“You can teach her how to burp,” I said.
“So could you. You’re getting good. I’m pretty sure I smelled pepperoni pizza on that last one.”
“Yeah, that’s what I had for lunch.”
“Duh, I was there. Remember the fire alarm?”
“Classic. How could I ever forget that? I can’t believe it was just burned popcorn from the teacher’s lounge.”
“I know. We will forever be legends at our school. No one will ever top us.”
“Our story will live on forever,” I added. “Someday, many years from now of course, kids will still tell the amazing tale of The Underwear Dare!”
“We’ll be living legends like the Swamp Ape or the Loch Ness Monster,” he said.
“Except we’ll be real,” I added.
“What do you mean? The Swamp Ape and the Loch Ness Monster are real,” he said.
* * *
“Get up, boys. You’ve got a lot of work to do,” my dad announced the next morning. “Since you lost your TV and computer privileges, you both have a lot of free time. I figured you two could start by raking the yard.”
I had a feeling this was going to be a long month. Eddie and I spent most of the morning raking leaves into a big pile.
“Hey Josh, check this out,” Eddie said and fell over backwards into the huge pile of leaves.
“Let me try!” I said.
“Wait, let me pretend to shoot you.”
“Okay.”
Eddie did his best gangster imitation, “Alright you dirty rat. This is the end of the line for you.”
Eddie really sounded like an old time gangster. He was a pretty good actor.
“Bang!” he yelled.
I flung myself backward into the pile of leaves. They felt soft and crunched loudly. They smelled all earthy like plants and soil.
“My turn! You shoot me,” Eddie yelled.
“Alright, mister,” I said even though my gangster imitation sucked compared to Eddie’s. “It’s over for you. Bang!”
Eddie flew backwards. It really looked like he had been shot. He sat up in the pile of leaves and laughed. Just then my dad came out with a hand full of garbage bags.
“Looks like you’re ready to bag up the leaves,” he said putting an end to our fun.
* * *
Eddie and I spent the rest of the afternoon in our room. Eddie wandered around in circles. I could tell he was bored.
“I miss TV,” he said.
“I know and it’s only been half a day.”
“I miss the internet.”
“Me too.”
“What can we do?” Eddie said as he rummaged through the closet. “What do we have here?” he asked as he pulled out his sketchbook.
“Hey, I put my origami stuff in there, too!” I scrambled to get it.
Eddie and I began to create art. “My mom was still really mad today,” Eddie said.
“She seemed a bit better.”
“Naw, she’s mad. I could tell because she didn’t make a special breakfast. Saturday’s breakfast is always big and delicious. Today she just gave us cold cereal.”
“Maybe she has morning sickness. I heard pregnant ladies can get sick in the morning.”
“That’s stupid. It can’t be true.”
Eddie continued to draw and after a while he said, “We should do something nice for my mom.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno, you’re the one with the brains. You think of something.”
“We could help around the house.”
“Boring.”
“Sometimes you have to do things that are boring if you want to help people.”
“Yeah, but what if we did something less boring. Less boring things can help, too.”
“You think of it then.”
“We could make her a card,” Eddie said.
“That’s for babies,” I said.
“That’s it. You are smart.”
“What’s it?” I asked.
“We could make something for the baby. We’ve got everything we need here to do it.”
“Let’s do it,” I said enthusiastically.
Eddie and I spent the rest of the day creating art for the baby. I got really good at making origami animals. Eddie decided to paint animals. Together we created an art zoo.
Eddie made a really cool painting of an elephant in the jungle. I taught myself how to fold a penguin and bear out of origami paper. I used Eddie’s markers to add eyes and noses to the animals.
Next, Eddie painted a monkey swinging from a tree. The cool thing was, when it was next to the elephant painting, it looked like it was the same scene. He somehow made the jungle match up between the paintings.
I taught myself how to fold a pig, a swan and a frog. Then I made about ten more copies of each animal.
“You’re getting good at origami,” Eddie said.
“Thanks. Your paintings look great. I like how they look like one scene.”
“Check this out,” Eddie said and added his final painting to the line up. It was a giraffe. He had painted it so its head was up in the tree looking at the monkey. He was a gifted artist.
“It’s really good,” I said.
“Thanks,” he answered and I could tell he was proud.
“What should I do with all these origami animals?” I asked.
“You could string them together and we could hang them in the baby’s room.”
“Along with your paintings.”
“It’ll look great.”
Later that night when Allie and my dad were asleep, Eddie and I snuck downstairs to secretly decorate the baby’s room with our creations. For once Eddie’s feet didn’t sound like a caveman’s feet clomping down the stairs.
Eddie snuck some yarn out of Allie’s knitting basket and we tied the origami animals to the long yarn. We hung up Eddie’s paintings using old thumbtacks from our bulletin board and we strung the origami animals across the room.
It felt good to do something nice for Allie. And Eddie was right, it wasn’t boring.
CHAPTER 18
Sausage. Yummy breakfast sausage. I jumped out of bed and rushed downstairs. I bumped into Eddie on the way.
“Out of my way, shrimpo,” Eddie yelled and passed me on the stairs. This time I didn’t care. I knew there would be enough sausage to go around.
Allie put a heaping plate of pancakes and sausage in front of me, Eddie, and my dad. I poured warm maple syrup over my plateful and dug in.
Allie joined us at the table.
“I want to thank you boys for the beautiful art in the baby’s room. I’m sure you did it out of the goodness of your heart. It’s not a bribe, is it?” Allie asked.
“We felt really bad for upsetting you and Jack. We were trying to show you we were sorry,” Eddie said.
“We really are sorry,” I added sounding like a parrot.
My dad looked over his glasses at Allie. “Well, saying you’re sorry is a good place to start but that doesn’t make up for what you two did. You can think about it this afternoon in your room. It’s raining too hard for yard work. And you both will load the dishwasher when you’re done with breakfast.”
We ate the rest of our breakfast in silence and then loaded the dishwasher. We trudged up the stairs to our room and plopped on our beds.
“Check this out,” Eddie said as he picked up a deck of cards off his nightstand.
“Where’d those come from?” I asked.
“My mom. They’re the same deck that my mom, dad, and I used to play with. She must have put them up here while we were loading the dishwasher.”
“I guess she’s not as mad as before,” I said.
“You want to play Hearts?”
“I don’t know how.”
“I’ll teach you, but it’s kinda hard to play with just two people.”
“Okay,” I said as he dealt the first hand and explained the rules. After we’d been playing awhile I said, “Do you think our parents will l
et us name our sister?”
“Probably. If we convince them we want to be a part of it all.”
“We should pick a really cool name.”
“Like Alwilda,” Eddie said.
“What? That stinks.”
“No it doesn’t. If you know your history then you know Alwilda was a princess.”
“So, there were lots of princesses in history.”
“Not like Alwilda. She was the princess of Scandinavia or something and she was supposed to marry Prince Alf of Denmark.”
“Alf? Sounds stupid, like a muppet.”
“Whatever. Anyway, she thought Prince Alf was a wimp so she dressed up like a man and became a pirate and sailed away.”
“So that’s it?”
“Ah, no that’s not it. Her pirate ship got into a battle with Prince Alf’s ship. He won and took her prisoner. She was so impressed by his unwimpiness that she married him and became the Queen of Denmark.”
“Cool. But Alwilda is still an ugly name. What would her nickname be, Al? If you want a stupid pirate name why not name her Scurvy. That’s just as bad.”
“Duh, Josh. Scurvy is a good name for a dog, but not a person. Everyone knows that. So, what’s your choice?”
“I was thinking Hannah.”
“What? There are a million girls named Hannah.”
“Yeah, but Hannah is a palindrome,” I added.
“What’s a palindrome? I could get on board with the name Palindrome. That’s a cool name.”
“Palindrome is not a name. It’s when a word is spelled the same forward and backward. Like tot, T-O-T.”
“Yum, tater tots. Are we having those for lunch? Wait! I get it. Like poop. P-O-O-P forwards or backwards it’s P-O-O-P. That’s awesome!” Eddie said.
“So you agree, Hannah is cool,” I said.
“I do agree Hannah is cool. I like Palindrome better, but Alwilda is the best. And I’m willing to bet on it. Do you care to bet on it?” Eddie goaded me.
“Yes, I am willing to make a bet on it. The winner gets to name our sister. What kind of bet?” I asked.
Eddie smiled slyly and said, “I’m thinking about a series of dares…”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
This book was written by the Nardini Sisters. Lisa Nardini lives in Florida and Gina Nardini-Christoffel lives in North Carolina. Although the two sisters live in different states, they still make time to write together. While growing up in the Ozarks, they shared a bedroom and according to Gina, Lisa got all the good wall space and shelves.
The Underwear Dare is their first novel. They are currently working on Zoo’d which features the same cast of characters from The Underwear Dare as they venture into sixth grade.
Visit our website at:
www.nardinisisters.com
The Underwear Dare: Nerd vs. Bully! Page 12