Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (25 page)

Men just can’t make up their minds about what they want.

“A couple of days apart was just too much for you and Benny?” I asked my brother.

“That, yes. But also, we figured, you know, we started that whole red notebook thing for you. We have kismet together.”

“And you really missed each other! And hopefully decided to just admit that and see each other exclusively?”

“I wouldn’t go
that
far,” Langston said. “Let’s just say Benny and I have a behind-closed-doors Skype date for New Year’s Eve tonight while he’s in Puerto Rico. No babysitting you and your hijinks.”

“Gross. And you never babysat me.”

“I know. And believe me, I’ll be blamed for everything that’s happened for the rest of my life.”

“Thanks for doing a terrible job being in charge, Brother. I had a blast.” Something about the red notebook’s origins still bothered me, though. “Langston?” I asked.

“Yes, Lily celebrity-bear? Oh, Celebri-bear! That’s going to be my new name for you.”

I ignored that last bit. “What if it’s really you he likes?”

“Who? What do you mean?”

“Dash. Finding the red notebook. That was your idea. I wrote the first messages in my own handwriting, but the words and ideas were yours. Maybe the person Dash asked out for New Year’s Eve is based on some figment of his imagination that you created?”

“So what if it is? You kept on with the notebook. You
continued the adventure. And look what it turned into! I coughed away in my bedroom and mistakenly broke up with my boyfriend. You went out and made your own destiny with that notebook!”

He didn’t get it.

“But, Langston. What if … Dash ends up not really liking me?
Me
-me, not his
idea
of me.”

“So what if he doesn’t?”

I’d been expecting my brother to jump to my defense and proclaim his certainty in Dash’s certain liking of me. “What?” I said, offended.

“I mean, if Dash doesn’t like you once he gets to know you, so what?”

“I don’t know if I want to take that risk.” Get hurt. Be rejected. Like Langston once was.

“The reward is in the risk. You can’t stay hidden inside Grandpa’s overprotective cloak forever. You’ve seemed like you needed to grow out of that for a while. Mom and Dad going away, and the red notebook, these things just helped. Now it’s up to you to figure out how Dash figures into the picture. How
you
fit into this picture. Take the risk.”

I wanted so badly to believe, but the fear felt as great and overwhelming as the desire. “What if this all has been a dream? What if we’re just wasting each other’s time?”

“How can you know if you don’t try?” Langston then quoted the poet he’d been named after, Langston Hughes. “ ‘A dream deferred is a dream denied.’ ”

“Are you over him?” I asked.

We both knew the him I referred to was not Benny, but the him who broke Langston’s heart so devastatingly. Langston’s first love.

“In some ways, I think I’ll never be over him,” Langston said.

“That is such an unsatisfying answer.”

“That’s because you’re interpreting it the wrong way. I don’t mean it as a wistful, overdramatic declaration. I meant that the love I felt for him was huge and real, and, while painful, it forever changed me as a person, in the same way that being your brother reflects and changes how I evolve, and vice versa. The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There’s no getting over that.”

My heart undoubtedly wanted to embrace and/or be trampled upon by Dash. That much was sure. The risk would have to discover its own reward.

From under the table, Boris licked at my ankles. I said, “Boris is staying and he has imprinted on my heart and Mom and Dad are just going to have to live with that.”

“Joke’s on you, Celebri-bear. Your big Christmas present on New Year’s Day was going to be Mom and Dad finally giving you permission again to have your own pet.”

“Really? But what if we move to Fiji?”

“The parents will figure it out. If they do decide to go, they’ll keep this apartment, where I’m going to stay living while I’m at NYU. I don’t think Mom and Dad are planning to live in Fiji year-round—just during the school terms. I’ll take care of Boris when you’re away, if you end up going with them and it turns out Boris isn’t allowed past customs in Fiji. How about if that’s my Christmas present to you?”

“Because you were too busy being with Benny to get me something this year?”

“Yep. And how about in return, instead of the sweater you’ve undoubtedly knit me, and the umpteen cookies you’ve undoubtedly baked me for Christmas on New Year’s, if you just tell Grandpa not to blame me for all your hijinks and get him off my case?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Let the girl call the rules, as it should be.”

“Speaking of rules … what
are
you doing for New Year’s, Lily? Surely you’ll be let back outside again? Will Monsieur Dashiell be squiring you around our fair town tonight?”

I sighed and shook my head. There was nothing to do but admit it: “He hasn’t called me or emailed me or notebooked me since the police station.”

I abruptly stood up from my chair so I could return to my room and feel terribly sorry for myself and eat way too much chocolate in private.

I supposed I could text or email Dash (even
call
him—what?!?!?), but those options felt intrusive after all we’d been through. After the red notebook. Dash was a guy that appreciated his privacy and seemed to revel in solitude. I could respect that.

He should be the one to contact me.

Right?

What did it say about me that he hadn’t?

That he couldn’t possibly like me as much as I’d started to like him. That I would never be as pretty and interesting as that Sofia girl, while Dash’s handsome face would continue to appear in my daydreams.

Unrequited.

It wasn’t fair that I sort of missed him. Not his presence
so much—I barely knew him—but having that red notebook link to him. Knowing he was out there thinking or doing something that would be communicated to me in some surprising way.

I lay on my bed, daydreaming about Dash, and reached down to receive a reassuring lick from Boris, but he was not there. He was out on his walk.

Our apartment doorbell buzzed loudly and I jumped up and ran into the hallway to answer it. “Hello?” I said from the other side of the door.

“It’s your favorite great-aunt. I left my key inside the apartment when I came to walk Boris.”

Boris!

The twenty minutes since he’d been gone had nearly destroyed me. Boris never ignored me like that Dash guy.

I opened the door to let Mrs. Basil E. and Boris back inside.

I looked down at Boris, pawing at my ankles to get my attention.

Boris’s mouth held not a doggy bone or a postman’s jacket. From between his teeth, Boris slobberingly offered me a red-ribbon-wrapped red notebook.

nineteen
–Dash–

December 30th

We retreated to my mother’s apartment after I was released from jail. The adrenaline in all of us was amazing—we alternated between bouncing and floating, as if the excitement of escape had turned the world into a giant trampoline.

As soon as we were in the door, Yohnny and Dov attempted to raid the refrigerator and were unsatisfied with what they found.

“Noodle pudding?” Yohnny asked.

“Yeah, my mom made it,” I told them. “I always save it for last.”

While Priya went to the loo and Boomer checked his email on his phone, Sofia stepped into my bedroom. Not for any lascivious reason—just to check it out.

“It hasn’t changed much,” she observed, staring at the quotes I’d thumbtacked to my walls.

“Little things have,” I said. “There are some new quotes on the wall. Some new books on the shelves. Some of the pencils have lost their erasers. The sheets are changed every week.”

“So even though it doesn’t seem like anything’s changed—”

“—things change all the time, mostly in little ways. That’s how it goes, I guess.”

Sofia nodded. “Funny how we say it
goes
. That’s the way life
goes
.”

“
That’s the way life comes
just sounds so awkward.”

“Well, sometimes you can see the future come, no? Sometimes it even, say, catches a baby.”

I studied her face for any hint of sarcasm or meanness. And sadness—I was also looking for sadness, or regret. But all I found was amusement.

I sat down on my bed and held my head in my hands. Then, realizing this was way too dramatic, I looked up at her.

“I truly don’t understand any of this,” I confessed.

She stayed standing, facing me.

“I wish I could help you there,” she told me. “But I can’t.”

So there we were. Once upon a time, during the storybook version of dating we’d gone through, I’d pretended that it was possible to love her when I only mildly liked her. Now I had no desire to pretend we’d ever be in love, and I liked her madly.

“Can we try to be wise with each other for a very long time?” I asked her.

She laughed. “You mean, can we share our fuckups and see if we can get any wisdom out of them?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That would be nice.”

I felt we needed to seal our new pact. Kissing was out. Hugging seemed peevish. So I offered her my hand. She shook it. And then we went to join the rest of our friends.

I couldn’t help but wonder about what Lily was doing. How she was feeling. What she was feeling. Yes, it was confusing, but it
wasn’t a bad confusion. I wanted to see her again, in a way I’d never wanted to see her before.

I knew the notebook was in my hands. I just wanted to find the right thing to say.

My mother called to see how things were going. There was no Internet access at the spa, and she wasn’t the type who turned on the TV when she wasn’t home. So I didn’t have to explain anything. I just said I had a few people over and we were all behaving ourselves.

My father, I couldn’t help but note, usually checked the news every five minutes on his phone. He’d probably even seen the headline on the
Post
site, and the photos. He simply didn’t recognize his own son.

Later that night, after a marathon of John Hughes movies, I kept Boomer, Sofia, Priya, Yohnny, and Dov in my mother’s living room and brought out a dry-erase board from her home office.

“Before you leave,” I told them, “I would like to conduct a brief symposium on love.”

I took out a red marker—I mean, why not?—and wrote the word
love
on the board.

“Here we have it,” I said. “Love.” For good measure, I drew a heart around it. Not the ventricled kind. The made-up kind.

“It exists in this pristine state, upholding its ideals. But then … along come words.”

I wrote
words
over and over again, all around the dry erase board, including over the word
love
.

“And feelings.”

I wrote
feelings
in the same way, crisscrossing it on top of everything I’d already written.

“And expectations. And history. And thoughts. Help me out here, Boomer.”

We wrote each of these three words at least twenty times each.

The result?

Pure illegibility. Not only was
love
gone, but you couldn’t make out anything else, either.

“This,” I said, holding up the board, “is what we’re up against.”

Priya looked disturbed—more by me than by what I was saying. Sofia still looked amused. Yohnny and Dov were curling closer together. Boomer, pen still in hand, was trying to work something out.

He raised his hand.

“Yes, Boomer?” I asked.

“You’re saying that either you’re in love or you’re not. And if you are, it becomes like this.”

“Something to that effect.”

“But what if it’s not a yes-or-no question?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“I mean, what if love isn’t a yes-or-no question? It’s not either
you’re in love
or
you’re not
. I mean, aren’t there different levels? And maybe these things, like words and expectations and whatever, don’t go on top of the love. Maybe it’s like a map, and they all have their own place, and then when you see it from the sky—whoa.”

I looked at the board. “I think your map is cleaner than mine,” I said. “But isn’t this what the collision of the right two people at the right time looks like? I mean, it’s a mess.”

Sofia chuckled.

“What?” I asked her.

“
Right person, right time
is the wrong concept, Dash,” she said.

“Totally,” Boomer agreed.

“What does she mean by that?” I asked him.

“What I mean,” Sofia said, “is that when people say
right person, wrong time
, or
wrong person, right time
, it’s usually a cop-out. They think that fate is playing with them. That we’re all just participants in this romantic reality show that God gets a kick out of watching. But the universe doesn’t decide what’s right or not right. You do. Yes, you can theorize until you’re blue in the face whether something might have worked at another time, or with someone else. But you know what that leaves you?”

“Blue in the face?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“You have the notebook, right?” Dov chimed in.

“I really hope you didn’t lose it,” Yohnny added.

“Yes,” I said.

“So what are you waiting for?” Sofia asked.

“You all to leave?” I said.

“Good,” she said. “You now have your writing assignment. Because you know what? It’s up to you, not fate.”

I still didn’t know what to write. I fell asleep with the notebook next to me, both of us staring at the ceiling.

December 31st

The next morning, over breakfast, I had my grand idea.

I called Boomer immediately.

“I need a favor,” I told him.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Is your aunt in town?”