Disclaimer: All Drake & Josh characters copyright their proper owners. I just wrote this.

Author's Note: More of Mindy's poking around, and we're going to be reminded of Drake's promises. Please read and review.

Chapter Six: Remember Your Promise?

Monday came, and things appeared to be going smoothly. Josh hadn't asked Drake about Mindy's "talk" with him, and Drake didn't mention it. Josh couldn't help but notice that morning, though, that the first place Drake went was Christine's locker. This wasn't exactly normal for Drake. Normally, Drake would go to his own locker. Then he'd search for a girl who would become a date. If he was successful, he'd find his friends and talk to them. However, he skipped over his morning search and went to find Christine.

Josh was puzzled by Drake's behavior. Had he missed Christine that much and was hoping to catch up on six years? Normally, nothing could distract Drake from girls. His routine of date searches was absent, and this concerned Josh. While he probably should have been happy that his brother was no longer running around and recklessly dating, it still made Josh feel as though he should worry about Drake. It just wasn't normal for him.

Drake had no idea that Josh was taking notice of the sudden change in his routine. In fact, he had no idea of what anyone else thought of him that morning, including Candice, and for the first time in a long time, Drake Parker didn't care. He headed toward Christine's locker first thing, ignoring the hopeful smiles and glances from the majority of the female population of Belleview.

"Hey, Christine."

"Good morning, Drake," she replied, pleasantly. She appeared to be in a good mood today. Maybe the mall trip with Mindy had calmed her down. She had been calm when Drake left the house on Saturday, but he had been concerned about her on Sunday. He didn't know if Mindy had mentioned his nonexistant feelings for her either. Of course he had feelings of friendship toward her, but not the feelings to which Mindy was referring, not feelings of romance. They had kissed once. They were eleven then. They got older and went out on dates and kissed other people. The first one was special, but it was just a memory now. Yes, they'd almost kissed again in Drake's room, but it was just the heat of the moment. Nothing was going to happen. Drake really wanted to know if Mindy mentioned her "feelings" theory to Christine, though. If she did, he'd have to clear things up and he'd already cleared up a lot with Christine.

"So, how was the mall with Mindy yesterday?" he asked.

"Fine," she replied. "I didn't think guys normally wanted to hear about girl time, especially at the mall," she smirked.

"Oh," Drake responded. "Well, you know. Just wondering how you were doing yesterday."

"Fine. I'm very much over what Candice said by now."

"Good, I'm glad." Drake had no idea how to get her to talk about what she and Mindy talked about or if it had anything to do with him. "Talk about anything interesting?"

"Just about how Candice isn't as high and mighty as she thinks she is, why?"

"Just curious," Drake replied. "I don't get along with Mindy too well. She tried to frame me for putting Mrs. Haifer's car in the classroom last year. Just wondering if she was making me look bad," he said smiling.

"She actually said you were right about not letting anybody walk all over me like that."

"Wow. Mindy said I was right? Maybe she's coming down with something." Drake was glad to hear that Mindy hadn't told Christine her suspicions.

Christine laughed. She and Drake walked together that morning just talking about random things. Many of the girls who found Drake attractive felt a bit jealous. Especially the ones who knew them from elementary school. Who was she to come back and think she could keep Drake Parker all to herself? They'd have to deal with it. Drake wasn't looking in any other direction but her's.

Josh and Mindy both noticed a few things as the day continued. Drake was in all of his classes on time. He was with Christine the entire day. He didn't eat lunch with his normal friends, but he instead ate with Christine. When it was time to go home, he went to her house. Josh wondered if Drake was sick. Then he figured he might be just happy to see Christine again. He hadn't really had time to catch up with her. That's all it had to be. Mindy on the other hand only saw more and more that she had been right. Mindy was big on science and knew that she only had a theory until Drake proved it completely true that he did have feelings for Christine, but to Mindy, the proof was there. Drake just had to put it together for himself to see it.
For Mindy, the most obvious piece of evidence came when it was Saturday and Drake had no date that night. She decided to speak with him again. As difficult as he was to deal with, she couldn't help but want to help Drake. She was sick of watching him date girls he didn't really care about. Even with all of their arguing, Drake had grown on Mindy a bit. Even if she hadn't grown on him.

Drake was at the Premiere like he normally was when Mindy decided to bring up her thoughts again. He was sitting in a chair playing with the wrapper from a Megathon Bar.

"Hey," said Mindy.

"Hi," Drake replied. "Can I help you?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

"About...?"

"Well..." she paused for a moment. He was folding the candy bar wrapper into a paper airplane. She smacked her hand on top of his. "Stop it! I'm trying to talk to you!"

"Sorry," he responded.

"Now I know you said you don't have feelings for...Drake Parker!" Drake was aiming for the garbage can with his paper plane. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Not really," he replied.

"This is important, so if you don't stop messing with that airplane and start listening, you can kiss your guitar goodbye!"

Drake looked startled, then scared.

"Okay, okay. I'm listening. What is it?"

"You told me you don't have feelings for Christine. I know that's not true."

"Mindy..."

"No. You spent the entire week with her. You went to her house every day after school. You don't even have a date at all today."

"Well, I've just wanted to catch up with her. Is that a crime? We're friends. Nothing more. We'll never be more than that. The sooner you get that through your thick head the better. Now quit bringing this up. Nothing will ever happen between me and Christine." Drake stood and left Mindy. She glanced in the direction he walked away. Why didn't he just admit it? It would make things much less complicated.

Drake bumped into Christine while walking out of the Premiere.

"Hi," he said.

"Hey."

"How's it going?"

"Alright. Drake, can I talk to you about something?"

"Sure."

"Can we go to the park? I'd rather we talked where it was a little more private. Everyone from school is here."

"Okay," Drake replied.

The two made their way to the park and sat down on a bench. Drake was happy. Was she finally going to open up to him and tell him why she was angry with her dad?

"Drake, remember the last time we saw each other?" Christine asked.

Not what he'd expected, but now he was even more curious.

"How could I forget that day?" he responded.

"Well, then you remember you made a few promises that day."

"Uh...yeah," Drake blushed. He remembered all right. What was she expecting?

"You promised we'd find each other again and would always be together."

"Yes, I do remember. Where is this going?"

"I wondered if you are going to keep that promise."

"Um, well, why wouldn't I?"

"You said so yourself, you date a lot of girls."

"I know. I just..."

"Are you going to keep the promise of our always being together? It doesn't have to be as a couple, so stop looking at me like that. But can you be friends with me when half the girls that you go out with end up giving me dirty looks?"

"If they don't like you, that's their problem. They should know that we would never be anymore than friends."

"Right," she agreed, not really looking at him at that moment.

"I promise we'll find each other. Then we'll be together again forever and happy. We can even get married."

The laughter of the small boy died away as Drake shook himself awake. He sighed. Christine hadn't mentioned the part about getting married the previous day. He knew why. It would be silly to hold him to that. He'd said that when he was eleven. Of course things had changed. Besides, it was just a silly little childhood promise. Then why did she ask about the rest of it?

Drake looked at the clock. It was only 8:34. Last time he'd dreamed about that day, it was the night he nearly kissed her again. Then Christine brought up his promises just yesterday, and he'd had another dream like this. Why did his mind think it had to sort that out while he was asleep? He sighed. Why was he dreaming about that day anyway? Was it really because it kept coming up or was it something else?