Double Dog Dare (2 page)

“Well,” Brendan said, narrowing his eyes at him, “why don’t you?”

Kansas’s head snapped up.

A slow stretch of a smile spread across Brendan’s face. It was not a particularly friendly smile. “I double dog dare you,” he told Kansas.

“
What?
” Kansas said.

“
What?
” the rest of the class exclaimed.

The smile on Brendan’s face grew even more sinister. “I just think there should be some sort of tie-breaker,” he said. His voice sounded friendly, but Francine, who had known Brendan for years, detected a hint of a snake in it. “Between you and Francine. So, why not a dare? Since you do them all the time and everything. Whoever does the most dares wins.”

“Yeah,” Andre agreed. “Whoever does the most wins.”

The other members of the Media Club—turned in
unison to look at Miss Sparks. But Miss Sparks was busy erasing the names off the board. When she finished and turned around, they were still staring. Miss Sparks thought about it. “As long as you don’t disrupt any other students,” she said, setting down her eraser, “or violate any school rules, you are free to solve this problem in whichever way you as a group see fit.” Their eyes—all sixteen of them—went wide with possibilities. “Just let me know before winter break who the news anchor will be.” And she strolled to her desk, leaving the members of the Media Club to their own devices.

That was the way the war began.

By the end of first recess, Kansas had successfully completed the first dare. He’d scooped up a lizard—yellow and slimy and splotchy and
yech
—and licked it right on its scaly belly. Kansas hadn’t particularly
wanted
to lick a lizard, but he’d never said no to a dare in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now.

At lunch, Francine did a dare, too. She stuck a spork on her nose and balanced it there for fifteen minutes. No
problem. She hadn’t particularly wanted to stick a spork on her nose, but she’d been itching for that news anchor job for the past three months, and she wasn’t about to lose it now.

Luis was the one who came up with the rules. One dare per kid, per day. The members of the Media Club had to vote on what each dare would be. If you completed your dare, you got a point. If you didn’t, you didn’t. They would keep track of the points on the chalkboard in Miss Sparks’s room. Kansas’s points were in the right top corner, and Francine’s were in the left. Miss Sparks never mentioned anything about the points, but when she erased the chalkboard at the end of the school day, she kept the tiny white numbers in the corner: a one for Kansas, and a one for Francine.

There were fourteen school days until winter break—just under three weeks of school—which meant fourteen days of dares. Most people wouldn’t think that you could cause too much chaos in just fourteen days.

Most people didn’t know Francine and Kansas.

1.

A pair of boys’ underwear

One.

Two.

Those were the numbers written on either side of the chalkboard in Miss Sparks’s fourth-grade classroom on Thursday morning. Francine stared at them as she drummed her fingers on her desktop, waiting for Media Club to officially start. Waiting for Kansas to walk through the classroom door. He was taking
forever
.

One.

Two.

Francine had only been in this war with Kansas for two days, and already she was behind. She had one point, and Kansas had two. Yesterday, when she’d been dared to hang
upside down from the monkey bars for all of second recess, the blood had rushed to her head somewhere around the eleventh minute or so, and she’d gotten dizzy and suddenly found herself—
PLOP!—
facedown on the grass with a raging headache. Kansas had been able to do
his
dare, no problem—telling the yard monitor, Mr. DuPree, that he needed to smell his armpit for a science project—so he was ahead, two points to one. But did that mean he was more worthy of being the news anchor than Francine was? No, of course not.

Francine just had to prove it.

“Francine?” Natalie asked, nudging her in the side with her elbow. “You want some pudding?”

Francine looked over at her friend, who was sitting at the desk next to her. Natalie was holding out a pudding cup from her lunch bag.

“But it’s not lunch yet,” Francine said. Francine’s mother was morally opposed to any food that tasted good, so Natalie always shared hers. Chocolate pudding days were especially exciting. “If I eat it now, all I’ll have for lunch is fava bean salad.”

“Take it,” Natalie said, pushing the pudding cup closer
to Francine’s nose. She dug a plastic spoon out of her lunch bag, too. “You look like you need it.”

“Thanks,” Francine replied, taking the pudding and the plastic spoon. She was particularly grateful for the spoon. Natalie’s mom usually packed real silverware in her daughter’s lunch, but when there was chocolate pudding, Natalie always tried to sneak in a plastic spoon for Francine. That’s because Francine felt strongly that chocolate pudding tasted one thousand times more delicious with a plastic spoon, instead of a metal one. She couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t eat it that way.

Francine peeled the foil lid off the pudding cup and licked the underside. The chocolate melted on the outside edges of her tongue, smooth and creamy and perfect. Just what she needed. “I guess I am a little jumpy,” she told Natalie. Her eyes drifted to the backpack on her desk, where she was keeping her secret weapon—the thing that was going to help her defeat Kansas Bloom for sure.

Only … what if it didn’t?

“You’re really going to do it?” Natalie asked, her eyes focused on Francine’s backpack, too.

Francine gulped down a mouthful of pudding, and did her best to sound confident. “Yep,” she said.

“Well”—Natalie crumpled her lunch bag closed, just as Kansas strolled through the door—“good luck.” And she stood up and joined the other members at the clump of desks in the corner, where they were studying that morning’s newspaper.

“Thanks,” Francine said, scraping out the last dregs of chocolate pudding. But she knew that real winners didn’t need luck. Real winners needed courage.

When she was sure that Miss Sparks was distracted on the other side of the room, searching through her desk drawer for something, Francine made her way over to the other members of the club. With his floppy hair and ruddy cheeks, Kansas was looking cool and calm, just like the King of Dares he thought he was. Well, Francine would show him. Not even the King of Dares would do what she had planned for him.

Taking a deep breath of courage, Francine plopped her backpack dead center on the group of desks.

“What’s that?” Luis asked.

“That,” Francine replied, allowing herself the smallest
of smiles, “is Kansas’s new dare.” And, while everyone watched, Francine slowly, tooth by tooth, tugged open the zipper of her backpack. Then, with the eraser end of a number-two pencil, Francine pulled out her secret weapon and raised it from her backpack for everyone to see.

A white pair of boys’ underwear, slightly used.

Emma squealed. Luis’s eyes went huge, his lips round as he whistled out a “nooooooo way!” Andre snorted and thumped Kansas square on the back. “Oh, man,” he said, shaking his head. “Oh,
man
.”

But Kansas was silent.

“Whose are they?” Brendan asked.

Francine paused a moment. If there was anyone in that room who should know whose tighty whities they were, it was Brendan King. After all, he’d been the one who swiped them from the boys’ locker room during PE yesterday while Kansas was changing. Francine had paid him five bucks to do it. The whole dare had been his idea. But he was probably just trying to cover up so no one would suspect him of being an underwear thief.

Francine stood up a little straighter, swinging the briefs from her pencil like a pendulum. “See for yourselves,” she
told them. And she flung the underwear down in front of Kansas’s perched elbows so that the name on the waistband was completely visible.

Kansas Bloom
. The words were written in neat, square permanent marker.

Emma squealed again, so loudly that Miss Sparks popped her head up from behind her desk to see what was going on. Alicia had the sense to cover for them, fanning out the pages of the morning’s newspaper and exclaiming loudly, “I cannot
believe
this thing about the strike in Greece!”

Miss Sparks went back to rummaging.

Luis inspected the briefs. “You write your name in your underwear?” he asked Kansas.

Kansas was doing his best to ignore the underwear just two inches from his left elbow. “No,” he said, flicking his eyes up to meet Francine’s, “I don’t.”

Brendan snorted. “Well, then I guess your mom does,” he replied.

“What’s the dare?” Alicia asked, scrunching the newspaper aside to get a closer look at the underwear.

This was it, Francine thought.
This was the moment when Kansas would say, “Fine, I give up, you got me.” This was the moment when Francine would finally, officially, win the war and be declared the future news anchor of Media Club for spring semester. Just the way it should’ve been all along.

“I double dog dare you,” she told Kansas, her stomach fluttering with the excitement of the moment. This must be how generals felt when they were about to defeat their enemies. “To string your underwear up the flagpole.”

The members of the Media Club gasped. “Wow,” Alicia said. “That’s
good
.”

“We need to vote on it,” Luis reminded them, “before it’s an official dare. All in favor?”

They were all in favor.

Francine turned to Kansas. She wanted to be sure to catch the exact moment when he threw his hands up in the air and quit.

But he didn’t do that at all. Instead, as cool as ever, Kansas scooped his underwear off the table and said, “You want me to do it right now?”

“Wait,” Francine said. “You mean you’re actually going to
do
it?”

“Of course I’m going to do it,” Kansas said, rolling his
eyes. Like Francine’s dare was nothing to him. Like
she
was nothing. “I told you, I’ve never turned down a dare in my life. I’m the King of Dares.”

Then he slid his chair back, the feet making an awful
thrummmmm
against the linoleum, stuffed the briefs into his back pocket, and walked across the classroom. On the way, he gave Francine a little shove, right in the shoulder. It might have been an accident. But Francine knew it wasn’t.

“I can’t believe he’s going to do it,” Natalie whispered under her breath, after the door had shut behind him. “He’s so
brave
.” Francine frowned at her. “Oh. But, I mean, you’re totally going to win, though. Obviously.” She offered her elbow to Francine, who took it after only a second’s pause, and together they joined the other club members at the window, where they were already swarming for the best view of the flagpole.

The flagpole was right outside the school, next to the marquee that was currently announcing
SCHOOL
SPIRIT
DAY
TOMORROW!
WEAR
GREEN
&
WHITE!
Mr. DuPree always raised the American flag in the morning right before school started—Francine had seen him do it a few times, just as Media Club was wrapping up—so at the moment, the
flagpole was straight and bare, like a mast on a ship just waiting to fly its colors. One minute passed, then two. Francine did her best to breathe normally. Kansas was never going to do it, she told herself. No way.

“So what do you want to do this afternoon?” Natalie asked Francine as they waited for Kansas’s floppy-haired head to pop out the main door of the school. “More guinea pig training?”

“Um …”

Natalie came over to Francine’s house every Thursday because her dad worked late and her mom had a pottery class, and otherwise she’d have to stay with her great-aunt Mabel, who Natalie said spent most of the time sleeping in front of the TV. Natalie had been coming over every Thursday since she and Francine were in kindergarten. She knew Francine’s house practically as well as Francine did—which cupboard the glasses were in, the trick to opening the laundry room door without it sticking, and the fact that the labels on the hot and cold faucets in the downstairs bathroom were switched.

Of course, Natalie hadn’t come over
last
Thursday, because she’d had the flu. And she hadn’t come over the
Thursday before that, because it was Thanksgiving. It also happened to be the Thursday that Francine’s parents announced, over mashed potatoes and okra, that they were getting a divorce. Francine kept meaning to mention it to Natalie, the whole divorce thing, but it never seemed like the perfect time to tell her. Besides, the second Natalie found out that Francine’s parents were getting a divorce, she was going to get freaked out and weepy and be all “oh, my gosh, Francine, you must be
so
upset!” and cry and sniffle and want to talk about it, like, nonstop. And that really didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun to Francine.

“Um, yeah,” Francine said. “Samson training would be great.” Maybe Francine could sneak into the car before Natalie got in, and tell her mom not to mention anything. To just pretend like everything was peaches and happy and normal, like maybe Francine’s dad wasn’t at the house because he was off playing bridge or something. “Samson’s getting sort of good at his obstacle course. He only went backward twice last time.”

Beside them, Emma suddenly perked up. “I think I see him!” she squeaked.

“
You do not,” Brendan said, but he was leaning as far up against the window as anybody.

“Do too,” Emma said. “That’s him right there.” She pointed.

“That’s a garbage can,” Alicia informed her.

“Oh, yeah.”

“You guys,” Francine told them, “he’s not going to do it.” But, like everyone else, she held her breath and waited.

2.

A PINK CHERRY PENCIL

Two.

One.

Those were the numbers written on either side of the chalkboard in Miss Sparks’s fourth-grade classroom. They were the last two things that caught Kansas’s eye as he marched into the hallway with a pair of white boys’ underwear—slightly used—in his pocket. Kansas had two points, and Francine had one. He was in the lead, and he definitely planned on staying that way. He wasn’t the King of Dares for nothing.