The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  “Ah, the Bainbridge Fan Brigade. I thought better of you, Fiorella.” Frankie doesn’t keep his opinions about anything to himself. I usually admire that a little desperately. This time it stung. “I really did.”

  Why? I’m only human. And invisible. In part (not that I kid myself that it’s the major part) because I am still not much over five foot nothing. Alex Bainbridge is a foot taller than I am, with bronze hair that turns up at the front and a mouth that turns up at the corners, even when he’s not smiling.

  “It’s better than her obsession with a dead man,” Sadie said gently.

  “Not much,” was Frankie’s grumbled reply.

  He’s probably right. I can sit blissfully under Edward’s portrait in the library, scouring the Web for auctions containing his paintings, reading and rereading his letters and the handful of biographies about him, and no one notices. This year, it’s even legit: research for my honors art history project. Besides, Edward was real. Everything he wrote and said was real, true. Unlike Fitzwilliam Darcy, who, drool-worthy as he might be, was really just Jane Austen in breeches. And look how many women dream about marrying him. I know for a fact that two of the girls at Table 13 are regular contributors to an online Darcy fanzine. They read aloud from it during lunch. It’s not bad.

  As for the possibility of Alex . . . well, he’s alive. I could reach out and touch him almost any day September through May. I could actually invite him to a movie or pizza, or Marino’s, where my nonna would make the calamari and my brother would have to serve it to us at a table in front. But I wouldn’t. More the point, I couldn’t. Because of his seat near the windows. Because of Amanda Alstead and lacrosse and the fact that he probably doesn’t eat squid. I know the closest I’ll get to Edward Willing is his portrait and an honors thesis. Of course I know that. As for playing footsie under a red-checked tablecloth with Alex . . .

  Truth: For me, it’s easier to accept the impossible than the pitifully improbable.

  I should probably have left the book where I found it, half hidden under the statue of Samuel Windsor Willing, Edith’s grandfather (the Revolutionary War uniform is misleading; a little math tells us that he was only nine in 1776, but the Willings were never short on ego). I was coming out of the east corridor girls’ room, which makes me wonder if school bathrooms are going to have ongoing significance in my life. I wish it didn’t seem so likely. I certainly don’t spend much time in them. Even at Willing, they smell like dirty water and that industrial pink soap that doesn’t come out of the dispensers, no matter how many times you pump. Besides, I’m not a mirror girl. I have Frankie and Sadie to tell me if I have lettuce in my teeth. I don’t have shiny lip gloss to check. I don’t do anything that necessitates Visine. Still, sometimes I’ll come out of a stall or look up from washing my hands and catch sight of myself: a small, startled person behind a curtain of dark hair who looks away quickly, as if embarrassed by being caught staring.

  This time, I could have used the bathroom closer to math class. I mean, I didn’t have to pee all that badly. But Amanda and her cadre can usually be found in the bathroom closer to math class before math class. Since the only word she has spoken to me since freshman year was “Ewwwww!,” it makes sense to avoid her.

  Beyond that, it’s a Girls’ Declamation (formerly known as “Oral”) Week at Willing, which means we have to memorize scarily long poems and recite them in front of our class. Declamation has this bizarre and overblown importance at Willing. Like all our future success depends on being able to remember that love is like a red, red rose. The week’s subject was Robert Frost. Meaning the school has been overrun for the last few days with nervous girls reciting “The Road Not Taken.” It’s the poem of choice for the Phillites and Bee Girls. They’ve been coaching each other all week, filling the halls and bathrooms with bouncy rhythms and rhymes that I don’t think Frost intended, even though he wrote them.

  During Dec Weeks, we at Willing live a life that’s something like a cross between a Broadway musical and Christian hip-hop. Everyone walks around mouthing unfamiliar, old-fashioned words. The halls become littered with increasingly dog-eared printouts of poems. We skip a little as we walk, like ponies in iambic quadrameter: bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum. Endless blonde ponytails swishing down the halls.

  “Two roads diverged in a wood and I—

  I took the one less traveled by . . .”

  Bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum . . .

  So I used a quiet bathroom. Coming out, eyes on the scuffed toes of my Chucks, I saw the book. It was tented near Cornelius’s feet, a few papers loose under the bent pages. I leaned over and picked it up. And that, as Robert Frost would say, made all the difference.

  From Table 12, I had a fairly good view of Table 2. Alex always sits there (Table 1 is for Phillite seniors only) usually in the same seat, back to the room, facing the window. It’s a cool guy’s seat. It says,

  I know you won’t throw things at the back of my head because you wouldn’t dare.

  Ditto making faces or rude hand gestures.

  I’m not worried about missing anything that might go on in the rest of the room.

  I don’t care if you notice what I’m wearing, or that my hair is perfect today.

  Nothing inside is more interesting that what’s outside, away from school.

  Except, of course, Amanda Alstead, but she always sits half next to Alex and half on him, so he could see her just fine.

  Today, she was sitting sideways in her chair, as usual. She could see part of the room (the Table 1 part, actually); most of the room could see her outfit (all shades of white, very cute, I wouldn’t dare), her cameo profile, and the fact that she had her legs slung over Alex’s lap. What I could see of him was the perfect triangle of his back in a green Lacoste and the pale edge at his hairline, the divider between the last of his summer tan and his October haircut.

  “Hey, Alex.” I composed the words in my head. “I have your book . . .”

  D’oh. I would be standing there, holding his book.

  “Alex. Thought you might want to have this back.”

  Nope. Sounded like I’d taken it, which would be bizarre, or that he’d given it to me, which would be ludicrous.

  “Hey. This was on the floor in the upstairs hall, and I figured you probably didn’t know where it was.”

  Truth is always good.

  He would look blank for a sec (he probably had no idea he’d dropped it; European history was first period), then smile gratefully, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, that mouth turning up in that unbelievably cute way.

  “Wow. Thanks, Ella! I didn’t even know I’d dropped it.”

  See?

  And I would hand it over—if our fingers brushed, no complaints—and say, “I saw the stuff inside. It’s really . . .”

  “El. Ella.” Sadie bumped me with her button again. “Coming?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Where were you? Oh, yeah . . .” She followed my slightly unfocused gaze and nodded. On her other side, Frankie snorted. She elbowed him. No button on the other sleeve. “Wanna practice before class? I mean, I know you don’t have to; it’s imprinted on your brain. But there’s that line at the end I just can’t get right. El?”

  As I watched, Amanda swung her legs off of Alex and stood up. My legs felt a little rubbery as I did the same. “See you in class,” I said quickly, leaving Sadie to remember that, in “Mending Wall,” the line is: We keep the wall between us as we go. It’s my favorite Frost poem. No pony rhythm, no rhyme. About walls.

  I wove my way between the tables, pulling my hair forward over my shoulders as I went. Alex was still sitting when I reached him.

  “Hey. This was on the floor in the upstairs hall . . .”

  I stood behind his chair. Completely frozen.

  I might have stood there for a very long time if he hadn’t pushed himself away from the table to get up. The chair thumped me in the stomach first, then in the knees. I think I made a noise. I dropped
his book.

  “Oh. Oh, crap. I’m really sorry!” Alex jerked the chair out of the way and bent down a little. He had to, to see my face. “You okay?”

  I did manage to nod.

  “Seriously. I must have really pounded you there. You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, fine,” I whispered.

  Across the table, Chase Vere laughed. “Dude, she was, like, standing right behind you.”

  Alex ignored him. He stared at me for a long second, then bent down to pick up my book. Only, of course . . .

  “This is my book.”

  I nodded again. “Um, yeah. I found it. Upstairs—”

  “Oh, right. I was running to trig. It must’ve fallen out of my bag. Thanks.” He was already turning away, already forgetting the moment. “It’s Freddy, right?”

  It kinda felt like the chair, again, in my stomach. Usually the name doesn’t bother me. When I’m prepared for it, anyway. But this time, I wasn’t. I let more of my hair fall forward. “Um, no,” I said softly. “Ella. It’s Ella.”

  He faced me again, looked confused for a second. Then he shrugged. “Huh. Okay. Ella. Well, thanks.”

  I heard the muffled giggle. Or maybe it wasn’t muffled, just quick and quiet. I didn’t want to turn around. I would much rather have crawled under the table, only I’m not quite that pitiful.

  I turned.

  Amanda hadn’t really left. She’d gone to get a bottle of water. Another Willing perk: all the Poland Spring we can drink, and handy recycling bins to keep it Green. She was standing three feet away, flanked by her inner posse, Hannah and Anna. The Hannandas, we call them. Not that they look alike. Amanda is what guys picture when they hear the words Swedish Massage. Anna is dark, like me. Hannah has the gold-brown hair and awshucks look of a Kansas farm girl. But they are alike. Perfect features, the right shoes, luminescent lip gloss, and the instincts of barracudas.

  Amanda bared her teeth. It wasn’t really a smile. “Let’s go,” she said to Alex.

  He went.

  I could have counted. On three. One . . . two . . . The whisper came, followed by the whinny. I’m not noble enough to call it a laugh. Not from the Hannandas. Skirts and ponytails twitching behind them as they went. Bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum.

  “. . . Freddy . . . Don’t you remember . . . tries to hide it . . .”

  I followed, at a distance, as we all left the room. We keep the walls between us as we go.

  3

  THE DECLAMATION

  “. . . I shall be telling this with a sigh

  Somewhere ages and ages hence:

  Two roads diverged in a wood and I—

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference.”

  “Thank you, Hannah. That was very nice. Now . . . ah . . . Fiorella Marino. All the way up front, please, Fiorella. Okay. Whenever you’re ready . . . ?”

  “Ella.”

  “Sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

  “It’s just Ella, Mr. Stone.”

  “Oh, is that something new and hip that you’re trying out?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that, either. Quiet, people, please. Miss Marino is speaking.”

  “It’s always been Ella, Mr. Stone. Since before I came here.”

  “Oh. Ha. Well. Okay, then. Carry on. Ella. Everyone else, quiet. Now!”

  “‘Mending Wall,’ by Robert Frost.

  ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

  That sends . . . um . . . that sends . . .

  . . .’”

  “That’s okay. Ella. You can try again next week. Have a seat. Now. let’s see. Who wants to have a go? Amanda Alstead. Good, great. Carry on, Amanda . . .”

  4

  THE SCAR

  To his credit, Alex obviously didn’t remember why people call me Freddy.

  It’s after Freddy Krueger.

  I’m not scary. I’m nothing like a nightmare movie monster. Objectively, I know I’m not even ugly. It’s the scar.

  Most of the time, you can’t see it. If I wear sleeves, even short ones, and my neckline isn’t too low, all you can see is the section on my neck. Turtlenecks hide it almost completely, but Philadelphia is too warm for turtlenecks half the year. So I wear my hair down all the time, and try to keep it in front of my shoulders.

  It’s what’s known as a hypertrophic, hyperpigmented scar. Meaning it’s raised and it’s darker than my natural skin. In my case, it’s red and looks a little like a web, over all of my right shoulder, about four inches down my right breast, and about five inches up my neck. It was a hot-water burn. I was seven. Ironically, maybe, it didn’t happen in the kitchen at Marino’s, or in our—the Marinos’—kitchen, where there’s often a big pot of soup or pasta water boiling on the stove. Nope. This was the doing of an electric tea urn in the church basement. Sacred Heart does bingo every other Friday. Bingo players drink a lot of tea and coffee. Mrs. Agnelli bumped the folding table, which folded. The urn tipped over. Dad tried to pull me out of the way, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. He got burned, too, over his hand and wrist, but it was only first degree. “Nuthin’,” he says sadly whenever he talks about it. “Nuthin’ I don’t get every week at the stove.”

  It was bad—the ambulance and the hospital and all the stuff that followed. It was scary. So was the screaming. Sometimes Mom at Dad (Why hadn’t he moved faster, for Chrissakes?), sometimes Dad at the insurance company (What did they mean it doesn’t merit extensive cosmetic treatment—isn’t covered, for Chrissakes?), sometimes me (It hurt.).

  In the end, it stopped hurting, although it’s still sensitive to the touch. Nonna stopped praying about it, and Mom and Dad stopped yelling about it. There was no extensive cosmetic treatment. Extensive means expensive, and it’s ten thousand dollars no one has. I think Dad had a meeting with some of the more important Sacred Heart people. He never talked about it after. All these years later, I can imagine why he went and what was said. “We understand that your daughter’s injury would be upsetting to you, Ronnie.” They would have called him Ronnie, not Mr. Marino. “But as neither the urn nor the table belonged to the church . . . Lawsuit? Well, you are aware we have seventeen attorneys on retainer . . .”

  Father Sanchez and Mrs. Agnelli came a lot, always with cookies. Mrs. Agnelli offered to sell her 1986 Cadillac and give us the money. Father Sanchez is still trying to find someone to do laser treatment for free. I think that’s why Dad still goes to Mass. But only on the holidays. I don’t go very often, either, but that has more to do with things the Church doesn’t want me to do than with the scalding. Nonna still goes every day. And my sister, Sienna, is having her wedding there in December.

  Life goes on. Even for a timid kid who got more timid after she got burned. In another story, the plucky heroine would have filled her wardrobe with halter tops and organized loose change collections for the Children’s Hospital burn ward. But this was me. I put T-shirts on over my swimsuit when we went to the Shore. I stopped wearing sundresses. I tried to be charitable about the Freddy Krueger stuff. After all, the scar was pretty horrendous and huge then. I’ve grown; it hasn’t. I thought Freddy would be left behind when I got my Willing scholarship and got out of Sacred Heart.

  Of course it wasn’t.

  I have my theories about how the name followed me. The nicest one is that Philly, for all its big-bad-city rep, is really not all that large. For those of us who live pretty much in the middle of it, it’s a village.

  Since freshman year, when everyone at Willing had to try it out, I don’t hear it as much. I don’t expect it. And I really, really don’t like surprises. Which made going home at the end of the unexpectedly catastrophic day okay. There are exactly no surprises to be found there.

  I stopped at the restaurant first. Marino’s takes up the first two floors of the building; there are three apartments above that. My dad and uncle Ricky grew up in one. When they got married, they each moved into
one of the other two. My grandmother stayed, even after Poppa died and the crazy old lady next door died, and Mom made sure to get the listing so she and Dad could buy the house. Nonna finally moved in with us four years ago. My brother, Leo, moved into her place. Ricky and his wife moved down the block, and my sister took their apartment. Uncle Ricky stays in the closet-size attic studio when Tina kicks him out of their house.

  My family doesn’t believe in long-distance anything. Or quiet, either.

  The noise hit me before I even had the back door into the kitchen all the way open.

  “So I’m sitting there at my own table, trying to have a quiet bowl of cornflakes,” Uncle Ricky was yelling to no one in particular over the chugging of the industrial dishwasher, “and she’s tearing into me about my friggin’ socks . . .”

  “. . . six cases of the plum tomatoes, and two pounds of dried oregano . . .” my dad shouted into the phone. He and Ricky look a lot alike—short, solid, with serious Roman noses—but Ricky still has all his hair. Stress, Dad says. “. . . okay, okay, throw one of those in, too, but make sure it’s good . . .”

  Leo shoved through the serving doors, glowering in a way his last girlfriend told him makes him look like Johnny Depp. “Mr. Donato wants more pepperoncini in his antipasto.” Leo hates waiting tables, especially when Sienna is hosting. He is planning on running Marino’s when Dad retires. She has been planning her wedding for a year and isn’t above showing bouquets and garter samples to the customers to get their opinion. “And there’s some pickled asshole from Society Hill saying the mozzarell’s off.”

  “Taci, Leonardo! Watch your mouth!” Nonna swatted at him with a wooden spoon. She was standing on a milk crate in front of the big stove, like she does whenever she makes sauce. Leo grinned and dodged just enough so the spoon grazed him instead of smacking into his bicep. If she’d missed completely, Nonna would have climbed off the crate to try again, and lively as she is, she really shouldn’t be hopping on and off boxes. “Take Salvatore his pepperoncini and the other gentleman an insalata mista on the house.” She swatted again at his departing butt and got back to stirring.