Center Stage (TNT Force Cheer #3)

by Dana Burkey

  When the bell rang at the end of class, I instantly felt my heart speed up. Either before lunch or after lunch, I would need to go to my locker for my afternoon books. Should I take the time and look at what was in the envelope? Would knowing the dare make it any easier? Putting it off a little longer, I went to the restroom before heading to the lunch line. I didn’t want to get to my lunch table before Penny or Trent. If I could just enter into their conversation, then it would keep me from having to put in too much effort.

  “-he is going to be so mad if she actually kisses him!” I heard Penny say when I was a few feet from the table.

  “She has to,” Trent shrugged, popping some grapes into his mouth. “That’s how the dare works.”

  Immediately I wanted to run and hide. It was clear they were also talking about the stupid dare. Okay, any other year I wouldn’t have said it was stupid, but now that I was a part of it, I didn’t like anything about it!

  “Who are you talking about?” I asked. I in no way actually wanted to know, but if they kept talking, it could give me some time to think through what I should say.

  “Courtney got her dare this morning, and it says she has to kiss an ex,” Trent explained while brushing his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. That was all he really needed to say, thankfully. The rest was filled in with my knowledge of school drama.

  Courtney Morris was in our grade and was currently dating Jackson Hill. They started dating right at the start of middle school and were determined that they would keep dating all the way through college into marriage. Everyone knew it was a real possibility-they were basically a celebrity couple at Central Grove Middle School. In fact, they were so close that most people forget that Courtney actually dated Jackson's best friend Scott the first few weeks of 6th grade. It was something that was more or less just forgotten, but now that the kiss dare was out in the open, Courtney would have to basically cheat on her boyfriend if she didn’t want to pay the consequences.

  “Can someone really make her do that?” I asked, shocked that someone would have the guts to give her that dare after her and Jackson had been together for almost two years now.

  “I guess so,” Penny replied. “In fact, I bet Scott was the one who gave her the dare in the first place!”

  “No way!” Trent shook his head. “I think it was totally Heather. She’s had a crush on Jackson forever.”

  While my two best friends began debating who could have been responsible for daring Courtney to kiss her ex, all I could think about was the dare that was waiting for me. Once I opened the card in my locker, I would only have until the end of the dance on Friday to complete whatever the card told me to do. The part of it that I didn’t understand was who would have placed it in my locker to begin with. Sure, it was a tradition at our school for years, but generally only the super popular kids gave and received the dares. The fact that one of them might have dared me was too crazy to think about. Sure, my sister was a cheerleader when she was in 7th and 8th grade, but that was already three years ago, and everyone had long since learned I was nothing like her.

  “Hello? Earth to Bre.”

  Hearing my name snapped me back to reality. Trent and Penny were both staring at me, waiting for something. Had they asked me a question? Did I accidently speak while I was off in la-la land thinking about the black envelope sitting in my locker?

  “What?” I managed, not sure saying anything else was quite safe yet.

  “I asked if we’re all still going to the dance together.” Penny repeated slowly. I had a feeling it wasn’t just the second time she was saying these words. “My brother gets the car for the weekend as long as he drives us, so we don’t have to walk this time.”

  “Oh, cool,” I said flatly. “I don’t know if I want to go, though.”

  “What do you mean?” Penny exclaimed. “We’ve been talking about how fun this dance is going to be for months! I mean, it’s the last dance before we leave middle school forever. We can’t just miss it!”

  “Besides,” Trent began in a much calmer tone than Penny. “What else are you going to do on a Friday night when both of us are at the dance?”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it,” I said with a sigh.

  “Don’t think, just say you’ll go,” Penny demanded. “Please!”

  “Fine,” was all I managed, my eyes glued to my food. I hoped if I could just focus on the plate in front of me, I could make it through the whole lunch period without incident.

  “Bre?”

  Looking up I was shocked to see both Trent and Penny were standing up and getting ready to leave the lunch room. Around us, everyone else was also leaving. Somehow I had missed the first bell, and if I didn't hustle, I was going to be late for my next class. Clearly I had focused on my food a little too hard.

  “Are you okay?” Trent asked me as we walked to bio a few minutes later. I had thrown away what was left my lunch while Penny gave me an odd look, then decided to skip my locker trip so I didn’t have to see the envelope at all. I would deal with the consequences of not having my English book with me later.

  “I’m just tired,” I lied easily. It was kind of true, though. And even if it wasn’t the main reason for my head being in the clouds, it was better than letting Trent know I had a dare in my locker. A massive part of me hoped that when I opened it, the card would be addressed to someone else. Maybe it was just put in the wrong locker. Maybe it was for Frankie who was two lockers down from me. He usually got at least one dare each year. So, maybe I was off the hook.

  “Well wake up,” Trent smiled. “I can’t have my lab partner dozing off today.”

  With a groan, I marched up the steps to class. How could I have completely forgotten it was dissection day? Before we even entered the classroom, I could smell the chemicals and stench of dead worms. Even without the envelope in my locker factoring in, this was about to be a pretty terrible Tuesday for sure.

  Chapter 2

  When school was over, I did my best to slip the black envelope into my bag. At that point in the day, I had already done a pretty good job of avoiding both Trent and Penny, so pulling the thin paper out of my locker was rather easy to accomplish. The whole bus ride home, I tried not to make eye contact with anyone, and as soon as the bus stopped at my street, I was sprinting home as fast as I could move.

  “Where’s the fire?” my sister Caitlyn asked as soon as I slammed through the back door into the kitchen.

  “What?” I asked, shocked to see her sitting on the counter waiting for her daily after school pop tart to be ready. “I mean... I’m fine.”

  “You’re so weird,” she said with an eye roll and hair flip. She could not be more different than me if she tried.

  I raced up to my room then, making sure to not actually run until I was out of eyesight. When I walked into my room I tossed my bag on the floor. It spilled out on my area rug instantly. I watched as the black envelope slid under my desk chair, this time face up. It was the first time I had bothered to look at the front, so seeing it was a whole new shock. Moving closer to stare at it without actually touching it, I saw that my name was written in silver sharpie. I had seen other people’s names on envelopes when they had them at school, even my sisters’ name on her dares still hanging on her corkboard in her bedroom. But suddenly, actually seeing my name, made me know the envelope had not just been placed in the wrong locker.

  Refusing to be in the same room as the dare, I got up and headed to the living room. Knowing there had to be something on TV to help me forget about the dare for a while longer, I snagged some chips on my way, then flopped down on the couch. Unfortunately, just as I was settling into a re-run episode of Friends, Caitlyn came into the room chomping loudly on her pop tart.

  “Have you seen my new silver flip flops?” she asked between massive bites of her snack. “You used them yesterday, right?”

  “No, I had on my grey ones,” I corrected her with a sigh. “Last I saw them, yours were in the laundry room.”

 
“I just checked and they’re not there,” she huffed before turning and storming out of the room.

  Trying to get back into the episode, I listened as she stomp-stomped up the steps, clearly not wanting to check in the laundry room as I suggested. Determined to block out the sounds of her feet pounding around while she looked, I turned up the volume on the TV. It was an episode of Friends I had seen a few times before but it was still fun to watch and laugh at.

  “Look what I found!”

  Tearing my eyes off the screen, I was surprised to see Caitlyn standing in the doorway once again. But it was nothing compared to the shock of seeing her holding a familiar black envelope in her hand, instead of her silver flip flops.

  “What are you doing?!” I jumped up off of the couch, causing my open bag of chips to spill everywhere. “Why were you in my room?”

  “I was looking for my flip flops but found this instead,” she said with a massive grin. “Why didn’t you open it yet?”

  “Give me that!” I grabbed the envelope from her, holding it tight enough to bend it slightly.

  “So, open it already!” Caitlyn stepped past me to grab the chips from the floor and take a seat on the couch.

  “No,” I said with a shake of my head. “I don’t want to open it.”

  “But you have to,” she made out between handfuls of food. “If you don’t open it then you won’t be able to finish the dare.”

  “I don’t want to do this stupid dare anyways,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t even know how I got nominated in the first place.”

  “Maybe everyone thinks it’s time you start acting like your big sister?” Caitlyn guessed. She had been a cheerleader since she was in 7th grade, and when she got to high school, she went straight to the varsity squad as a freshman. Her boyfriends have always been varsity sports team members, and she is always at the center of every major social event in the school. So, when I chose not to try out for sports in favor of joining the art club and could care less about school functions, everyone was shocked. It was assumed that I would be just like my popular big sister; instead, I was her polar opposite. If it weren’t for our matching curly blonde hair and green eyes, everyone would assume I was adopted for sure!

  “You know there’ll be consequences if you don’t finish the dare.” Her words brought me out of my head and dropped me back in the present. “When I was in 7th grade, Gary Bronson had to get his head shaved when he didn’t kiss Maggie K.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, trying to convince myself as well as my sister.

  “Sure it is!” Caitlyn insisted. “When I was still in 6th grade, there was a girl that got dared. After she didn’t do her dare, she had to move schools! And when I was in 8th grade, Mr. Mackey failed a kid in gym class for not doing his dare. I mean, who actually fails gym?”

  “A teacher can’t make someone fail for not kissing someone,” I said quickly. “And if someone just says they didn’t get their dare then no one can make them pay up for not doing it.”

  “That’s what the dance is for,” she said with a smile. “If you don’t finish the dare by the start of the dance for whatever reason, whoever dared you is going to make sure everyone knows about it and people won’t let you leave until you make good on the dare. And if you don’t go to the dance, then they will make you kiss whoever it is during lunch on Monday! Not seeing the dare is not an excuse anyone has ever let slide!”

  I didn’t want to believe her, but then I remembered how the kiss dare went when I was in 6th grade. Hearing about the dare from my sister, I wasn’t too shocked when the black envelopes started showing up around school. Teachers more or less looked the other way since none of the kissing was during class or was too over the top. That was, until Monday. On Monday, a guy actually stood up on a table and had to kiss a girl who joined him there as well. I later found out that she had been sick the week before, so he had to go above and beyond to make up for not completing his dare. Since then, no one stood on tables, but I think that was only since no one actually had the guts to ignore who they were told to kiss.

  “You know I’m right,” Caitlyn all but laughed. “So just open it and see already! I can give you good ideas on how to surprise him if you want.”

  “I don’t want to open it yet,” I finally admitted. “I don’t want to get my first kiss this way.”

  This was an unusual conversation to be having with my sister, but there seemed to be no one else to talk to. If I told Penny, she would make me open the envelope. And if I told Trent he would roll his eyes and send me to talk to Penny. So, I sat down next to my sister, knowing she was no doubt loving the chance to actually have a girl chat with her little sister.

  “It’s not a big deal Bre,” she said, finally setting the chips aside. “The kisses are only five seconds, and as long as one person sees it to verify you actually did it, then you’re good. It doesn't have it be in front of everyone if you don’t want.”

  “Five seconds is a long time,” I frowned. “And what if I have to kiss someone I don’t even know? I mean, I don’t hang out with any of the popular kids.”

  “Which makes it even weirder that you were dared in the first place,” Caitlyn pointed out with a confused look. “But don’t worry about it. I know girls that had to kiss people they never even talked to. And really, it made it easier. It’s hard when it’s someone you’re in classes with or someone who’s dating someone you know.”

  “Courtney Morris has to kiss an ex-boyfriend,” I told her, glad I had the info to add to the conversation.

  “Her sister told me at school today.” Of course Caitlyn already knew something people at my own school didn’t know yet. “Thank goodness you won’t have something embarrassing like that for your dare.”

  “I hope not,” I nodded, knowing that without an ex-boyfriend, there was little likelihood of that kind of drama.

  “So are you going to open it now?” Caitlyn finally asked, pointing to the envelope I was still clutching in my hands.

  “I think I want to wait a little still,” I explained. “Maybe the less time I have to worry about it, the less it will stress me out.”

  “Okay, but don’t skip doing it,” Caitlyn warned. “It’s not worth the consequences for sure. And people will freak if they know my sister refused to do the dare!”

  Caitlyn stayed in the living room and joined me watching Friends. It was the first time in months that we actually sat in the same room and just hung out. Kind of weird, but also kind of nice. Once the episode that was on ended and a new one began, she headed to her room to call her boyfriend, but not before reminding me one more time that I needed to open the envelope sooner or later.

  I chose later, of course. But sadly, not too much later. After talking to Caitlyn, I was having a hard time imagining what I would look like with a shaved head, or how terrible it would be to have to kiss someone on a table in the lunchroom in front of the whole school. I was determined to make it until Thursday before opening the envelope, but instead I finally grabbed it off my nightstand around three in the morning. Sleep was refusing to come until I knew for good.

  Tearing open the envelope I pulled out a card that had a familiar rhyme on it. It was the same one they had been using since before Caitlyn was in 7th grade and got her first dare.

  “Here is your dare, and here is your mission,

  Find your partner, it’s time for kissing.

  It must be five seconds, and not on the cheek,

  But you better hurry, you only have a week.

  By the end the of the dance you must finish this dare,

  And those who do not... BEWARE!”

  I tried not to let the word get to me as I finally opened the card. I was hoping it would tell me to “kiss someone in one of your classes”, or “kiss someone that rides on your bus”. Even seeing “kiss a football player” or “kiss someone on student council” would have been better that the words I saw before my eyes. I blinked a few times, but the words didn’t go away. They just stare
d at me in bold letters.

  “Kiss your best friend.”