time is it?”

As Joey flipped open the phone and said, “Hello?” the voice of Maria Guerin came through loudly to all four occupants of the suddenly silent car.

“So, you do have a working phone. Now who would have imagined that the very first night after you got over being grounded for ten weeks, and let me see, what was that grounding for, oh yes, for missing curfew, the very first night after your punishment is over, you not only miss curfew again, but 40 minutes later your mother has to call you because despite you having a perfectly good phone, you couldn’t make the effort to call your parents who have been sitting here frightened out of their minds assuming you were hit by a car and lying in a ditch somewhere.”

Joey struggled to find words, knowing that even her dad ran for cover when mom was this wound up. ‘What words won’t not make the situation worse?’ she asked herself, knowing that nothing she could say would make it better.

Feeling a mixture of sympathy for Joey and guilt over her part in the situation, Barbara Douglas took the phone from Joey.

“Mrs. Guerin? Hi, this is Barbara Douglas. You met my son Andrew and husband Roger today, but we haven’t had the chance to meet yet. First of all, I am terribly sorry. My son and Joey have a date to the winter carnival dance, and I wanted to get to know her so I picked her up after she was done at the library. I really wanted to talk to her about her and my son and really pressured her to come along, practically put a gun to her head and kidnapped her, you might almost say. Anyway, we got to talking about her and my son, she was kind enough to invite me to get together with the two of you when you go shopping for the dance dress, … we’ve just been having the most wonderful time together, and I am afraid the time just got away from us. Really, it is all my fault, and I’m afraid if you punish Joey for it my son may never speak to me again.”

On the other end of the line Maria hesitated for a moment. She thought back to the lip-lock that Joey and Andrew had put on each other at the end of the basketball game and decided she could understand Andrew’s mom wanting to talk to Joey about it, she’d be talking to Joey about it too, whenever she did get home. And it was probably a good thing Barbara had talked to her as well.

They really hadn’t believed that Joey was in a ditch somewhere, thinking it more likely she was in the back seat of a car with Andrew.

‘Well, OK,’ she decided. Joey had taken the ten weeks grounding like a trooper, not even once pleading to Michael who she knew would have knocked it down to two weeks in a minute.

“Mrs. Douglas, I’m glad you had a chance to talk to Joey, and I’m looking forward to meeting you in person on Saturday. Let’s plan on the three of us having lunch. Please tell Joey to be home no later than 11:30 or give me a phone call by 11:25 to explain why not. I’ll speak to her when she gets home but, considering everything, tell her we’ll let it go this time.”

As Barbara closed the phone she looked up to see Joey still trying not to giggle from the “gun to her head and kidnapped her” comment. Andrew was looking back and forth between Joey and his Mom in amused puzzlement, and Roger Douglas simply looked totally confused.

“You’re off the hook this once, Joey,” said Barbara Douglas. But I think we really do need to get you home by 11:30. I think your mother takes curfews seriously.”

“Thank you. I wouldn’t have thought that anything could have saved me Mrs. Douglas.

“Oh, moms think pretty much alike. We should have called your parents earlier, but I don’t think your mom was worried about you losing track of time talking to Andrew’s mom, near as much as she was about you losing track of time ‘talking’ to Andrew.”

It was decided that Roger and Andrew would go home in one car and that Barbara would drop Joey off and perhaps briefly meet her parents using the other car. The teenagers had been given a few seconds of privacy to say their goodbyes, while Barbara explained to a thoroughly bewildered Roger that Joey seemed to be a delightful young lady and that Barbara couldn’t understand why he’d had such reservations about her.

The situation was starting to fall into a familiar pattern, known to husbands for several millenia, and he contented himself with a “Yes dear, of course you’re right.”


Twenty minutes later at the Guerins, Barbara Douglas met both parents. Maria talked to her for a few minutes, agreeing that the kids seemed to be growing up, and sharing in Barbara’s concern that they didn’t grow up too fast. Michael was pleasant enough, but as it got in to the “girl talk” his eyes drifted toward the TV where the ice hockey game was in the third period and Maria and Barbara retired to the kitchen. They set up a time to meet at the mall on Saturday, and then Barbara went home.

Barbara had asked Andrew to stay up to talk to her, and he had. She had learned a great deal about her son tonight, and had much to discuss with him. She sat at his desk as he sat on his bed. “Joey said she told you about her ..family,” he said, the words still left unsaid.

“Yes, she did. She showed a lot of trust in me, considering how little I was showing in her. That’s a big secret, and important to her whole family. Her life, their lives, even your life can change dramatically, everyone she loves can be hurt greatly if that story were to get out. How well do you understand that?”

“I understand,” he said, eying his mother warily. Joey had said she knew and it was alright, but Andrew was still cautious.

“I will always be grateful to Joey for what she did for you, Andrew, and I guess I will always be grateful that she is what she is because it let her do that. But that’s really not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to talk about you and Joey.”

“I think I may have already had this conversation with Joey’s Aunt Isabel, Mom, but go ahead.”

“I realize that what Joey did for you was wonderful, incredible even, and I know that Joey cares for you a great deal. But gratitude, no matter how great the deed that leads to it, isn’t enough to base a relationship upon.

I’ve got nothing against Joey, and maybe what you have will in time grow into something that can be permanent, but you were really only with her for three days, and I have to wonder if that was really time enough for you to know if your feelings for her are real or if they are mainly just gratitude for what she did for you.”

Andrew’s face got a far away look, as if he was going back in time to that day. “I don’t remember what happened after I was in the hospital until I started to wake up in the cave, Mom. I was still almost out from the medicine when I saw her standing over me, taking my cervical collar off. I couldn’t believe she was there. I didn’t know what she was doing, didn’t know where I was, didn’t know what she was. I just knew that I loved her and was glad she was with me.

When I woke up she was collapsed on top of my chest. I don’t think she really had the strength to do what she did, I think she almost died doing it. But that’s kind of the way Joey is, she puts everything on the line, holds nothing back…I didn’t know that she had healed me when I went to hold her close to me, I was surprised that my arms and legs even worked, but when they did I just wanted to cradle her in my arms.

I fell back to sleep holding her to me. We were both exhausted. When I woke up later I still didn’t know what she had done, what she was. But my biggest concern was to know if what I’d seen in the flashes was true, if she really loved me.

That was more important than that I’d been healed or how, more important than where we were or how we’d gotten there, because I loved her. I think I’ve loved her since fourth grade. I know I’ve loved her for the last two years.

Having her tell me we couldn’t go together, that we could never be together, was the worst day of my life, worse even than my injury I think. Seeing in the connection that she’d felt the same way,…..I can’t ever be without her again, Mom. Her aunt already told me that gratitude wasn’t enough to base a relationship on, that there were risks involved with being with her, risks for me if people even knew how I’d been healed, that they’d want to take me apart to see how it was done. She said that nobody would think less of me if I just walked away from the whole alien thing, but I told her I couldn’t. Joey completes me, Mom. The world just isn’t quite right if she’s not there to share it with me."

Barbara looked down at her child sitting on his bed, her baby that had somehow become a man right under her nose, without her really noticing.

Somehow she knew that this wasn’t puppy love, and that it wasn’t going to go away. Joey was going to get her wishes, probably all of them. And although she knew that this was going way too fast, that the conventional wisdom was that these two were much too young for any such commitment, that both were too inexperienced to be making such commitments at all, she felt the same kind of feeling about it that she had when Andrew had first said he loved Joey, and that he was going to be with her.

It was indeed an inexorable fact, not the protest of a lovesick teenager.

Only now Barbara didn’t feel the panic and fear she had felt before she understood about Joey, strange as that seemed to her. She had in fact been reassured by the alien powers of Joey. It wasn’t just the love she’d seen there, but the maturity and the determination.

Barbara knew how incapacitated she had been by Andrew’s injury. She had seen how Joey had been just as emotionally devastated initially, but had quickly dealt with it, regrouped, planned and executed something nearly impossible even for her, and then done the best she could to limit the impact her actions might have on the people she loved, as well as the people Andrew loved.

Barbara realized how close she had been to total breakdown, even to insanity that night Joey had dreamwalked her. And Andrew was right, Joey hadn’t held back, she’d put it all on the line to help her, a person she’d never even met, because she was important to Andrew and that made her important to Joey.

And the Andrew she had seen in the flashes, and the one before her now, was not the immature child that he had been even just a few months ago. Both kids, she realized, had a maturity when it came to their feelings for each other that belied their years. What they shared really did seem to be the real thing.

As Barbara came in to the bedroom, Roger Douglas looked at his wife. He had been scared to death when she’d been missing, and was almost certain that she meant to actually harm Joey Guerin. When he’d found them together crying he was certain there had been a major problem between them, and had been astounded to find his wife now not only accepting of Joey, but apparently very friendly with her. Apparently something had gone on, something intense, that had changed her opinion completely. He had been worried about his wife since the Friday night that their son had been hurt, even after he had returned in good health. That atmosphere of desperation and unease seemed to have totally resolved. His wife looked as happy, as content as he had seen her in 10 weeks.

The Douglas’ had been married a long time, and could read each other fairly well. There was a story here, and he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he extracted it from her.

“We need to talk,” he said.

Barbara had known this would be coming. Even had she not spent the last 15 minutes in Andrew’s room talking to him, Roger would have clearly seen the change in her attitude toward Joey. But the story was…well, rather an amazing one. She had listened to Joey cite the history of aliens in Roswell, but absent actually being there, actually hearing Joey’s voice with the emotion she put into it, it would seem only a tall tale. Until she saw the flashes when Joey connected with her, she really truly hadn’t believed. She knew she’d been an emotional wreck for 10 weeks, and she really didn’t want her lifemate to think she’d finally gone over the edge entirely.

If Joey was indeed going to become part of their family, and Barbara was now convinced of that, there would be plenty of time for proof later. She opted to keep the conversation generic, and not get into the Czechoslovakian business.

“Earlier today you drove away after telling Andrew he should never have anything to do with Joey, we were both convinced you hated her. We were scared to death when we couldn’t find you, then scared worse when we did find you with her. I actually thought you might have even been willing to harm the girl. Then everything changed. Now you are treating her like the daughter we never had. Tell me what happened.”

“I think I did hate Joey,” said Barbara Douglas. “I think I started to hate her two years ago, when she turned down a date with our son breaking his heart, after he’d spent two weeks getting up his courage to ask her out.

It was always irrational, of course. She was 13 years old, and 13 year old girls are entitled to be immature, even callous. I think I carried that hatred over even to today, and when I found him again feeling affection for her, I think I was terrified that she’d hurt him again. I felt that he’d been through too much lately, we’d all been through too much lately, to let that happen. I picked her up at the library to tell her to stay away from him, to leave him alone.

But then I found out what her real feelings are towards Andrew, and what his real feelings are for her. She’s loved him for years, even when she turned down his invitation.

When she saw Andrew hurt, it sort of pushed her over the edge herself. She found that she couldn’t deny her feelings for him, that the reasons she had pushed him away just didn’t matter that much anymore. It scares me a little, how close they’ve become, how it seems to have happened so quickly.

But the changes I see in Andrew aren’t as scary when I know how they happened, that his love for her is changing him, and in some ways making him an even better person than he was. Both of them seem so mature now, they are growing up so fast. But while I miss my little boy, I will always be grateful to Joey, grateful that she loved Andrew enough to be there for him when he needed her most.”

Roger had been married long enough to Barbara that he knew there was more to the story somehow, but Barbara really had been kind of emotionally wrung out recently. He didn't really understand about Joey being there for Andrew, at least, not any more than they'd all been there for Andrew. But for now it was enough. He'd ask her more when she'd rested, when she'd had time to deal with all the changes.

Maybe he needed that too. It had been a long day and a lot had happened. There would be time for further talk tomorrow.....

It wasn’t like Joey really made a conscious decision to conceal the fact that Barbara knew about the Czechoslovakian business from her mother and father that night, but it was pretty late when she got home, later still by the time Barbara and her mom had discussed meeting at the mall on Saturday, and really pretty late by the time her mom got done talking about public displays of affection on basketball floors, especially with young men that she’d barely met.

By the time they’d gone over in detail of just what EXACTLY had happened during the three days in the pod chamber, and Maria had assured herself of what really had NOT happened, it was really pretty late and Joey was fairly certain that Drew was already waiting for her on the beach.

Explaining at that hour to her mother that she’d dreamwalked Drew……oh, probably seventy times in the last 10 weeks, and they were hardly in the ‘barely met’ category anymore, particularly after the virtual marriage proposal really didn’t sound like a discussion she wanted to start at 1:30 in the morning, and explaining that Barbara Douglas knew about the Czechoslovakian business was going to lead to questions that she really didn’t want to answer until her parents had gotten to know Drew’s parents better.

She really did like Barbara Douglas and could tell when she connected with her that she really was going to be like a second mom to her. She really didn’t want a little misunderstanding like the incident with the pistol to taint her parent’s perception of the woman before they’d really even gotten to know her. Particularly not since Joey had already started to think of her as her future mother-in-law.

And of course, with the dawn of a new day, Joey actually had her first day in school where she and Drew could be together. So somehow telling her folks just kind of dropped off the radar screen, not so much a decision on Joey’s part, but more just a situation where the opportunity to do so either never came up, or was overtaken by events. For whatever reason, it just didn’t happen.

The situation with Roger Douglas was actually a little more premeditated. If Barbara hadn’t known that Roger was so worried because she’d been so stressed out over the accident and kidnapping, she MIGHT have given it a try. But she was pretty sure that if she’d have just up and told him, “Oh honey, that nice little girl our son just started going with…., well she’s part alien, and…..oh yes, they’re engaged,” Roger was going to believe she’d truly gone over the line. Better to wait for a time when it was just the four of them, when Joey could perhaps do a little demonstrating and Drew could back her up. THEN Roger might handle it a little better.

So for a number of reasons the fact that there was a new member of the I know an alien club was not made known to Joey's parents, and the fact that Roger Douglas’ son had just became engaged to an alien wasn’t made known to Roger Douglas. Both omissions would lead to some interesting conversations in the near future.

Tuesday night was a busy time on the dream beach. The virtual proposal the night before, the feelings transmitted through the connection during the kiss on the basketball floor, both had fundamentally and irrevocably changed their relationship.

Neither Joey nor Douglas would ever again regard themselves as anything other than one half of a couple, and until well into Wednesday morning they sat on a log in front of a beach fire discussing their future, the future they wanted to create together. Both of them loved their parents…..their families, and really didn’t want to do anything that would upset them. But their futures were each other, both had decided that and there simply was no going back from that fact.

So for the short term, the goal was to get their parents to accept that fact. Andrew had in fact been rather amazed at Joey’s success with his Mom. But there were now three other parents to convince.


Wednesday morning was a milestone in the life of Joey Guerin. Joey had always been a goal oriented person. She might agonize over a decision, but once she made her decision, she had no hesitation about working hard to make sure the result came out as she wanted it.

She had long desired Andrew Douglas, but shyness, concern over his acceptance of the Czechoslovakian business, and even concern about how the Czechoslovakian business might potentially harm Andrew had resulted in seven years of watching him from afar. All that had started to change with his injury. It had damn sure changed with his healing. And with 10 weeks of dreamwalking culminating in the virtual proposal, then sealed with the kiss on the basketball floor the preceding day, all doubt was now removed from Joey Guerin as to how she wanted to spend her future life and who she wanted to spend it with.

Had you asked her about Andrew Douglas the day before his accident, she would have told you he was perfect. If you asked her today, she would have told you the same. It was just that there were a whole lot of things about him that would be more perfect with the right influence from her.

To a man this might seem illogical, but in fact it was the kind of logic that women had been using on their men for millennia, and it seemed to have worked, being the basis for most of modern civilization. In fact, she had been doing this from the first moment they both were awake together in the pod chamber. Some of it was below the level of consciousness even for Joey, like the way she looked at him. Sometimes it was a guilty pleasure, like accelerating the motorcycle to get him to hold her tighter. Sometimes there really was purposeful manipulation, like dreamwalking him in the string bikini, simply to send a message that it was indeed OK for him to think of her that way. But today the manipulation would begin in earnest. It wasn’t that Joey didn’t love Andrew just exactly the way he was, for she did. It’s just that the future she wanted would be expedited by a few changes, and Joey was nothing if not a goal oriented person.

What Joey wanted was Andrew, but she was realistic. He was only a sophomore, two and one-half years away from graduation. It was worse for her, she was three and a half years away from graduation. Andrew had talked about them getting married after graduation and she’d seen in the connection that he’d clearly meant it, but there were a few practical issues involved. The situation with her future mother-in-law had gone extremely well, and she knew that she had an ally there. Hopefully with her help they could manage Drew’s father. Her own father really wouldn’t be that much of a problem, she had years to work on him and months probably would have been enough. Mom was more of an issue, but again, once she won Dad over, he’d swing Mom.

That left only the details, which in Joey’s mind were food, clothing, shelter, and education.

Both she and Drew were good students, and both were good athletes. By excelling at academics they could both assure they could get in to the college of their choice, for her that meant whatever one Drew was attending, and by excelling at academics they could potentially get someone else to fund it. Sure, she knew their folks would help, but her folks were already putting one kid through college and who knew what they might eventually want to do with regard to grad school or something.

The goal then was to be married to Andrew when she was eighteen, and with a couple of scholarships the financial ability to do that would be entirely within their hands. And who knows, maybe with a summer school class or two, she might even graduate early……

Wednesday morning was a milestone in the life of Andrew Douglas. Andrew had always been a goal oriented person. He’d always been kind of shy, personally, preferring to avoid the spotlight, somewhat uncomfortable with the opposite sex, except for Joey, and after she’d rejected him back in eighth grade, really uncomfortable since she really was the only one he was interested enough in to overcome his shyness.

So while he excelled academically and athletically, he’d always been kind of a loner socially, at least off the playing field. All that had started to change with his injury. It had damn sure changed with his healing. And with 10 weeks of dreamwalking culminating in the virtual proposal, then sealed with the kiss on the basketball floor the preceding day, all doubt was now removed from Andrew Douglas as to how he wanted to spend his future life and who he wanted to spend it with.

What Andrew wanted was Joey, and as much as it had meant to him when he had seen during the kiss on the basketball floor her fantasy about bearing their child…..well…almost immediately, he knew that realistically they had to take things a lot slower than that. But being married the day after her graduation was certainly a realistic goal, and what would assist that was to excel academically and athletically and get scholarships, and that was just a matter of hard work and Andrew wasn’t afraid of hard work.

Of course, that was going to mean convincing his parents to let him play football next year, and a few other things. But given time he could do it. And Joey would help. Joey could be very persuasive at times, he thought, remembering the sudden change in his mother last night.

It’s not that Joey hadn’t always been attractive, for she had. She had her mother’s good looks, and years of athletics had given her an easy strength and grace.

It was more that Joey had never really cared if she was attractive. The short hair had been a concession to the desire to be able to get it dry quick after hitting the showers after a game, not any real styling decision. Make-up wasn’t really ever an issue. The only guy she was really attracted to was Andrew, and she’d decided she couldn’t have him, so why torment herself? She used enough to blend in to the teen-female crowd, but saw it more as an inconvenience than as an item of importance. She’d never really wanted to be noticed, let alone stand out in a crowd.

But all that had now changed, as part of the plan. During Aunt Izzie's visit (and Joey’s grounding) Joey had talked to her about cosmetics, hairstyles, and everything else that had never before been important to her. It wasn’t just that Aunt Izzie had once been an Ice-Princess, but she was also an alien, and had learned and mastered all sorts of things you could do with molecular manipulation to dry hair, style it, do and redo your own cosmetics, fix your clothes, color-coordinate things……, she had a whole litany of ways you could go from athletic/wholesome to chic/sexy.

And those things were now important to Joey because they were now part of the plan. Now she wanted to be noticed, not just because she enjoyed watching Andrew’s eyes light up like when he saw her in that string bikini (although she really had), but because you aren’t as likely to get scholarships by camouflaging yourself and hiding in the background. So now, that became important, because it mad Andrew happy, and because it was part of the plan.

As Joey came down the stairs for breakfast Maria turned to her and said, “If you don’t hurry, you’re going to miss the school bus, Joey.” As her daughter came into view Maria was somewhat startled and thought, ‘Omigawd, I hope Michael is ready for this…..’

“Uh, nice outfit, honey. Is that new?”

“No Mom, I just kind of recolored and retailored an old dress. Aunt Izzie showed me how to do it. Do you like it?”

“Well, it’s quite nice, but that’s a real change in look for you, isn’t it? You are usually a whole lot more casual, like denim and Adidas?”

“I still like denim and Adidas, Mom. But sometimes you just want a little dressier look.”

“Dressier….well, yes, I suppose so.”

As Michael Guerin came into the kitchen he could not help but instantly notice that his normally cute 15 year old little girl had somehow transformed herself into an extremely attractive young lady who appeared to be at least eighteen.

He opened his mouth to speak…..no words came out. Eventually he sat down at the table. Some seconds later, he remembered to shut his mouth. Maria watched him carefully thinking, ‘THAT went a whole lot better than I would have anticipated.’

“You’d better hurry dear,” said Maria, “Here comes the bus.”

“That’s OK Mom, Andrew is going to pick me up and give me a ride to school in about five more minutes. And he’ll bring me home after basketball practice too.”

As the color slowly drained from the face of Michael Guerin, he finally found his voice.

Looking at his daughter with fatherly concern, he said, “Joey, I know your Mom talked to you last night about that kiss you gave Andrew at the basketball game. I just want to reemphasize to you that public displays of affection like that are inappropriate.”

“I understand, Dad. Andrew and I won’t ever do that in public again.”

This was not PRECISELY the response Michael was seeking, however a knock at the back door announced the arrival of Amy Valenti and as he looked at his mother-in-law Michael’s mind went back to a weekend many years ago when he listened to Amy on a cell phone telling him:

“Michael, I want you to listen to me very, very carefully. On this glorious, rebellious, lost weekend of yours, you will take care of my daughter. You will protect her and be kind to her, and she will have fun. You will not get matching tattoos, and you will not allow her to pierce any part of her body that cannot be shown in polite company. And, Michael, if you have sex with my daughter, I will hunt you down and kill you like the mangy dog you are. Okay?”

Somehow, with her in the room, Michael sort of felt that his moral authority to lecture to his daughter evaporate. So for the time being…..he let the comment pass.

The 2006 Honda Insight was ancient but actually in pretty good condition. While anything but a muscle car, it was remarkably cheap to insure, even for a 16 year old male, perhaps for that very reason. Andrew had been able to talk his parents into letting him buy it only about four weeks previously. His sports practices had always made it difficult for him to take the bus, and an economical and very safe vehicle for traveling around town had seemed quite reasonable, once Andrew had gotten his license.

The Insight had been cheap enough, Andrew knew, because it was fairly old, and really didn't have much of a payload. Andrew wasn't real heavy, as football players went, but his parents had been concerned that the 400# payload meant that he and one other player would be very close to the maximum the car should carry. Andrew wasn't concerned. Joey weighed 110#, and he knew that she was the only one who'd be in it with him 95% of the time.

Another reason it was cheap was that it was somewhat non-standard. It had been modified by its former owner. an electrical engineer, the old Nickel Metal Hydride battery pack being replaced by newer technology, and a switch being installed that allowed the car to run on the battery alone at speeds up to 35MPH, until the battery was down to 20% charge.

The reason for the modification, apparently, was that the guy would sneak out nights sometimes after his wife was asleep to go visit a.....friend. Eventually the man's wife had awakened as the garage door was closing, and had followed him in their other car. The ensuing divorce was also a reason he'd gotten such a good price on the car.....

In any event, Andrew was now the owner of wheels, wheels that were extremely quiet in town as he glided along, at least until the battery got low enough to start the engine.

And this morning Andrew was feeling quite happy as he glided almost silently into the driveway of Michael and Maria Guerin and walked up to knock on the back door and pick up HIS GIRL to take her to school.

She'd felt his presence as soon as he'd turned the corner down the block, and even though she couldn't hear it, she felt his presence more strongly as his car drove into the driveway.

It wasn't that the banter between her Dad and her grandma wasn't important to her, it was just that she hadn't really seen him in almost nine whole hours, and she just felt drawn to him, the connection forming before he could really even get to the back door.

Maria's attention was diverted from the standard good natured joking that had gone on between her mother and her husband for nearly a quarter of a century now by Joey's eyes. They had suddenly gone toward the living room, almost as if she'd heard a car out on the street, and followed through until it was in their driveway. Except, Maria hadn't heard a car, and she had very good hearing.

But even more significant was the smile that suddenly had come across her daughter's face, a smile that grew slowly and became a large grin as she stepped to the back door and opened it. The boy was already standing there, his hand raised to knock on the door.

*Come in dear* Joey said through the connection, before catching herself and saying "Oh, Hi Drew, come on in..."

The boy's eyes widened as he saw her. *Wow! Nice outfit. What's the occasion?* "Oh,......eh.....Hi Joey." As he started to blush he said, "Nice dress."

*No particular occasion, just felt like dressing a little dressier today, to get a little more notice.* "Thank you, Andrew." *So you like this better than the white string bikini?*
"This is my grandmother, Drew, Amy Valenti."

Maria watched as the boy started blushing even more deeply. As she watched further, she saw Joey start to blush even as Andrew said, "Pleased to meet you Mrs Valenti."

Maria fought back a laugh and said to herself, 'This can't be happening.'

"So this is the young man of the lost weekend, huh Joey? Well, maybe I can't blame you after all," said Amy Valenti.

As both teenagers blushed at the comment, Maria's hand found Michael's forearm and squeezed it. As he looked into her eyes the connection formed almost immediately.
*Michael, they are connected...*

*Who is connected?*

*Joey and Andrew.*

*That can't be. They aren't touching. They aren't even looking at one another.*

*I'm telling you Michael, they are. Watch them.*

*Maria....., they barely know one another.*

*Apparently they know one another well enough, Michael. So now what do we do?*

"I'm terribly sorry that Joey worried you so much that weekend, Mrs Valenti. I'll try to see that I never break my neck again..."

At that point Michael Guerin was seriously considering breaking it for him, considering the wide-eyed looks he'd given Joey when he first saw her dressed that way. But if they were truly connected, and Andrew was really thinking about her....like that....and Joey while blushing was still grinning like she was....... *This is going to require finesse, Michael, not brute force* thought Maria through their connection, feeling Michael's emotions.

*Yeah love, and maybe brute force too......*

"Mom, Dad, Grandma, love you, but Drew and I have got to go or we'll be late."

"Drive carefully," Michael called out, looking at Andrew and talking in a tone that seemed to imply as much threat as concern.

"I will. Good to meet you Mrs. Valenti. Mr. and Mrs. Guerin, I'll have Joey back promptly after practice...."

*But not too promptly, Andrew.....*

*Semi-promptly maybe, Joey......*

As the small car slid almost silently into the parking stall and came to a stop, Andrew pulled the parking brake. As he did, Joey's left hand softly covered his and Andrew turned to look into her eyes.

By unspoken agreement they had dropped the connection when they'd gotten into the car........too distracting while driving, and the close confines of the car seemed stimulating enough somehow. Somehow excitement and contentment had been swirling in an intoxicating mixture within the car throughout the drive to school. Sure, they wanted more than to just sit beside each other and drive, but somehow for the moment knowing that they were a couple, knowing that they could show the world their pride in being a couple, somehow for right now that was enough.....

As Joey looked into Drew's soft brown eyes she thought briefly about her father's words...., 'How public is this car? Damn, it sure has an awful lot of windows.....'
Finally she contented herself with lifting his chin with her free right hand and giving him a quick kiss on the lips, damping the connection furiously as it tried to form.

'Whew! I think Dad might have the wrong idea. It might be a whole lot safer if we confined our affection to when we were in public.....or on the beach.'

"What's the funny smile for, Joey?" Andrew asked, enjoying the kiss but somewhat missing the easy access they had to one another's thoughts and feelings within the connection.

"Just an old saying that came to me, Drew. 'Father knows best,'
....but for now, we'd probably better get to class....."