The Fine Art of Truth or Dare (30 page)

“Never.” He turned on a leaded-glass lamp that looked as old as the house. “I don't know about you, but I have to get out of this suit.”

I stood, in the middle of the floor in my purple dress and stupid shoes and his coat, and froze.

“Come on.” He held out his hand. I waited a long moment. Then I took it. This was Alex. I trusted him.

I counted six doors on the second floor, all open onto dark rooms. Alex pointed to one. “Mine.” Then he gave me a little shove toward another. “Mom keeps a bunch of stuff in the closet for guests. Help yourself.”

He flicked a switch, illuminating a modern bed with an old patchwork quilt and a few pieces of mismatched but pretty furniture. When I turned back, he was halfway down the hall, whistling. So I headed for the closet.

A “bunch of stuff,” it turned out, was T-shirts, shorts, flip-flops, sweatshirts, and even a small stack of cashmere cardigans. I looked at one closely. It didn't have a single moth hole. It was just . . . a spare. No-brainer, I was going to wear it.

“Come back downstairs when you're ready,” Alex called a minute later.

I took a peek in the freestanding mirror. The sweats were a size too big, the shirt (a Menemsha bluefish, I'd been happy to read the front) more than that. But the sweater was heaven, and I was comfy.

I found Alex crouched in front of the stone fireplace, playing with sticks and matches. He glanced around and grinned. “Excellent.” He had M
ENEMSHA
B
LUES
written across the back of his sweatshirt. “Now for some fye-ore.” He gave a caveman thump on his chest and plied what looked like a miniature blowtorch. “Hey. Harrison's having a New Year's party. You have plans already?”

“Nope,” I said, feeling a little thrill at the question. I wondered if Sienna had left anything interesting in her closet.

“Good.”

I wandered over to the new-looking glass door. It was all black beyond. Alex reached past me for the handle. “Just for a sec,” he said.

We walked to the edge of the creaky deck. He stood with his chest pressed against my back, arms tight around me. It was cold enough to make my nose hurt, and my feet were frozen, but I wanted to stand right where I was for a long time, breathing in the smell of the ocean. “There's the lighthouse.” He pointed. I could just see a tall shadow. Then the light on top blinked. “In the daytime, you can see down to the water.”

“It's amazing.”

“We'll come back. Whenever you want.”

I liked the sound of that.

Back inside, his fire was crackling away. “Okay.” He actually rubbed his hands together. “Action.” In two minutes, he'd pulled cushions and a couple throws from the two sofas and made a sort of nest in front of the fire. Then he grabbed his backpack. “Refreshments.”

I half expected to see a bottle of wine or something similar. Instead, he pulled out a thermos. Followed by a bag of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and, absolutely, enough Hershey's chocolate bars to feed a small army.

“S'mores!” I said happily.

“And cocoa. Sit.” He waited until I was in the middle of the nest, then disappeared through a doorway. I heard a few squeaks and rattles. When he came back, he was carrying a tray, loaded with mugs, napkins, and real, three-pointed skewers.

“You're kidding,” I teased when he handed me one. “You actually own s'mores implements?”

“Roast, then laugh.”

I didn't laugh in the end. We didn't talk much for a while, either. After the wedding dinner, I only managed three s'mores. Alex had eight. He took his marshmallows seriously, too, turning and examining and turning until they were perfectly, evenly browned. Me, I just waited until they caught fire and assumed they were done.

Finally, stuffed and a little jittery from all the sugar, I collapsed against the pillows. I waited for Alex to join me. Instead, he shoved the leftovers to the side, carefully wiped his hands, and went back to his bag.

“I have something to show you.”

He sank down next to me and handed me a sketchbook. I opened it.

And saw the mermaid. She was drawn in colored ink, exquisitely detailed; each scale had a little picture in it: a pyramid, a rocket, a peacock, a lamp. Her torso was patterned red, like a tattoo, like coral. She had a thin strand of seaweed around her neck, with a starfish holding on to the center. Her hair was a tumble of loose black curls. She had my face.

I turned the page. And another and another. There she was fighting a creature that was half human, half octopus. Exploring a cave. Riding a shark. Laughing and petting a stingray that rested on her lap.

“I'm calling her Cora Lia for the moment,” Alex told me. “I thought about Corella, but it sounded like cheap dishware.”

“She's . . . amazing.”

“She's fierce. Fighting the Evil Sea-Dragon King and his minions.”

I traced the red tattoo on her chest. “This is beautiful.”

Alex reached into my sweater, pulled the loose neck of the T-shirt away from my shoulder. I didn't stop him. “It looks like coral to me.”

He touched me, then, the pad of his thumb tracing the outline of the scar. It felt strange, partly because of the difference in the tissue, but more because in the last few years, the only hands that had touched me there were mine.

I set the book aside carefully. “Guess I don't see what you do.”

“That's too bad, because I see you perfectly.”

I curved myself into him. “Maybe you're exactly what I need.”

“Like there's any doubt?” He buried his face in my neck. I didn't stop him. “So.”

“So?”

“We'll kill a few hours, watch the sunrise, have pancakes, and you'll drive home.”

“What?”

I felt him smile against my skin. “I got you swimming with sharks. Next on the Conquer Your Fears list is driving a stick shift. Right?”

“One thing at a time,” I said. Then, “Oh. Do
that
again.”

In another story, the intrepid heroine would have gone running out and splashed in the surf, hypothermia be damned. She would have driven the Mustang home, booked a haircut, taken up stand-up comedy, and danced on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

But this was me, and I was moving at my own pace.

Truth:
My story started a hundred years ago. There's time.

35

THE END

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: December 19, 6:54 p.m.

Subject: Three Things

1.
Truth:
I'm terrified of an embarrassing number of things, including Ferris wheels, rusty nails, being alone, and being with someone.

2.
Truth:
I'm working on that.

3.
Dare:
Take a chance on me, Alex Bainbridge.
Qu'ieu sui precieuse, Ieu lo sai.*

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THE CAT'S CAT-ASTROPHIC CAT-ACLYSMIC CAT-ATONIC SUMMER BLOG

JUNE 22

TRANSATLANTICISM

Airplane bathrooms are only a step above the ones found in gas stations. Unless you're in first class, which I'm not. I haven't even seen first class on this plane. It's upstairs. Apparently you sit in your own private little pod. Which, when you think about it, must be kinda like sitting in the lavatory here in coach, but with your own movie screen and room service.

Airplane food (
“This evening, ladies and gentlemen, we are offering you a choice of spinach-stuffed chicken in a lemon-tomahto sauce or two-cheese ravioli in a spinach-chicken sauce.”
)
is disgusting. Unless you're in first class, which I'm not. Or flying Air France, which I'm not. I would much rather be going to Paris than to London. Paris has croissants and Dior and boys who look like Orlando Bloom but say things like
“eet geeves me such ennui”
and
“merde.”
London has sandwiches made with cucumber and butter, guys with bad teeth, and the library where my (s)mother will be spending the summer trying to get to know some woman who did absolutely nothing of import and has been dead for two hundred years.

I so wanted to stay with Dad, but apparently the soon-to-be-stepmonster needs his spare bedroom for her “office.” Like she can't keep her teetering towers of bridal mags, sample menus, and bad band demos in her own office until the wedding. But then, I've never actually seen her place of work. Perhaps she is not the on-the-rise cleaning-product executive she claims to be. Perhaps she is but a lowly soap-bar wrapper without so much as a cubicle to call her own. Wouldn't surprise me.

So then I'm thinking, I'm sixteen, totally old enough to stay on my own for a few weeks. Mom actually laughed when I suggested it, which wasn't entirely unexpected. Then told me it was a moot point as she was renting the apartment to a visiting professor from Kazakhstan, which kinda was. But I Plan B'd her and suggested staying with Grandma in the burbs. GM would have been happy to have me and offered to drive me to and from the SEPTA train station every day so I could get a job in the city.

Mom's response to that? According to her, since discovering Dr. Phil, GM has become “Freud with a chain saw.” Whatever that means. Then she said that GM is also developing a “pernicious mochaccino habit that makes her a caffeinated hazard behind the wheel,” and an even worse eBay addiction, which has resulted in a closetful of designer knockoffs made in Chinese sweatshops. (Mom is so obsessed with Third World labor issues.) With all due fondness, Mom sez, she wouldn't leave the dog with her mother for more than an afternoon.

As jolly olde, horsey-houndy England has never had a single case of rabies, there's this bizarre pet passport thing and the dog can't come with us because Mom missed the deadline. He's staying with Mom's teaching assistant. Apparently my passion for reality TV isn't the kind of “rabid” they fear, so here I am jetting over the Atlantic.

For the next ten weeks, while you, my beloved friends, have the CW and texting and weekends at the Shore, I'll have buttered cucumber and the Queen and this blog. Mom swears the apartment . . . excuse me . . . the “flat” has high-speed Internet access. Guess I'll find out when we land at 6 a.m. tomorrow.

Merde
.

One pale, tiny glimmer of light has just pierced the gloom. (One other than the “Occupied” light over the lavatory door.) London might actually have Orlando Bloom.

JUNE 23

WHO KNEW

I've learned these English things:

• Their “ground floor” is our “first floor.” Hence, when they say “third floor,” it's actually the fourth. As in: “Charming third-floor flat a stone's throw from Regent's Park. No lift.”
  
• They say “lift”; we say “elevator.”
  
• They must all be champion shot-putters. I figure I could throw a stone to the park . . . oh, with the aid of a grenade launcher. If you lean all the way out the window—avoiding the copious pigeon
  merde
  —and think creatively, you can kinda see some green over all the brick chimneys.
  
• When a girl with serious jet lag sleeps until three in the afternoon, the only sandwiches left at the so-called sandwich shop are egg-mayo (egg salad), yoghurt-prawn (shrimp), and chicken-rocket (I have no idea, but it was very yellow and very green).
  
• There is nothing on the “telly” at 3 a.m. except test match cricket (read: will test your viewing endurance with its endlessness) and reruns from the third season of
  Friends
  .
  
• High-speed Internet access here is an oxymoron.
  

JUNE 25

WHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN ON ME

Day 3 in London. It's raining. Hard. It rained yesterday. And the day before. I'm alone in the flat. Pix below. The distance between my bed and both walls, in case you're curious, is exactly twenty-two inches. The living-room sofa is, yes, truly that orange, the carpet truly that stunning brown. That row of books below the painting of the cows (and that third cow from the left is going to make me crazy—you just
know
it's going to go headfirst into the river) . . .
The Complete Guide to British Fungus, Volumes I–XVII.
Only
III
and
VII
are missing. Apparently the flat belongs to King's College's foremost expert on creeping mold. Who, according to Mom, is spending the summer doing research in the middle of some African desert. What is wrong with that picture, folks (not to mention the cows!)? And where are
III
and
VII
? Being dragged around by some poor camel?

Mom has been at the library since eight this morning. She was there from eight to four yesterday. I've been here, and here, and within three blocks of here. The “newsagent” down the street sells every magazine known to woman—except
InStyle
. And thirty-seven different kinds of chocolate. I counted. Mom tried to get me to go to the BM with her. Really. That's what they call the British Museum. She's working in some dusty back room, just her, some boxes of old papers, and the occasional presence of some old archivist named Mr. Reade. Really. She says I could entertain myself for days in the museum part of the BM, that it's the most famous museum in England. No
merde
. Ha ha.

My mother is full of BM. Ha ha. She loves that crap. Ha ha. Dusty papers, dusty old costumes. Stuff belonging to dead people, most of whom weren't even famous when they were alive. Like I want to spend the day with two-hundred-year-old shopping lists.

I could have done this in Philly, sat in the apartment for three days while it rained. But there it would be raining
and 80
degrees, which, while weird, has a kind of tropical vibe. Here it's 14 degrees Celsius, which means 58.

What I did today:

• Slept until 11:00.
  
• Put a sweater on over my pajamas. In June.
  
• Sent fourteen e-mails, including one to Adam the Scum, requesting the return of my DVDs. He has forfeited his right to ever watch
  Eternal Sunshine
  again. Or even
  Borat
  , for that matter.
  
• Took digi-pix of the flat (all four rooms; see below).
  
• Read
  Elle
  ,
  Vogue
  , and something called
  Hello!,
  which is like
  People
  on meth.
  
• Ate one bar Aero (chocolate with little airholes), one bar Curly Wurly (chocolate-covered caramel), and one bag Maltesers (chocolate-covered malt balls).
  

What I would do if I were in Philadelphia:

• Wear shorts.
  
• Send three e-mails, because I would probably be seeing the four people who got the other eleven. Including Adam the Scum. But I wouldn't say anything to him, of course.
  
• Take Andouille for a walk, maybe all the way to South Street, because the Java Company allows dogs and Sophie and Jen and Keri would meet me there.
  
• Have some pizza, have some gossip, do some good browsing, because South Street has decent stores and miniature dachshunds will sit quite happily and quietly in your tote bag as long as you give them a regular stream of doggie treats.
  
• Go back to Keri's house because no one is ever there and she has a plasma screen. Watch an episode of
  Grey's Anatomy
  or
  Ugly Betty
  . Have a good Abuse Adam the Scum session. Slag him off with the help of my best girls. Probably cry.
  

Another English thing I've learned:

• “Slag” has rahther a lot of meanings.
  

Are We Having Fun Yet?

JUNE 26

HELP!

I have experienced boredom of the sort that numbs the soul and reduces the cerebellum to a desiccated and crunchy mass of no substance whatsoever. Kinda like an Aero without the chocolate.

O my friends, why hast thou deserted me? No e-mail since last night. No reports on Hannah's party and whether Adam the Scum was to be seen still in the company of that slag (
see?
) Mandy?

I did finally get e-mail from Dad, apologizing profusely for bailing on dinner the night before we left and promising to make it up to me in a Big Way when he comes to visit. So, what is an appropriate Big Way, do you think? Some Citizens jeans? A new iPod? Nah, I'll take just having him here without the soon-to-be-stepmonster.

Today the temperature has risen to a blistering 16 Celsius. Got math? That's 66 degrees, give or take. I need another sweater. I brought one. Twelve tees (Mom made me leave eight behind—as if she was going to have to carry them), one sweater. God, I miss H&M. Go, O my friends, and tell me what is on display. Even better, take pix. I walked by a clothes store this morning on the long way back from the newsagent (Cadbury Twirl). The sweaters had, like, plaid trim. Really. Help.

Mom says I need to get farther afield, expand my horizons. She also told me to go to Carnaby Street, where the Beatles used to hang out. Can someone please tell me where to go where the Ting Tings or Keane hang out???

(later)

I found H&M. Resisted the urge to kiss the floor.

It stopped raining. Mom threatened to disconnect the Internet service, such as it is, if I didn't venture past the newsagent today. Sometimes I really hate my mother.

She pointed me in the direction of Oxford Street and gave me thirty pounds (about fifty-eight dollars). Sometimes I can almost tolerate my mother. Turns out that Oxford Street is pretty cool. H&M, Virgin Records, and Selfridges (kinda like Macy's with attitude). See pix. It's a lot like New York. Wiiiiide street. Most of the cars are cabs—although their cabs look like everything around them should be black and white. Like Cary Grant should be getting out instead of guys with spiky yellow hair and girls with pink cigarettes. Half of the stores sell things with pictures of the Queen or red double-decker buses on them. Most of the others sell Rolexes. Everything is crazy crowded, everyone is carrying designer knockoff handbags, and everyone is making sure to look totally grim. Except the tourists.

H&M here is enormous. Shiny. Overflowing. Mecca, Valhalla, the Emerald City. I wandered. I basked. I worshipped.

I bought myself a boyfriend cardigan with Union Jack buttons. Most cute. See pix. If only finding a boyfriend could be accomplished in a similar fashion. “I'm looking for a medium in some variation of beige or brown. No, this isn't a good fit. Lemme try that one . . .”

Tried on some jeans. I couldn't get them past my knees.

More English things learned:

• English clothing sizes are two numbers bigger. Like even a skeleton would need a 4.
  
• English shoe sizes are tiny. My size 9s? Here, I am a 6
  ¹
  /
  ₂
  . Go figure.
  

Mom and I went out for Indian food tonight in Soho. It's all Indian restaurants, where the Indian waiters sound like Colin Firth, and pubs, where everyone spills out onto the sidewalk and sounds like Adam Sandler. On the way we passed the house Mom's research subject lived in. Lots of the houses in the neighborhood have these round blue plaques on them.
“Frances Hodgson Burnett, Writer, lived here
.
”
(For those of you who have forgotten your childhood, she wrote
The Secret Garden.
) Or
“Martin Van Buren, Eighth U.S. President, lived here.”
What our president was doing living in London is a mystery. My fave (see pix):
“Beau Brummell, Leader of Fashion, lived here.”
Leader of Fashion. Gotta like that. Mom says he lived at the same time as the woman she's studying, that if he didn't like the way a girl dressed, she could just about give up any hope of being a “success.” She says he polished his boots with champagne bubbles. I get the idea she doesn't much care for Beau Brummell. He sounds okay to me.
What Not to Wear
, Regency Edition.

So we walked by the house Mom's Mary Percival lived in. Not so much as a tiny little blue bathroom tile there. Apparently her books didn't make her famous enough for a plaque. Pretty house, though, red brick with lots of windows and a fancy black stair rail that Mom says is definitely original. She touched it and got all emotional. Help.