Anniversary

On All Saints Day this year, I had a dream about a girl.

I knew her back when. She transferred in to my tiny little elementary school around fifth grade. Maybe sixth. She came with an older sister and a younger brother.

The brother was an ugly, rude little shit. Never liked him. He hung with the wrong crowd and I ended up booking him sometime in the late nineties.

But this aint about him.

This is about his sister(s).

Her older sister was stunning. I mean, honestly beautiful. She was always underappreciated by the boys in school, though. She wore a little too much makeup. Her hair was a little too big. Her pants a little too tight across amazing, curvy hips. I'd think that'd be enough to have all the boys after her, but things are different in cliquey little small towns. She was an outsider, a stranger, a little different. When I was in sixth grade, she was on the bus in the seat in front of me. She was a year older, and where I come from, that generally meant unobtainable. Boys dated younger girls, but that wasn't reversed. Unless you're Wesley, and that fucker was just lucky as hell and obviously had magic in his pants, because he dated a girl three years older than us. God. I still hate that guy, and by hate that guy, I mean admire him strongly and wish I knew his secret. That girl was hot. Cheerleader hot. Track and field hot. Magazine-cover hot. No shit. Anyway.

Her sister, out of the blue, turned to me and my best friend on the bus. I'm still not sure why she was on our bus, but some mysteries are lost to time. "Hey, David," she looked at my buddy, "switch seats with me for a minute." He did, and there was this gorgeous fucking stranger sitting next to me. Of course, she wasn't a stranger, we were acquaintances, and the middle school was small enough everyone knew everybody's name, at least. "Hey," she said. "I think you're a cool guy." Of course, I got a hard on. This was something from Penthouse Forum, of which I was intimately familiar as a wayward twelve or thirteen year old who had an uncle with a subscription and he didn't ever count how many back issues were in the bathroom magazine rack.

"I have a question for you."

"Sure, okay, what's up?" I was lucky the main brain was working properly to still form language.

"Have you ever had a blow job?"

Wait, what?

"Uhm, what?" Language. Still functional, but now confused.

She giggled, grinned, and leaned in like she was going to kiss me. She grabbed me behind the head, just like I'd seen in the movies, only...instead of a kiss, she put her mouth on my nose, and blew into my nostrils.

What the fuck?

What the fuck?

My hardon was still there, only now it was so confused and absolutely lost as to what was happening.

She laughed, blushed, and moved back into her seat. My buddy David just looked at me through his cokebottles and shook his head. I sat there in shocked silence, processing that I was almost kissed by a girl I thought (and still think) was one of the prettiest we ever had in school.

I sneezed.

She absolutely died laughing, and we never spoke of the incident again.

The thing is, that's not the girl in my dream last night, though.

Nicole. Her name is Nicole, and she was not quite as pretty as her sister, but she was a very good looking young woman. Hers was the first ass I ever grabbed, and I was in the seventh grade. She let me touch it. It was a one-time thing in the hallway at our lockers. I still remember her stonewashed jeans and me just asking her if I could. "Sure, knock yourself out," she said, grinning. I did. It was wonderful, and was the basis for comparison of every ass I grabbed until the year 2000. Nothing else ever happened, and like that nose job I got from her sister, it never got brought up again.

Nicole and I were friendly throughout high school. We never dated, we never flirted, we never really interacted outside of classes or extracurriculars. I always liked her, though. She had a pretty good head on her shoulders and she was always pretty. I didn't care for a couple of the girls she hung out with, though. They were just kinda assholes. But not Nicole. She was always sweet to me and my friends.

In my dream last night, she kissed me. I could feel her short sandy-blonde hair in my fingers. I could smell her Cool Water perfume. Her shiny, flavored lip gloss left my lips feeling moisturized and protected by strawberry goodness. It was absolutely real, such was the clarity of this dream. I woke up and could still feel her lips pressing against mine when my alarm clock sounded.

After my morning routine ended and I made it into my office, I set out finding this woman of my dreams.

My Google-Fu is medium strong. I'm no expert, but I can sometimes grab those haystack needles that I go on a mission to find. The internet wasn't really doing me much good, though, and I kept hitting brick walls. Facebook, of course, was where I ended up.

She isn't there.

Her sister is, (she is still gorgeous). Her brother is, (he is still ugly as fuck). Her mother is (she seems nice). Her best friends all are. Hell, friends we had in common are all present and accounted for. But not Nicole.

She's gone.

The girl who kissed me so tenderly that I still feel it hours later is only a dream.

That's all she'll ever be.

I had a dream about a girl who died a year ago today.