21 Dares: A Florida Suspense Mystery (17 page)

Dharma
stood. “Isn’t this whole thing kinda juvenile?”

“Yes,
but isn’t it kind of fun too?” Susan’s eyes lit up. She put her hand on Abbie’s
shoulder. “Come on. Admit it. You’re having a good time.”

Abbie
looked over at her. “Let’s just get it over with.”

“There’s
my little trooper,” Susan said. “We’re getting close to the undisclosed
location where your surprise guest is waiting.”

Abbie’s
face lit up. “So you
do
know who it
is.”

“Maybe.
Maybe not.
There’s really only one way to find out.”

Abbie
sighed and sent the mission complete text,
then
looked
at Susan. Abbie started to ask for a clue when a new text message came in. All
the phones dinged, except for Dharma’s.

“We’ve
got the next dare,” Susan said.
 

The
girls laughed. Lindsey took a black magic marker from her purse. “This is the
best one yet,” she said.

“It
was my idea.” Lindsay held up her own magic marker. Lindsey’s back straightened
and she shot her sister an offended scowl.

“It
was actually my idea,” she said. “I came up with it after seeing that scene on
that television show.”

“Doesn’t matter.”
Lindsay held out her
marker and tapped Lindsey on the nose with it. “I’m the one who suggested it
for Abbie’s party.”

Abbie
took the magic marker from Lindsey,
then
took the
other one from Lindsay. “Okay, which way are we headed?”

Susan
pointed and the girls headed east along the old Ybor District sidewalk.

Chapter 20

T
here’s something that’s always bothered me about
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
,” Susan
said. The girls walked east along Eighth Avenue. “And I get it. She’s got super
powers. But every night she kicks and punches vampires—yet her makeup is always
perfect. No sweat. No ripped clothes.
Never a hair out of
place.”

“Well,
the thing that bothered me about Buffy, and I’m a huge fan,” Dharma said, “is
how she kept putting off Spike for Angel. She was so hung-up on Angel when
Spike was clearly her soul mate.”

Abbie
stopped walking and held up a hand, halting Dharma in her tracks. “There is no
greater love than Angel and Buffy. Angel is classic mysterious loner dude. He
loved and protected Buffy from afar and was just too noble and valiant for his
own good.”

“Are
you on drugs?” Dharma let out a sarcastic laugh. “It’s Buffy and Spike forever.
They had a forbidden, dangerous, toxic love-hate relationship that made Angel
look like a boring wax figure.”

“Angel
was romantic.” Abbie was both excited and aggravated as she explained herself.
“Once he accepted the impossibility of their relationship, he broke up with
Buffy and left Sunnydale, leaving her to attend senior prom alone. And then
once you think your heart can’t break anymore, he shows up out of nowhere in a tuxedo
and dances with her… at her Senior Prom.”

“That
whole episode blew-up the cheese meter.” Dharma moved her hands to mimic an
explosion and
its
following mushroom cloud.

“It
showed how deep their love was,” Abbie said. “Even though he couldn’t give
Buffy the future they both wanted, he knew what he could give her was that one
perfect high school moment.”

“Excuse
me,” Lindsey interrupted. “Who are Buffy and Angel? Do they go to BHU?”

“I
think I have a class with a guy named Spike,” Lindsay said.

“C’mon, Abbie.
You’re supposed to be
completing the dare.” Susan stopped them and pointed. On the sidewalk across
the street, three college boys dribbled a basketball back and forth to one
another. They looked like brothers, with the same hair cut and lean body type.
They were short too. Susan pushed Abbie to ask them.

“Okay,
okay. Stop nagging me,” Abbie said. She approached the boys. They stopped
dribbling and turned to her. “It’s my birthday and I’m doing these dares,” she
said to them. “And I was wondering if you could help me.”

The
boys threw the ball back and forth. “Sure, what’s up?” the slightly taller boy
said, catching the ball.

“You
look like you work out.” Abbie laughed nervously, and then looked back at the
group. When she turned back around, she saw him nodding. He couldn’t have been
more than five-foot-four.

“Yeah,
it was leg day,” he said. “Tomorrow is arms.”

“Great.”
Abbie looked down at him. “How about you lift your shirt and let me sign my
name on your abs?”

“Come
again?” He dropped the ball, but caught it before it hit the ground.

“It’s
a dare.” Abbie felt silly even saying it. “I have to sign my name on twenty-one
different guy’s abs.”

“That’s
crazy.” He tossed the ball to his brother and lifted his shirt anyway. “I guess
so.
Why not?”

His
two brothers laughed as Abbie wrote her name just above his belly button. He
laughed too, looking down at his stomach. Then he showed it off like a new
tattoo. His brothers lifted their shirts. Abbie crouched down and signed her
name on their stomachs as well. Then she returned to the girls.

“Okay,
three down, eighteen more to go,” she said, putting the cap back on the magic
marker.

Continuing
along the sidewalk, they ran into more boys. One said that he would only allow
her to write her name if she also wrote down her phone number.

“How
would you read it?” she asked him. “It’d be upside down.”

“I’ll
look at it in the mirror,” he replied.

Abbie
laughed. “But it’ll be backwards.”

“That’s
okay,” he said. “I’m dyslexic.”

Abbie
shrugged and scribbled “Erin Outtercooch 987-6543.”

Another
block further, they approached a dad walking with his wife and two kids. He had
a large beer belly and said there was room for all the girls to write their
names on his belly. This time Dharma, Susan, and the twins signed their names
too. He returned to his family, laughing with five girl’s names scrawled across
his wide pale stomach.

Behind
the family, a little further down the street, Abbie noticed a black pick-up
parallel parked along the curb. A familiar guy hopped out of the truck, and she
waved to him. He looked at her and smiled.

Josh
Parks locked his truck and made his way toward Abbie. He was out of uniform and
wearing a canary yellow Tommy Bahamas shirt, ironed-creased tan Dockers, and
white tennis shoes. Comb lines tracked through his parted black hair.
  

“I
didn’t recognize you out of your security guard uniform,” she said, smiling.

He
laughed. “I apologize for that, ma’am. I do have an off campus civilian life.”

“But
you look so different?”

His
blue eyes looked down at her. “Good or bad?” he asked. “And don’t say bad. My
ego won’t be able to take it.”

“No,
you look –” Abbie paused, looking down at her white tennis shoes. “You look
good,” she said quietly.

“Thank
you. You too,” he said. There was an awkward pause. “What are you and your, um,
party posse doing now?”

“It’s
a new dare,” she said. “It’s kind of stupid, really.”

He
waited for her to answer.
“And?”

“Well…”
Abbie paused. She didn’t want to tell him. This wasn’t the kind of thing she
went around doing. She took a breath,
then
just said
it. “I have to ask twenty one guys to lift their shirts and let me sign my name
on their stomachs.”

“What
number are you up to?”

Abbie
turned and called out to Susan. “What number are we on?”

“Sixteen,”
Susan, Dharma and the twins yelled back in unison.

Abbie
turned to Josh. “Sixteen,” she said.

Josh
laughed. “And you’re looking for number seventeen.”

“Would
you mind?”

“I’ve
already bailed you out once tonight, you know.” He turned to her, drew a
breath, his blue eyes serious. “If I help you again, I’ve got one stipulation.”

“What’s
that?” she asked.

“That
you write your phone number along with it.”

Abbie
shook her head, grinning. “I’ve already heard that line tonight.”

Josh
touched the breast pocket of his Tommy Bahamas shirt, tapped it with a finger.
“Well it’s either that or no deal.”

Now
Abbie laughed. “Okay,” she said. “It’s a deal.”

Josh unbuttoned his shirt and opened it.
Leaning forward, Abbie saw an odd, puckered scar on his stomach, just above his
navel. Twisted, gray, and wrinkled. It almost looked like someone had carved a
lopsided number “8” in his belly. He must have caught her staring at it.

“I got shot in the stomach when I was a kid,”
he said. “Everyone says I’m lucky to be alive.”

“You got shot?” Abbie straightened and
stepped back. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“With
a gun?”

“Like a million years ago.” He looked down at
his stomach. “Scars of childhood, right?”

Abbie started to ask him what happened when
Susan yelled at her. The others joined in, urging her to get on with it.

Abbie
uncapped her black magic marker. She signed her name to the left of Josh’s scar,
then
added her phone number below it. This time, it
was her real number.

When
she was done, Josh lowered his head. He read the numbers out loud.

“You
can read upside down,” she said.

“Yeah,
but I can’t tell your fives from your threes,” he said. “Is this a seven or a
one?”

“I
guess you’ll just have to try a couple of combinations to see what works.” She couldn’t
believe she was actually flirting with him.

“I
guess I will.” He glanced at the twisted old scar on his stomach,
then
closed his shirt over it. When it was fully buttoned
again, he asked, “Where you headed now?”

“I
don’t know,” she said. “Onto the next dare I
guess.
”

“Well, ma’am.”
He paused,
then
added, “Abbie?”

“Yes?”

“I
hope we run into each other again tonight.”

She
smiled. “Me too.”

She
watched him take a few steps down the street, then she called out to him again.
He hesitated and turned around. When she didn’t say anything, he shouted, “Hey,
how do you get a tissue to dance?”

Abbie
looked confused. “What?”

“How
do you get a tissue to dance?” he yelled again. Abbie shrugged. He laughed and
pretended to blow his nose. “You put a little boogie in it.”

Abbie
laughed and waved. He saluted her then turned, heading down the street. Abbie
put her head in her hands as the other girls crossed the street.

“What
was that all about?” Dharma asked. “Was that the security guard?”

“Josh,”
Abbie said. “His name is Josh.”

“You
were check’n him out yesterday.” Dharma brought a hand to her mouth as she
laughed.
“Outside Professor Cunningham’s office.
I saw
you staring at him.”

“Sounds
like Abbie has a crush,” Lindsey said.

“Sounds like she’s in looo-ooove!”
Lindsay swooned,
placing her hands over her heart and closing her eyes. She followed that with
smooching noises.

“Come
on, people,” Susan said. “We’re losing moonlight.”

The
girls headed further east along the sidewalk. The crowd thinned slightly, and
the music sounded noticeably fainter behind them.

“I
can’t believe we haven’t run into McKenzie and Rocky yet?” Abbie trailed the
group, looking at her phone. “Why hasn’t she come back?”

“She’s
off fighting with her fiancée,” Susan said. “Probably pre-wedding jitters.”

“Or
making up with him,” Dharma added. “Maybe they don’t want to be found.”

“Well,
something doesn’t feel right.” Abbie tried McKenzie’s number again. It went
straight to voicemail. “She’s turned off her phone.”

“Because
she doesn’t want to be disturbed,” Susan said. “Now come on, let’s find four
more boys.”

They
girls approached four more guys, tourists from Oklahoma, and Abbie
half-heartedly wrote her name on their stomachs. They snapped pictures of her
signature and posed with all the girls in a group photo. It was probably the
wildest thing to ever happen to them.

When
they finally walked away, Abbie sent the mission completed text. She waited for
the next dare to come in. When it did, she looked puzzled and read it to the
girls.

Abbie
looked over at Susan. “That’s a dare?”

 
“I don’t remember it.” Susan shrugged. They
continued several blocks down Eighth Avenue. The street crowd gradually
disappeared, until the girls were the only ones left on the sidewalk. The
lights and music of the Ybor District grew faint behind them. An abandoned
cigar factory loomed eerily ahead.

“Is
that it?” Lindsey pointed to the silhouetted structure.

“That
can’t be it.” Lindsay turned her head, as if looking for some other building.
“It’s got to be a mistake.”

“I
think that’s trespassing.” Abbie stared at the abandoned factory in the
distance. It looked haunted, to say the least.

“Yeah,”
Susan said. “Who came up with this dare? I don’t remember it being on the
list.”