We arrived at the parking lot. He turned back to me as he pulled into a parking space.
"What music is in your Compact Disc player right now?" He asked, his face as somber as if he'd asked for a murder confession.
I realized I'd never removed the Compact Disc Phil had given me. "Well, I have this Compact Disc that my mom's ball-playing husband Phil gave me... " I told him. When I said that, he smiled crookedly, a peculiar expression in his eyes. He flipped open a compartment under his car's Compact Disc player, pulled out one of three hundred or so Compact Discs that were jammed into the small space, and handed it to me.
"Debussy to this?" He raised an eyebrow.
It was Phil's Compact Disc! I examined the familiar cover art, the picture of a man dressed up as a hot dog handing a flyer to an elderly woman, keeping my eyes down. I saw the words, the Compact Disc's title "Hard Ballin'" written across the top of the image in dark blue script over the light-colored sky and clouds. This was definitely Phil's Compact Disc. How did Fredward even know about this band? How does it even know about Phil? Fredward popped the Compact Disc in and the rowdy sounds of Hard Ballin' resonated through my ears. Fredward began to jam, shaking his head back and forth, his perfect hair shaking into a humorous fluff when he shook right, and shaking back into a perfect formation when he shook left. Fredward continues to amaze me, I realized, dreamily...
It continued like that for the rest of the day, Fredward asking me stupid questions and then somehow managing to amaze me by the end of the conversation. While he walked me to English in a Daze, when he met me after Spanish, all through the lunch hour, he questioned me relentlessly about every insignificant detail of my completely average existence. Movies I'd liked and hated, the few places I'd been and the many places I wanted to go, and books and music—endlessly books and music.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd talked so much. More often than not, I felt self-conscious, certain I must be boring him. But the absolute absorption of his face,257 and his never-ending stream of questions, compelled me to continue. Mostly his questions were easy, only a very few triggering my easy blushes—for example, he asked me how many boys I had held hands with. Man, did I blush! And when I blushed, it brought on a whole new round of questions.
Such as the time he asked about my favorite gemstone, and I blurted out topaz before thinking. He'd been flinging questions at me with such speed that I didn't even know which gemstone was my favorite; I felt like I was
257. Similar to a shammy cloth.