Double Dog Dare (3 page)

The hallway was empty, just like it was every morning before school started. Kansas’s steps echoed off the bare walls—
step, step, step
—as he made his way to the front
door. He could see the empty flagpole out the window ahead of him.

And then, suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Francine had said, “I double dog dare you to string your underwear up the flagpole.”
Your
underwear. But the underwear she’d given Kansas
weren’t
his. Kansas had known that for a fact, as soon as he’d laid eyes on them. Because for one thing, what self-respecting fourth-grader let his mom write his name on his underwear? And for another—well, they just weren’t. Francine had probably stolen them from her little brother and written the name on them herself, to try and embarrass him. Kansas didn’t have a problem stringing them up the flagpole, but … Francine had said
your
underwear. Not
these
. She’d been trying to trick him, to make him lose a point.

Well, no way Kansas was going to fall for that. If Francine said
your
underwear up the flagpole, it was
his
underwear up the flagpole she was going to get. Kansas never failed a dare. He had the photos to prove it—pictures of every single dare he and Ricky and Will had ever done together, stuck to the wall above his bed.

Kansas quickly changed course and turned into the
boys’ bathroom. Making sure no one was inside, he raced to the farthest stall and locked himself in. Less than one minute later, he stepped out with two pairs of underwear stuffed into his pockets, totally bare-butted under his khakis. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but he was definitely
not
going to wear some other kid’s underwear.

Kansas just had one more thing to find before he was ready to do his dare. But as it turned out, that thing found him.

“
Kan
-sas! What’re you doing?”

Kansas whirled around. At the far end of the hallway, by the library, was his little sister, Ginny. Her hair was pulled back into two uneven pigtails, and she still had on her ballerina tutu, the white one with the silver sparkles that she’d insisted on wearing on the early bus that morning. He’d really been hoping she’d take it off when she got to school.

“I was just looking for you,” he called back, hustling over to meet her halfway. He gestured toward Mr. Benetto’s classroom, where the Art Club met before school. “What’re you doing out here?”

“I was going to the library,” Ginny said. She was holding
a red notebook and a fat pink pencil with a red cherry eraser. “I need to look up how to spell
asthma.
”

“There’s a
th
in it.” Kansas paused. “Why do you need to know?”

“I’m writing a note to my teacher,” Ginny replied, sticking the notebook against the wall. The cherry on top of the pencil wobbled as she wrote. “I just remembered that Mom forgot to give me a note to get out of races in PE, so I’m doing it myself. Is the
th
at the beginning or the end?”

“She forgot? You sure she didn’t put it in your backpack?” Ginny was always needing a note to get out of something. She had asthma—not serious, but enough that she couldn’t run long distances—and she was deadly allergic to peanuts. One tiny bite, and she’d need to be raced to the hospital.

“Nuh-uh,” Ginny said. “I checked. And Mom said never to call her at work unless our heads were chopped off.”

“I think she meant only if it’s serious.”

“Well, I forgot the number anyway. Do you remember?”

Kansas frowned. “No.”

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Ginny said, still scribbling, “’
cause I’m gonna give her this one.” She pulled the notebook away from the wall and flicked it into Kansas’s face. “Pretty good, huh?”

“Uh, Ginny, no way your teacher is going to believe Mom wrote this.”

Ginny frowned. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It looks like you wrote it with your feet.”

Ginny grabbed the notebook back from Kansas. In one swift movement, she ripped the page out and threw it on the floor. Then she threw herself on the floor too, arms crossed and her sparkly white tutu poofed all around her.

“Maybe if you just talk to your teacher,” Kansas said carefully. Ginny looked like she was going to cry. He hated
when Ginny cried. Her voice got all gulpy and sniffly, and everyone always stopped what they were doing to hug her, and it took hours and was super annoying. “Maybe
I
could talk to her. Tell her that—”

“I know!” Ginny said. Her eyes were lit up, excited.

“What?”

“I’ll call Dad.
He’ll
tell Mrs. Goldblatt.” Ginny jumped to her feet. “I’m going to the office right now.”

Kansas grabbed Ginny by her tutu and dragged her back.

“Hey!”

“Ginny,” he said as she tried to wiggle away from him, “you can’t call Dad.”

“Why not?” Ginny said, all arms and legs and squirming. She was making a ruckus, and Kansas was starting to get worried that some teacher might discover them and send them back to their rooms, and then he’d
never
get to the flagpole. “Give me one reason I can’t call him.”

Because
, Kansas thought.
Because you’ve tried to call him almost every single day for the last three weeks, and he hasn’t picked up once. Because last time you tried to call, the voice on
the other end said the number was no longer in service. Because every time you do, you get so upset it takes a two-hour tickle fight to calm you down. Because if he really wanted to talk to us, he wouldn’t have up and left in the first place.

Kansas looked at his sister. “Because,” he said, letting all the air out of his cheeks. But he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say any of it. She was only six, for crying out loud. He shook his head, and then gently took the notebook from her. “Because
I’m
going to write you a note,” he said, and he smoothed his hand across a fresh sheet to think.

Ginny clapped her hands together. “Oh, good!” she said. She handed Kansas the cherry pencil. “Thanks, Kansas. You’re smart.”

Kansas studied the blank page and thought. Then, when he had it all figured out, he put the pencil to the paper and began to write.

The good thing about growing up with a mom who worked late all the time and a dad who was usually who-knew-where was that you got really good at forging letters. Need a parent to sign off on your C-spelling test? Mom forgot to look at that permission slip before she raced out
the door? Kansas was your guy. He had his mother’s handwriting down perfectly—from the loopy
S
in Susie to the jutting curve of the
m
in Bloom.

When he was finished, Kansas signed the note with a practiced flourish and passed it to Ginny to inspect.

He was especially proud of the
Sincerely.
He’d memorized that word about a year ago, just in case.

“This is perfect!” Ginny cried, clutching the note to her chest. “Thanks, Kansas!” And she left a wet kiss on his cheek.

“No problem,” he told her, wiping his cheek clean. He handed her back the pink cherry pencil. “Now I need you to help
me
.”

3.

A video camera

Brendan and Alicia had wrenched one of the windows open, and a waft of early-morning air—sweet and crisp and full of that barely-December sting that Francine loved so much—was breezing across Francine’s face. She had stood, with the members of the Media Club, watching, for three minutes, then four, but so far Kansas had not appeared at the flagpole. The clock ticked away.

“Do you think he chickened up?” Emma asked, standing on her tiptoes to lean farther out the window.

“Huh?” Luis asked.

“She means chickened out,” Alicia explained.

“Oh.”

Francine checked the clock again.

“
Where do you think he is?” Natalie asked.

Brendan snorted. “Maybe he got so scared he fainted. Maybe he’s in the nurse’s office right now.” He turned his back to the window. “The King of Dares,
ha
! What a baby.”

“Yeah,” Andre agreed, turning his back to the window, too. “What a baby!”

Francine tried not to let herself smile at that. She wouldn’t be smug when she beat Kansas, she decided. She’d very politely shake his hand and tell him that he’d put up an excellent fight.

“Let’s give him until the bell rings,” Luis said. “If his underwear’s not up by then, he doesn’t get the point. Everyone agree?”

Everyone did. They turned back to the window to watch and wait.

“Everything okay over here?”

Seven heads whirled around from the window. Miss Sparks was standing behind them, arms across her chest. “You all seem a little … preoccupied,” she said, a smirk of a smile on her face. “Is there something that’s disrupting our club time?”

They shushed and coughed, all of them, poking one another in the sides and clearing their throats, and generally acting—Francine thought—like a bunch of criminals caught in the middle of a bank heist.

“Oh, um, we’re fine,” Alicia said quickly. “Just checking to see if the weather forecast is right.”

Miss Sparks nodded in that knowing way she had. “I see,” she replied. “Well, now that you’re sure it is indeed cloudy, perhaps we should begin getting ready for today’s announcements, don’t you think? Only thirty minutes until the bell rings. Francine, can you give me a hand with the extension cord for the camera?”

And that was that. They all went about their business, same as they did every morning. But they left the window open, and Francine noticed that she wasn’t the only one whose eyes kept darting to the flagpole, tall and sturdy and completely flagless.

As Francine helped unroll the orange extension cord and cover it with the heavy gray mat so no one would trip on it, she snuck in a quick whisper to Natalie.

“No way Kansas’ll do it,” she said. She was growing more and more positive by the second. “And even if he
does
do it, he’ll get in trouble, and then no way he’ll get to be news anchor. Mrs. Weinmore will kick him out of the club for sure.” Mrs. Weinmore, Auden Elementary’s principal, was famous for her harsh punishments.

Natalie frowned. “Don’t you think you might get in trouble too, if Mrs. Weinmore finds out you’re the one who dared him?”

Francine tugged at a knot in the extension cord. “No way. Anyway, it was Brendan’s idea, not mine.”

“Just be careful, okay?” Natalie replied. “Otherwise you’ll
both
get kicked out, and then who would be news anchor?” And she crossed the room to help Alicia get ready.

Francine shot another quick look out the window. Still no Kansas. Still no underwear.

The last half of Media Club passed quickly, just as it always did. While Francine did her special duties as camerawoman—unlocking the camera from the closet, setting it up at the front of the classroom, checking all the settings—the other members had their own tasks to perform. Alicia, the news announcer for fall semester, was the star of the show. She set herself up behind Miss Sparks’s desk, in the large swively chair right behind Miss
Sparks’s red dippy bird, and studied the morning’s announcements while Natalie, who was in charge of hair and wardrobe, made sure that she was “camera ready,” occasionally dabbing at her face with a tissue.

Brendan was the news editor, so he was in charge of setting the order of everything Alicia read each morning, deleting any duplicates, and adding in any last-minute announcements. Those came from Luis and Kansas, the show’s runners, whose job it was to race around to all the classrooms before the bell rang and collect any new announcements the teachers might have.

Just fifteen minutes to go.

There was a tremendous crash from Francine’s right. Emma had managed to knock over an entire stand of lights. Emma was the “special effects technician,” which, as far as Francine could figure out, simply meant that she had to make sure everything was plugged into the wall. It wasn’t a difficult job, but somehow Emma still found a way to make it challenging.

“Oh, man!” Andre called. Andre was in charge of lighting. “One of the bulbs broke!”

Miss Sparks scuttled over to help clean up the mess. “Andre,” she said calmly, “go ask Mr. Paulsen if there’s an extra bulb in the drama room we can borrow.” And Andre scurried out of the room, shooting angry eyes at Emma as he went.

Francine tried to relax, settling herself behind the camera. This was always her favorite part of the morning—just before the rest of her classmates showed up and filed into their seats behind her, in those last few minutes of calm before the bell rang and everything became whisper-quiet all across the school. Everything, that is, except Alicia’s voice as she told the entire school the announcements of the day, courtesy of Francine and her news camera.

And Francine was just letting that warm, fresh, happiness envelop her, when—with only eight minutes left until the bell rang—she heard Emma’s piercing squeal.

“What?” Brendan asked. “What did you break this time?”

But Emma didn’t answer. One hand was clamped over her mouth, and the other was pointing out the window.

From where she was standing in front of Miss Sparks’s
desk, Francine had to squint to see it. But she could just make it out—Kansas, standing in front of the flagpole, grinning like an idiot, like he was about to get his picture taken or something. And high atop the flagpole above him, something small and white was swaying in the December breeze.

Francine had never been quite so depressed to see a pair of underwear.

4.

A FUZZY PHOTOGRAPH

“Take the picture!” Kansas called to Ginny. She was standing in front of the school marquee, blocking parts of the words
SCHOOL
SPIRIT
DAY
TOMORROW!
WEAR
GREEN
&
WHITE!
so that all Kansas could see, around her tutu, was
SCHOOL
MORROW!
WE
ITE!