Sarah Dessen (13 page)

“Come on,” he said, sliding his hand over my leg. “I’ll bet you.”

“No.”

“Scared?”

“Again, no.”

He cocked his head to the side, then squeezed my knee. His foot, of course, was tapping. “Let’s go. She’s about to walk in. When the door shuts behind her, time’s on.”

“Oh, God.” I said. “What’s the bet?”

“Five bucks.”

“Boring. And too easy.”

“Ten bucks.”

“Okay. And you have to buy dinner.”

“Done.”

We watched as the woman, who was wearing pink shorts and a T-shirt and carrying an armful of wrinkled dress shirts, pulled open the door to the cleaners. As it swung shut, I said, “Maine.”

“North Dakota.”

“Florida.”

“Virginia.”

“California.”

“Delaware.” I was keeping track on my fingers: he’d been known to cheat but denied it with great vehemence, so I always had to have proof. Challenges, to Dexter, were like those duels in the old movies, where men in white suits smacked each other across the face with gloves, and all honor was at stake. So far, I hadn’t won them all, but I hadn’t backed down either. I was, after all, still new at this.

Dexter’s challenges, apparently, were legendary. The first one I’d seen had been between him and John Miller. It was a couple of days after Dexter and I had gotten together, one of the first times I’d gone over to the yellow house with him. We found John Miller sitting at the kitchen table in his pajamas, eating a banana. There was a big bunch of them on the table in front of him, seemingly out of place in a kitchen where I now knew the major food groups consisted of Slurpees and beer.

“What’s up with the bananas?” Dexter asked him, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

John Miller, who still looked half asleep, glanced up and said, “Fruit of the Month Club. My nana gave it to me for my birthday.”

“Potassium,” Dexter said. “You need that every day, you know.”

John Miller yawned, as if used to this kind of stupid information. Then he went back to his banana.

“I bet,” Dexter said suddenly, in the voice I later would come to recognize as the one that always preceded a challenge, deep and game show host-like, “that you can’t eat ten bananas.”

John Miller finished chewing the bite in his mouth, then swallowed. “I bet,” he replied, “that you’re right.”

“It’s a challenge,” Dexter said. Then he nudged out a chair, with a knee that was already jiggling, for me, and said, in the same low, slow voice, “Will you take it?”

“Are you crazy?”

“For ten bucks.”

“I am not eating ten bananas for ten bucks,” John Miller said indignantly.

“It’s a dollar a banana!” Dexter said.

“And furthermore,” John Miller went on, tossing the now-empty peel at an overflowing garbage can by the back door, and missing, “this double-dare shit of yours is getting old, Dexter. You can’t just go around throwing down challenges whenever you feel like it.”

“Are you passing on the challenge?”

“Will you stop using that voice?”

“Twenty bucks,” Dexter said. “Twenty bucks—”

“No,” John Miller told him.

“—and I’ll clean the bathroom.”

This, clearly, changed things. John Miller looked at the bananas, then at Dexter. Then at the bananas again. “Does the one I just ate count as one?”

“No.”

John Miller slapped the table. “What? It’s not even to my stomach yet, for godsakes!”

Dexter thought for a second. “Okay. We’ll let Remy call this one.”

“What?” I said. They were both looking at me.

“You’re an unbiased view,” Dexter explained.

“She’s your girlfriend,” John Miller complained. “That’s not unbiased!”

“She is not my girlfriend.” Dexter looked at me, as if this might upset me, which was evidence that he didn’t know me at all. He said, “What I mean is, we may be seeing each other”—and here he paused, as if waiting for me to chime in with something, which I didn’t, so he went on—“but you are your own person with your opinions and convictions. Correct?”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” I told John Miller.

“She loves me,” Dexter said to him, as an aside, and I felt my face flame. “Anyway,” he said, moving on breezily, “Remy? What do you think? Does it count or not?”

“Well,” I said, “I think it should count somehow. Perhaps as half.”

“Half!” Dexter looked at me as if he was just so pleased, as if he had carved me out of clay himself. “Perfect. So, if you choose to accept this challenge, you must eat nine and a half bananas.”

John Miller thought about this for a second. Later, I would learn that money was always scarce at the yellow house, and these challenges provided some balance of cash flow from one person to another. Twenty bucks was food and beer money for at least a couple of days. And it was really only nine bananas. And a half.

“Okay,” John Miller said. And they shook on it.

Before the challenge could happen, witnesses had to be gathered. Ted was brought in from the back deck, along with a girl he’d been seeing, introduced to me as Scary Mary (I chose not to ask), and, after a futile search for the keyboardist, Lucas, Dexter’s dog Monkey was agreed upon as a suitable replacement. We all gathered around the table, or on the long, ugly brown couch that was next to the refrigerator, while John Miller did some deep breathing and stretching, as if preparing for a fifty-yard dash.

“Okay,” Ted, the only one with a working watch and therefore timekeeper, said, “Go!”

If you’ve never seen someone take on a food challenge, as I had not at that point, you might expect it to actually be exciting. Except that the challenge was not to eat nine and a half bananas quickly: it was just to eat nine and a half bananas. So by banana four or so, boredom set in, and Ted and Scary Mary went to the Waffle House, leaving me, Dexter, and Monkey to wait out the next five and a half bananas. It turned out we didn’t have to: John Miller conceded defeat in the middle of banana six, then carefully got to his feet and went to the bathroom.

“I hope you didn’t kill him,” I told Dexter as the door shut behind him, the lock clicking.

“No way,” he said easily, stretching back in his chair. “You should have seen him last month, when he ate fifteen eggs in a row. Then we were worried. He turned bright red.”

“You know,” I said, “funny how it’s never
you
having to eat vast quantities of things.”

“Not true. I just moved on after completing the master of all challenges back in April.”

I hated to even ask what would earn such a title, but curiosity got the better of me. “Which was?”

“Thirty-two ounces of Miracle Whip,” he said. “In twenty minutes flat.”

Just the thought of this made my stomach twist. I hated mayonnaise, and any derivation thereof: egg salad, tuna salad, even deviled eggs. “That’s disgusting.”

“I know.” He said it proudly. “I could never top it, even if I tried.”

I had to wonder what kind of person got such satisfaction from constant competitiveness. And Dexter would make challenges about anything, whether it was in his control or not. Some recent favorites included I Bet You a Quarter the Next Car That Passes Is Either Blue or Green, Five Bucks Says I Can Make Something Edible Out of the Canned Corn, French-Fried Potato Sticks, and Mustard in the Pantry, and, of course, How Many States Can You Name While That Woman Picks Up Her Dry Cleaning?

I, personally, was up to twenty. Dexter was at nineteen and experiencing a bit of a brain cramp.

“California,” he said finally, casting a nervous look at the front of the cleaners, where we could see the woman talking to someone behind the counter.

“Already said it,” I told him.

“Wisconsin.”

“Montana.”

“South Carolina.”

The door opened: it was her. “Game over,” I said. “I win.”

“You do not!”

I held up my fingers, where I’d been keeping track. “I win by one,” I said. “Pay up.”

He started to reach into his pockets, sighing, then instead pulled me closer, spreading his fingers around my waist, burying his face in my neck.

“Nope,” I said, putting my hands on his chest, “won’t work.”

“I’ll be your slave,” he said into my ear, and I felt a chill run up my back, then cast it off just as quickly, reminding myself again that I always had a boyfriend in summer, someone that caught my eye after school was finished and usually lasted right up until the beach trip my family took each August. The only difference this time was that I was going west instead of east. And I liked being able to think about it that way, in terms of a compass, something set in stone that would remain, unchanged, long after I was gone.

Besides, I knew already we would never work long-term. He was so imperfect already, his cracks and fissures apparent. I could only imagine what structural damage lay beneath, deep in the foundation. But still, it was hard to keep my head clear as he kissed me there, in July, with another challenge behind me. After all, I was up now, and it still seemed like we had time.

They all looked at me. It wasn’t rude for them to ask, of course: usually this was common knowledge—once, common assumption. But now I hesitated, which was unnerving.

“No,” I said finally. There was a quick intake of breath—shock!—from somebody, then silence.

“Wow,” Lissa said finally. “You
like
him.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I said, not refuting this exactly, which set off another round of silence and exchanged looks. Out at the Spot, with the sun going down, I felt the trampoline bounce lightly beneath me and leaned back, spreading my fingers over the cool metal of the springs.

“No Speech, no sex,” Jess said, summing up. “This is dangerous.”

“Maybe he’s different,” Lissa offered, stirring her drink with one finger.

“Nobody’s different,” Chloe told her. “Remy knows that better than any of us.”

It says something about my absolute adherence to a plan concerning relationships that my best friends had terms, like outline headings, detailing my actions. The Speech usually came right as the heady, romantic, fun-new-boyfriend phase was boiling to full steam. It was my way of hitting the brakes, slowly downshifting, and usually involved me pulling whatever Ken was in my life at that time aside to say something like: hey, I really like you and we’re having fun, but you know, I can’t get too serious because I’m going to the beach/really going to focus on school come fall/just getting over someone and not up to anything long-term. This was the summer speech: the winter/holiday one was pretty much the same, except you inserted I’m going skiing/really going to have to rally until graduation/dealing with a lot of family crap for the last part. And usually, guys took it one of two ways. If they
really
liked me, as in wear-my-class-ring-love-me-always, they bolted, which was just as well. If they liked me but were willing to slow down, to see boundaries, they nodded and saved face by saying they felt the same way. And then I was free to proceed to the next step, which—and I’m not proud—usually involved sleeping with them.

But not right away. Never right away, not anymore. I liked to have enough time invested to see a few cracks and get rid of anyone whose failings I knew I couldn’t deal with in the long term, i.e., more than the six weeks that usually encompassed the fun-new-boyfriend phase.

Chloe opened her bottled water, took a swig, then chased it with a sip from the tiny bottle of bourbon in her hand. “What are you doing?” she asked me, point blank.

“I’m just having fun,” I replied, taking a swig of my Diet Zip. It seemed easy to say this, having just run through it in my head. “He’s leaving at the end of the summer too, you know.”

“Then why haven’t you given him The Speech?” Jess asked.

“I just,” I said, and then shook my cup, stalling. “I haven’t thought about it, to be honest.”

They looked at one another, considering the implications of this. Lissa said, “I think he’s really nice, Remy. He’s sweet.”

“He’s clumsy,” Jess grumbled. “He keeps stepping on my feet.”

“Maybe,” Chloe said, as if it was just occurring to her, “you just have big feet.”

“Maybe,” Jess replied, “you should shut up.”

Lissa sighed, closing her eyes. “You guys. Please. We’re talking about Remy.”

“We don’t have to talk about Remy,” I said. “We really don’t. Let’s talk about somebody else.”

There was silence for a second: I sucked down some more of my drink, Lissa lit a cigarette. Finally Chloe said, “You know, the other night Dexter said he’d give me ten bucks if I could stand on my head for twenty minutes. What the hell does that mean?”

They all looked at me. I said, “Just ignore him. Next?”

“I think Adam’s seeing someone else,” Lissa said suddenly.

“Okay,” I said. “Now,
see,
this is interesting.”

Lissa ran her finger over the rim of her cup, her head down, one curl bouncing slightly with the movement. It had been about a month since Adam had dumped her, and she’d moved through her weepy stage to just kind of sad all the time, with occasional moments when I actually heard her laugh out loud, then stop, as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t supposed to be happy.

“Who is she?” Chloe asked.

“I don’t know. She drives a red Mazda.”

Jess looked at me, shaking her head. I said, “Lissa, have you been driving by his house?”

“No,” she said, and then looked up at us. We, of course, were all staring back at her, knowing she was lying. “No! But the other day there was construction on Willow and then I—”

“Do you want him to think you’re weak?” Jess asked her. “Do you want to give him that satisfaction?”

“How can he already be with somebody else?” Lissa asked her, and Jess just sighed, shaking her head. “I’m not even totally okay yet, and he’s with someone else? How can that
be
?”

“Because he’s a jerk,” I told her.

“Because he’s a guy,” Chloe added. “And guys don’t get attached, guys don’t ever give themselves over completely, and guys lie. That’s why they should be handled with great trepidation, not trusted, and held at arm’s length whenever possible. Right, Remy?”

I looked at her, and there it was again: that shifting of her eyes that meant she’d seen something in me lately she didn’t recognize, and it worried her. Because if I wasn’t cold, hard Remy, then she couldn’t be the Chloe she was, either.

“Right,” I said, and smiled at Lissa. I had to lead the way here, of course. She’d never make it out otherwise. “Absolutely.”