Free Remember by Eileen Cook Page B

kind of annoying poltergeist. They kept popping up, surprising me. What if something was really wrong with me?
    “Can’t sleep?”
    I jumped. My dad stood in the doorway. He had on the old sweats he slept in and one of his Star Trek T-shirts. He chuckled. “It would be a shame if you developed my insomnia.”
    My dad had weird sleep habits. He would sometimes be up for a couple of days in a row and then the next day he would sleep for an entire day until dinner. The concept of day andnight was more fluid in his world. He raised a good point; maybe my sleep problems didn’t mean something was wrong with me the way Neil implied. My poor sleep could be nothing more than a bad roll of the genetic dice—sort of like my huge flipper feet, which also came from my dad’s side.
    “Woke up and then couldn’t get back to sleep,” I explained. I didn’t mention the part where I was now worried there was something fundamentally wrong with my brain.
    “This movie should help put you to sleep.”
    “Ha-ha.” The movie was an old one, To Kill a Mockingbird . When I was little, I came home crying one day because someone had made fun of my name. My dad told me that I’d been named after Harper Lee. She wrote the book the movie was based on, and my mom had been reading it when she was pregnant with me. She didn’t love the book, but she liked the name. I liked the book and I loved the movie, even if it was in black and white. I knew it had been made way before I was even born, but it still felt special, like it was something just for me.
    “This movie would be better with aliens. Or if they blew something up. Heck, a good sword battle would do the trick too,” Dad suggested. This was his criteria for any good movie. Mayhem with a touch of gore.
    “I’m sure if they ever do a remake they’ll consider some zombies.”
    We sat in the dark watching the screen “I was talking to your mom,” he said.
    “Uh-oh,” I said.
    “Nah, it’s good stuff. We decided you should go ahead and get a new horse. Your mom called Laura; she’ll help you sort out which is the best one.”
    My mouth fell open. “Really?”
    “Yeah. We were going to wait to tell you for graduation, but you know how I am with keeping secrets.”
    I squealed and jumped up to give him a hug. “Thank you so much.”
    He patted my back. “You know I want you to be happy. Why you like the darn things is a mystery to me. They’re like big giant stinky dogs, only they don’t even fetch.”
    My mind raced, thinking through my options. “I’d love to get another Hanoverian, but Friesians are great too.”
    “Keep in mind, there will be a budget. We had insurance on Harry, but you still can’t buy some Kentucky Derby winner.”
    I shook my head. He never bothered to get it. “Dad, how many times do I have to tell you? Horses that make great racers don’t make great jumpers.” It was a miracle he’d gotten me Harry in the first place. Most kids get a pony, not an elite jumper horse to start.
    “Please, don’t give me another lecture on horses. I’ll buy you two, if you promise not to bore me with one of those.” He hugged me again. “I’m glad to see you smiling. I told you that you didn’t need the treatment.”
    I felt another stab of guilt.
    “You always were my ray of sunshine. Don’t tell anyone, but you’re my favorite kid.”
    I rolled my eyes at this old joke. “I’m your only kid.”
    “That makes it easier to choose. Less competition.”
    * * *
    I set a new world record for losing popularity points. I went from my dad’s favorite child to his least favorite person on the entire planet in less than twenty-four hours. After school I went directly to the barn to talk to Laura. She’d already bookmarked some pages with horses for sale for my consideration. We spent a couple of hours talking about different options, and I started to get excited about having a horse of my own again. Laura was happy to let me use her horse, Dallas, but it