Double Dog Dare (4 page)

It hadn’t been too hard to string his underwear up the flagpole once they’d finally gotten outside. The flagpole was still flagless, so all Kansas had to do was grab the rope, clip the briefs on, and haul them up.

The hard part was getting Ginny to snap a photo before anyone saw them. Kansas hadn’t read Auden Elementary’s official rule book or anything, but he was pretty sure that
stringing a pair of underwear up the flagpole would
not
be considered acceptable behavior.

“You just push the big button!” he shouted.

Ginny wasn’t the greatest photographer, but she’d have to do, since Ricky and Will were back in Oregon. Ginny had taken a photo of the dare he’d done yesterday too—telling Mr. DuPree that he needed to smell his armpit for a science project—and that one had turned out okay. Kansas hadn’t gotten a photo of the lizard-licking dare on Tuesday, which was too bad, because that was pretty much the grossest dare Kansas had ever done. But Ginny had helped him re-create it when they got home, with a lizard from their backyard that Kansas pretend-licked for the camera. It wasn’t quite the same, but it would do for the Wall of Dares in his bedroom, and he knew Ricky and Will would get a kick out of it when they finally checked their e-mails. Now, Kansas was always prepared—carrying around the cheap digital camera his dad had given him in his back pocket at all times.

Ginny snapped the picture.

Kansas hustled Ginny back to Art Club with—he
checked the clock on the wall of the art room—twelve minutes until the bell rang. Kids were already starting to trickle into the hallway, and he could hear a few murmurs here and there that sounded quite a bit like “flagpole” and “underwear.”

Kansas was just making his way back to Media Club when he noticed Luis heading out of a classroom two doors away, a stack of papers in his hands.

“Hey, Kansas!” Luis called, stopping so that Kansas had no choice but to talk to him while they walked together.

“Hey,” Kansas said. He was still the tiniest bit mad at Luis for nominating him for news anchor.

Luis grinned at him. “Did you do the dare?”

At that, Kansas couldn’t help but grin back. He pulled the camera out of his back pocket to show him, flipping the On switch as they continued down the hallway. But his grin quickly faded. “Aw, man! Ginny cut my head off!” He brought the camera close to his nose. All you could see was the tip-top of Kansas’s hair, poking out in front of the flagpole.

Luis leaned in to look. “At least she got the underwear, though,” he said. “That’s really the important part.”

“I guess,” Kansas grumbled. The entire image was fuzzy, completely out of focus.

“If you want someone to take pictures for you, you know, I could do it. I took a photography class this summer. I’ll bring my camera tomorrow. It’s one of the old-fashioned ones. You know, like, with film?”

“Um,” Kansas said. People actually had those still? “Thanks. That’d be cool.”

“No problem.” Luis was riffling through the papers in his arms, last-minute announcements from various teachers. “Hey,” he said, “are you going to be around over winter break?”

“Nah. I’m going camping with Ricky and Will. We go every year with Ricky’s dad, out in Glenyan, for, like, three days. We go rock climbing and ride ATVs, and Ricky’s dog comes too. It’s freezing, but it’s awesome.” He tried to return his camera to his back pocket, but it was too stuffed in there with the underwear. He put it in his front pocket instead. “How come?”

Luis shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just my birthday party.
I was going to invite you, if you were around. It’s all Marvel.”

“Marvel?”

“Yeah. Like the comic books? Spider-Man, X-Men, the Hulk …”

“Oh.” That sounded okay, Kansas thought, but not as fun as camping. “Well, too bad I have to miss it.”

Just as they were about to reach Miss Sparks’s door, Kansas was bumped from behind, hard. He turned around.

It was Andre Jackson, holding a box of lightbulbs. “Look where you’re going, doofus,” he told Kansas. But he was grinning when he said it, and Kansas was pretty sure he’d bumped into him on purpose. Kansas shook his head and opened the door to room 43H.

What Kansas
planned
on doing, when he stepped into the room, was to pull the underwear out of his pocket, the fake
Kansas Bloom
s, and shove them right in Francine’s face, and tell her, “You can’t get me that easy, Francine!” And then he’d make her add his third point to the board herself.

But he didn’t do that, for two reasons.

The first reason was that Francine Halata was already standing at the chalkboard, changing his two to a three.

And the second reason was that the underwear—the ones with
Kansas Bloom
written across the waistband—were no longer in Kansas’s pocket.

Somewhere, between the flagpole and his classroom, Kansas had lost them.

Kansas wriggled in the hard wooden library chair. It wasn’t a comfortable chair to begin with, and the fact that there was nothing but a thin pair of khakis between it and his buttocks wasn’t helping matters. Kansas was pretty sure that by the end of the day, his butt was going to be chafing big time. But sometimes that was the price you had to pay to be the King of Dares.

Kansas held his breath as he logged into his e-mail account. And then, he let it out. Finally. An e-mail from Will.

Kansas felt his stomach sink to his feet. Mark H.?
Mark H.
was going camping? Ricky and Will hadn’t even
asked
Kansas if he wanted to go. Like he suddenly wouldn’t like camping anymore, just because he’d moved away.

Kansas felt like a moron. He should’ve told Ricky he still wanted to go this year. He should’ve made sure they knew.

But they hadn’t even
asked
him.

Kansas logged into his IM account. If Ricky or Will was on right now, he could talk some sense into them. It would be faster than e-mail. He typed in his username, kansas_the_champ, and his password, and opened up his “friends” box. But neither Ricky nor Will was online. They were probably at lunch, hanging out with their new best friend, Mark H.

“Hey, Kansas!”

Kansas jumped with a start. It was Brendan, leaning
against the back of his chair, peering over his shoulder at the computer. Next to him was Andre, peering over Kansas’s shoulder too.

“Oh,” Kansas said. “Hey.” He logged out of his e-mail and IM with two quick clicks of the mouse, then turned around in his chair. “What’s up?”

“It took us forever to find you,” Brendan said. “What are you doing in the library during
lunch
?”

“Yeah,” Andre agreed. “Why are you in the library?”

Kansas shrugged. “Checking e-mail.”

“Well, we were looking for you because we thought of a dare for Francine,” Brendan said. “Everyone’s voted on it but you, and they all think it’s awesome.”

“Yeah,” Andre said. “Awesome.”

“What is it?”

“She has to go inside the boys’ bathroom,” Brendan said, “and write
Francine was here
on the wall.”

“Won’t she get in trouble?” Kansas asked. “I mean, if someone finds out?”

“Yeah, probably,” Brendan said. “But you probably would’ve gotten in trouble for the flagpole thing if you got
caught, and Francine didn’t seem to care about you. So come on. You vote yes or what?”

“Yeah,” Andre said. “Or what?”

Kansas thought about it. “Sure,” he told Brendan. “I vote yes.”

“Cool. We gotta make her do it before lunch is over. You should come with us.” And Brendan walked toward the door, snatching a thick black marker off the librarian’s desk as he went. Andre walked right behind him.

Kansas thought, but he wasn’t certain, that he could just make out a suspicious bulge in the back pocket of Andre’s jeans—a bulge that looked a whole heck of a lot like a wadded-up pair of underwear. He even thought he maybe saw the hint of a waistband sticking out, with what might just be the letter
K
on it. But Kansas didn’t say anything about it. What was he supposed to say? “Hey, Andre! Do you have a pair of underwear with my name on them in your pocket?” Uh, no. So, without another word about anything, Kansas followed Brendan and Andre out of the library to find Francine.

5.

A black permanent marker

Not that Francine had ever spent any time thinking about it, but if she had, she would have assumed that a boys’ bathroom would smell pretty similar to a girls’ bathroom—soap and floor cleaner and just a little of that classic bathroom stink.

It did not. The boys’ bathroom smelled quite a bit like the inside of one of her dad’s gym socks. She could smell it even from the hallway, with the door partially open.

Kansas finished checking underneath the last stall door for feet and gave Francine the all clear. Andre held the door open for her, then handed her the black permanent marker. Brendan grinned his sinister grin. “Good luck,” he told her. But Francine could tell he didn’t really mean it.

“
Don’t worry,” Natalie assured her. “If any boys are about to come in, I’ll pound on the door so you can hide.”

“Thanks,” Francine said with a gulp. The last thing she wanted to see that afternoon was
boys peeing
. She stepped inside, and the door shut firmly behind her.

Francine uncapped the marker and looked around for a good place to write her message. She didn’t want to do it anyplace obvious, where the janitor would see it and she’d get in trouble.

A faucet dripped.

Settling on the tile wall beneath the sink, Francine crouched down, head below a rusty pipe, and began to scribble.

Francine was here

She’d just finished the last letter when she heard it.

Pound, pound, pound.

Natalie was knocking on the door! Francine’s head shot up—
smack!
—into the bathroom sink. “Ouch!” she cried, then slapped a hand over her mouth. This was no time for sissies.

Tossing the marker quickly in the garbage can, Francine raced to the farthest stall against the wall and locked herself inside. Then she stood up on the rim of the toilet bowl, crouching slightly so her head wouldn’t show over the door. She could hear the main door to the bathroom creak open. Francine hoped that whoever had come in would pee and leave quickly. She didn’t want to spend one more second in that nasty stall than she had to.

But the person did not pee. The person shouted.

“Francine Halata!”

Francine’s legs began to tremble underneath her. The voice on the other side of the door was unmistakable. It belonged to none other than Mrs. Weinmore, Auden Elementary’s bulldog of a principal.

“Francine HALATA!”

That fink Kansas had tricked her, Francine realized. He and Brendan and Andre must’ve raced for the principal the second she walked through the bathroom door. That was probably their plan all along.

“I know you’re in here, Miss Halata!”

Maybe, Francine thought, if she could stay perfectly quiet, she’d be okay. Mrs. Weinmore wouldn’t know for
sure she was in the boys’ bathroom unless she saw her. Even if she suspected, she’d never be able to prove—

Ka-POP!
The stall closest to the door was swung open, then the next one.
Ka-WHACK!
Mrs. Weinmore was making her way down the row, checking inside every one.
Ka-FLING!
Ka-THUD!
Ka—

“Miss Halata!” The door of the stall Francine was hiding inside began to shake, the lock banging against the frame. “You come out of there this instant!”

Francine’s legs trembled more wildly on top of the toilet seat, and her head was throbbing so badly she thought her brain might burst from her skull. Still, she remained silent. Mrs. Weinmore could jiggle that door all she wanted. Francine was
never
coming out. She’d stay there all night if she had to. All week. Sooner or later, Mrs. Weinmore would have to go home, and until then, Francine would just—

SPLASH!

Before Francine knew what had happened, her trembling legs had quivered right out from underneath her, and she found herself tumbled onto the bathroom floor, flat on her back, with one foot ankle-deep in toilet water.

But worse than any of that was the sight of Mrs.
Weinmore’s beet-red face, glaring at her from underneath the stall door.

“Oh, um, hey, Mrs. Weinmore,” Francine said as casually as she could manage, as if she hung out with her feet in toilets every day. Francine could feel the toilet water seeping through her sock. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Mrs. Weinmore did not look amused.

6.

A TUB OF WATER

As soon as Francine stepped inside the bathroom, Brendan raced off down the hall. Andre kept checking his watch, looking as excited as Ginny did on Christmas morning, but Kansas couldn’t figure out what was so great about hanging out outside a boys’ bathroom. Francine had only been inside for twenty seconds, and already he was bored.

Andre leaned in close to Kansas, jerking his head toward Natalie. “Hey, you think Brendan needs help?” he whispered. “What if Mrs. W.’s not in her office?”

“Huh?” Kansas replied. He had no idea what Andre was talking about. He was more worried about stupid Mark H., and whether or not Ricky’s dad would let him drive one of
the ATVs by himself. Probably. Probably Mark H. was the best ATV driver in the whole world.

“I’m gonna go help,” Andre decided, checking his watch again. “You wait here, in case Brendan comes back.”

“Comes back from where?” Kansas asked. But Andre didn’t answer. He was already ten feet down the hallway.

“Hey, Kansas,” he called, whirling around with a smile on his face, “check out the dingbat with the tutu!” He pointed as he continued down the hallway.

Tutu?

Kansas squinted. Sure enough, there was Ginny at the far end of the hall, sitting on the floor outside her classroom. In her tutu. And she was
crying
.