by Barbara Dee
Abi slapped her arm. “Which means I get to ask Mak a question, which she has to answer truthfully. No topic is off-limits, okay? Because we’re all best friends. So let’s say I ask her, ‘Who is your secret crush?’ ”
Uh-oh, I thought. Here we go.
“Well, it isn’t Nick,” Makayla declared. “Okay?”
Abi rolled her eyes and smiled.
“But you didn’t answer the question, dahling,” Jules reminded Makayla.
“Fine, dahling,” Makayla said. “It’s Sean.”
“EWW,” Abi shouted, and Jules said, “Seriously? You mean that gross CIT?”
“I thought he was cute,” Makayla said. “In a bad-complexion sort of way.”
I glanced at Marley. More camp talk that we didn’t get. Was she starting to feel as left out as I did? And what was all this “dahling” stuff about?
I began chewing my thumb cuticle.
Makayla took a big bite of cupcake. “So anyway, Lia. I told my truth, and now I turn to the person sitting on my right.”
“Who’s me,” Jules said. “And I choose dare.”
Makayla grinned. You could see some frosting on her teeth. “You sure?”
“Totally. Bring it, Mak.”
“You asked for it, Julesie.” Mak looked at the ceiling for a few seconds. “Okay. I dare you to eat that cupcake with no hands.”
Jules squealed. “I totally hate you,” she told Mak.
Then she took a deep breath, put her arms behind her back like an Olympic speed skater, and gobbled up the cupcake, the entire thing, while all of us clapped and laughed. Even Marley, who apparently had decided to play.
Finally Jules looked up. She had frosting all over her mouth and her chin, and some gobs were sticking to her hair. “Victory,” she announced, then ran into Abi’s bathroom. We could hear her turn on the faucet full blast.
“What happens if you don’t complete the dare?” I asked.
“Then you have to repeat the turn,” Abi said. “Although if you’re caught telling a lie, you’re banished forever.”
“Because truth is the most important part of the game,” Makayla added.
Jules stepped out of the bathroom with a pink, chocolate-free face. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing, dahling,” Abi said. “We were waiting for you.” She turned to Marley. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Dare,” Marley said immediately. She looked a little pale, I thought, but maybe that was from too much pizza.
Jules glanced at Abi. “You sure?”
Marley nodded.
Jules smiled as she plopped down again on the white rug. “Okay, here goes. Marley, I dare you to take off your bra and show us the label, so we can all see your bra size!”
I swallowed. Marley didn’t even own a bra, and everyone knew it.
“No,” Marley said.
Abi did a slow blink. “You refuse?”
“Right. I refuse.”
“Then you have to leave.”
“You mean leave the game?” I said, staring at Abi.
“I mean leave my house,” Abi replied calmly. “That’s the rule.”
Marley was staring at a hole in one of her socks. She stuck her pointer finger in the hole and made it bigger.
“That’s not fair,” I protested. “Nobody ever said if you refuse a dare you have to go home. You should give Marley another chance.”
Abi and Mak had their eye conversation again.
“Fine,” Abi said. “Same dare. She has one more chance to accept, but that’s it.”
All of a sudden Marley jumped to her feet, reached under her Chicago Cubs jersey, wriggled a bit, and pulled out a pale blue bra through her sleeve. “30A!” she declared. “Are you happy now?”
Abi and Mak examined the label. They passed it to Jules, who offered it to me, but I didn’t look.
“We’re satisfied,” Abi announced. “Okay, Marley. Now you get to ask Lia.”
Marley snatched her bra from Jules and headed to the bathroom. “What if I don’t want to ask Lia?”
“You can forfeit your turn, then.”
“Great! Go ahead without me!”
Makayla shrugged. “All right, Lia, so which do you choose?”
“Truth,” I said. I mean, all I had on under my top was one of those lame no-boob training bras. Marley had gone out and bought some real bras, apparently. Maybe in Chicago this summer—or after I’d lied to her about “shopping.” It was weird she hadn’t even mentioned it to me. Was she afraid I’d accuse her of copying, or something?
Mak, Jules, and Abi huddled. All of my saliva dried into dust.
Then Jules smiled sweetly. “So, Lia,” she said. “Here’s your question. Have you ever kissed a boy who wasn’t your brother?”
“Oh, sure,” I blurted.
Jules looked surprised but quickly recovered. “Who was it?”
“His name is Tanner. He’s a freshman in high school. I met him this summer up in Maine.”
“Seriously,” Abi said. It was more of a comment than a question. “So what did he look like?”
“Incredibly cute. Brown eyes. Dark hair. Nice teeth.” Which was all true.
“You just walked up to this strange boy and kissed him?” Makayla asked, her eyes wide.
“No, of course not. I met him when my aunt invited his family over for dinner.” Also true. “And afterward we took a walk on the beach. And we kissed.”
Which of course wasn’t.
“On the mouth?” Jules was gaping.
“Yeah,” I said.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. A minute, maybe?”
Makayla’s eyebrows rose. “An entire minute?”
“Okay, no. More like twenty seconds, maybe. Or fifteen. I wasn’t counting.”
“Huh,” Abi said. She glanced at Makayla. “Were your eyes closed?”
I nodded.
“Were his?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know that if your eyes were closed?”
I swallowed some saliva dust. “I mean, I assume they were. I’m not positive.”
“So what did his lips taste like?” Jules asked.
“Chili. My aunt made veggie chili for supper. It was pretty good. Not too spicy. Although she did add some maple syrup—”
“Who pulled away first?” Makayla interrupted.
“Me. Although sort of both of us.”
Makayla, Abi, and Jules looked at each other. Something was communicated, a secret silent code you could decipher only if you went to their camp, swam in their lake, got stung by their mosquitoes.
Finally Abi took a tiny bite of cupcake. “And was there an exchange of spit?”
Jules and Mak both went, “Eww.”
“What’s wrong?” Abi asked, laughing. “It’s a totally fair question.”
“You think so?” Now Marley was back, smoothing the front of her jersey. “Because in the version of Truth or Dare I played with my cousins, you weren’t allowed to ask a bunch of follow-up questions.”
“Well, this is our version,” Makayla said.
“But it’s still Truth or Dare, right? Not A Million Truths We Get to Keep Asking Lia About. So I’m pretty sure by now it’s Abi’s turn. Isn’t it?”
Abi did her laugh. “Fine,” she said. “I choose dare. Lia, go ahead, dare me.”
Everyone looked at me, waiting.
I was too jittery to come up with a good one. So I dared Abi to sing a Disney song out the window, and she screamed “Let It Go” at the top of her lungs.
The whole time I kept replaying our game and what I’d just said, wishing I could somehow hit the Delete key.
Nothing’s Off-Limits
I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU that I didn’t sleep that night, and that all of Sunday I squirmed and blushed when I thought about the lie I’d told my friends. But here’s the truth—by the next morning I felt proud of myself. The tiny green bud of the lie—I kissed Tanner—had bloomed into a gorgeous pink flower
overnight, a great big peony I could keep in a vase in front of me and take whiffs of whenever I felt left out of the conversation. I kissed Tanner wasn’t the truth as a statement of What Actually Happened to Me That Summer, but it was a different kind of truth—a statement of What Was Going on Inside My Brain, how all of a sudden I could come up with details (the walk on the beach, the fifteen-second kiss, the closed eyes). I mean, I’d never even thought of stuff like that before, ever. Not about myself, anyway. So I felt excited, and maybe a little bit scared, about my new power.
Seventh grade started the following Tuesday. After the unfun summer I’d had, I wasn’t even dreading school all that much. And the first day wasn’t even that terrible—all of my friends except Marley were in my PE class, and Marley and Mak were both in my homeroom. And my teachers seemed decent, with the exception of Mrs. Crawley for math, whose nose job was totally distracting, and Mr. Halloran for homeroom and English, whose breath stank like onions and tuna fish.
I also secretly celebrated that my crush, Graydon, was in all my classes. After seeing Tanner up close this summer, I had to admit that Graydon wasn’t what you’d call “typical” cute. He was short, for one thing. Also, his wrists were bony and his glasses were always smudged. But he was incredibly smart and funny, and I liked the way his hair curled around his ears. A few times last year he let me borrow his homework. Once he asked me to dance at a boy-girl party Abi had in her basement; I stepped on his toes a couple of times and he didn’t even tease me about it.
Anyway, on our first day back, my friends and I played Truth or Dare again in the lunchroom. I had watered the Tanner Flower so much over the weekend that by lunch period it was almost a bouquet: I’d decided what his cheek felt like and how his hair smelled, what we talked about before kissing, how we strolled on the sand afterward. (I’d taken off my sandals; the damp sand cooled my toes, and the cold tide nipped at my ankles. Oh, right—and I even found some sea glass.)
In fact, I was so prepared for follow-up kiss questions that I barely paid attention to the game. Makayla asked Jules the grossest thing she ever ate (answer: snot, which her little brother sneaked into the peanut butter); Abi asked Makayla if she’d ever peed in the pool (answer: yes, twice); Jules asked Abi if she’d ever cheated on a test (answer: yes, once on a math test, when she’d copied two of Graydon’s answers).
And then Abi turned to me. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” I said right away. My heart was pounding. This time I was ready.
“Okay. So here’s your question, Lia: Did you get your period yet?”
“What?” I stared.
“You know. Did you start?”
“Men-stru-a-ting,” Makayla enunciated, as if she were the voice-over in one of those health class videos.
“Are you really asking her that?” Marley demanded. “Isn’t that personal?”
“We told you the rules,” Abi replied, not even looking at Marley. “Nothing’s off-limits.”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“Actually, I did,” I blurted. “Over the summer.”
Jules squealed. “Really, Lia? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“It’s kind of a painful topic.”
“Oh, I knowww,” Jules said, making sympathetic eyes. “You had killer cramps?”
“No, I mean painful embarrassing.” I started twirling the corners of my napkin. “Because it happened with Tanner. On the beach. We were walking, and all of a sudden I just . . . you know, felt it.”
Marley glanced up at me.
“At first I didn’t know what it was,” I continued. “My leg was wet, and I thought probably a wave had splashed me, or maybe some kid had kicked some wet sand on me. But when I looked down—”
“Blerg, that’s horrible,” Makayla said.
Jules nibbled an apple. “So what did you do?”
“Well, fortunately, I had a towel with me, so I wrapped it around my waist.”
“What did Tanner say?” Makayla asked. “Because omigod, Lia, there you were, suddenly wearing a toga—”
“I think she probably looked more ancient Egyptian,” Abi corrected her. “If Lia only had the towel around her waist.”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure how it looked. All I told Tanner was that I felt cold, so he gave me his hoodie.”
Jules and Makayla went “Aww.” And even I thought, That was really sweet of him.
Marley twirled the spaghetti on her plate, but she never put any in her mouth. “All right, my turn,” she said loudly.
“But Lia’s not done yet,” Abi protested.
“Yeah, she is,” Marley said firmly. She put down her fork.
You want to hear something funny? I knew Marley thought she was rescuing me from A Million Follow-Up Questions, and I appreciated that. But right then I also felt kind of annoyed at her. She’d basically barged into my story just when I was getting to the juicy Tanner part. And even though I had no idea where any of it was going, I could tell my friends were following every word. Because really: Getting your period on a lonely beach up in Maine with a dark-haired boy you’d just kissed whose lips tasted like chili—it was such a better My First Period story than Jules’s, which was basically about zits and cramps and the second-floor bathroom.
“I choose dare,” Marley said. She raised her eyebrows at me, like, Well?
I thought.
“Hurry up,” Abi said, poking me.
“I’m thinking,” I said. Daring Marley was tricky. If I gave her a lame one, like I dare you to hold your breath for sixty seconds, it would be like I was saying we should all go easy on her, because she wasn’t as cool as the rest of us. Which I definitely didn’t think. But if I gave her a hard dare, like showing her bra size, it would be mean to Marley. And I knew she wasn’t too happy with the game to begin with.
“Time’s up, Lia,” Abi declared.
“Wait,” I said. “There’s a time limit?”
She laughed. “Yeah. Time’s up when the rest of us are sick of waiting. So now we’re going to decide Marley’s dare.”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” I protested.
Abi, Jules, and Makayla ignored me. They huddled.
Then Abi smiled at Marley.
“Okay,” she said. “Marley, we dare you to give Graydon a love poem. But first we have to read it. And approve it,” Abi added.
Makayla nodded. “And you have to sign it.”
I swallowed. “Hey, guys. Isn’t that a little too—”
“She chose dare, Lia,” Jules reminded me.
“I know, but . . .” I glanced at Graydon, who was sitting at a lunch table with two other nerdy seventh-grade boys, Jake Lombardi and Ben Maldonado. “That dare affects other people.”
“Sometimes the game works that way.” Abi shrugged. “It’s how you play.”
The funny thing was, Marley didn’t seem to care about the Graydon part.
“I can copy it out of a book, right? I don’t have to actually write it?” she asked.
Makayla nodded. “You can even print it off your computer, if you want. As long as you sign your name.”
The bell rang.
“Oh yeah, and it has to happen by lunchtime tomorrow,” Abi announced, laughing for punctuation.
Glad We Spoke
THAT EVENING THE DOORBELL RANG at exactly six o’clock, and there was Val with her Tuesday Feast. She’d brought us two roast chickens, mashed potatoes, a Greek salad, roasted vegetables, and brownies. She’d also included two pints of vanilla ice cream, so we could à la mode the brownies, if we wanted. Oh, and a jar of fudge, which we could zap in the microwave, to pour on top.
I helped her unpack everything, thanking her like crazy, the way I always did.
She hugged me. “It just makes me happy to help you all,” she said, sighing. “Cooking is the least I can do.” Then she added, “Lia, dear, can we chat for a second?”
“Sure,” I said.
We sat at the small table in the kitchen. I quickly brushed some cereal crumbs
into my lap, hoping she didn’t see. Val smiled brightly, but she didn’t speak. Was she waiting for something?
“Would you like some tea?” I asked. “Or cider? Or water? I could make lemonade—”
She held up a hand. “No, I’m fine, thanks. Lia, Abi tells me you had a good summer. Lots happened, right?”
It did? I shrugged.
She waited a little. Then she said, “Well, if you ever want to discuss anything . . . if you have any questions—”
“About what?” I asked.
“Oh, anything. Girl stuff. Or not girl stuff. Really, anything at all.” She seemed to be searching my face for something. “I’m around all the time.”
“Oh, I know,” I said.
What was going on here, exactly? I had no clue.
And suddenly I got it: Abi had told her mom the My First Period story. Why would she do a thing like that?
My cheeks burned. “That’s really nice of you, Val, but I’m fine, actually. And also, I talk all the time to my aunt Shelby.”
Val’s brow puckered. “Right. How is Shelby?”
“Great. She has a store and maybe a second one. And omigod, such adorable cats! I always wanted one, but my mom was allergic, so . . .” I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop.
Val smiled. “Well, that’s all good to hear. I haven’t kept up with Shelby, actually. Most of what I remember about her from school was how different she was from your mom.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, your mom was very serious and very smart. And so sweet. Everybody respected her and loved her so much, you know, sweetheart. I still can’t believe—” She hugged me then, so I wouldn’t notice she was crying.
My throat ached as I smelled Val’s shampoo. Mom had used the same brand. Maybe it was the type they bought at salons: The Official Shampoo of All Moms Everywhere.
Finally Val pulled away. Her face was smiling again. “Anyway, I’m glad we spoke. Anytime you ever want to chat, even if you just feel like hanging out in my kitchen, remember I’m only a few blocks away. Will you promise you’ll do that, Lia?”
I wanted to shrivel up like a raisin. Abi’s mom was the nicest mom on the planet, and I was lying to her, too, now. Crap. Crap times five hundred.