The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  Aren’t we all?

  “It’ll happen,” Sadie announced, mind reader and eternal optimist that she is.

  The words were barely out of her mouth, my pithy retort just forming, when Frankie slid back into his seat, a good ten minutes too soon. He looked crushed.

  “Oh, sweetie.” Sadie scooted over and put an arm around him. “Clearly, he’s a taco short of a combo platter.”

  “Elvis has left the building” was my contribution.

  “A few fries short of a Happy Meal.” Sadie is very fond of food analogies. Who can blame her?

  Frankie focused. A little. “What?” he asked vaguely.

  “To say no to you.” Sadie smoothed a shiny comma of hair from his forehead. “He’s obviously insane.”

  “He didn’t say no to me. We barely got past introductions before I had to leave.”

  “Why?” Sadie and I demanded in unison. “He looks like a Norse godling!” I added.

  “I know. I know. Ragnor-Knut-Thor! . . . Only, his name is Biff,” he moaned. “I can’t go out with someone named Biff!”

  I patted his back. Onstage, one of the college boys was just launching into “U Can’t Touch This.”

  6

  THE DOOR

  Once upon a time, before Willing was a school, it was a house. Not the Willings’ house; they always lived in Society Hill, until the various and sundry branches moved out to the Main Line and vast acreage. The house-that-became-a-school was built by a South Philly man named Vittore Palladinetti, who made a fortune building railroads. Literally building them. He started as a laborer and ended up owning a big chunk of the Reading Railroad (Monopoly, anyone?). He bought the equivalent of an entire city block and built his four-story, sixty-two-room mansion, complete with an acre of Italian gardens, an aviary for his daughter, and a hundred-seat theater for his opera-loving wife.

  Just over a year after moving in, Vittore caught the flu—most likely from one of his daughter’s beloved birds—and died. His wife and daughter moved, married, changed last names, and so, while I might have been a student at the Palladinetti School, which would have been coolly ironic as my mom is descended from Vittore’s far-less-successful younger brother, Beppo, it wasn’t to be. Edith Willing swept in, disinfected, and this Wednesday morning in October, I was sitting on the floor outside what had once been Daughter Palladinetti’s bedroom and was now the Regina Pugh Willing Romance Language Room, sketching the door. It’s copied from a bronze abbey door in Rome, filled with angels and demons that look like they are having a hell of a party.

  Downstairs, the period bell rang. It’s actually an antique gong that lives in the back hall. The school secretary has to leave her office once an hour to whack it with a really big, padded stick. She puts on construction earmuffs to do it. It’s loud. A couple of times a year, humor-impaired students make it disappear until it becomes clear that no one really cares. They always bring it back. Until then, Mrs. Maus cheerfully uses an electronic signal horn. I think she likes watching people in the vicinity jump.

  I didn’t bother moving when the gong went. I had double AP studio—meaning I get to draw, for credit, for two periods in a row. Ms. Evers pretty much lets me do my own thing on the days when she doesn’t think I’ll benefit from whatever the rest of the class is doing. Every so often, she tries to get me to draw people. “We know you can do doors, Ella. Why not try faces? Fascinating stuff behind them, too. I bet anyone you ask will be happy to sit for you . . .”

  I think she’s matchmaking, or at least trying to help me expand my social horizons. She’s a former debutante from North Carolina who looks like Jessica Simpson. I would hate her, except she’s an incredible painter and really decent human being. So I nod and smile and go off to find an interesting window to draw.

  I figured angels have faces, even if these were almost too small to draw, so I was half honoring her suggestion. I was just starting on a wing when the door banged open, spewing a mixed crowd of juniors and seniors into the hall. Some were still speaking French. More were instantly on their iPhones, communicating with BFFs downstairs or down the hall. We’re not supposed to have electronic stuff out during the school day. Yeah, right. I would say with confidence that 250 of Willing’s 311 students can text without looking.

  I made myself as small as possible, tucking my legs in and pressing back against the wall. I still got bumped and stepped on a few times by oblivious texters. One stopped for a second. “Oh, hey, sorry. Didn’t see you,” she offered. The rest just kept going.

  My lowly French 2A class meets in the basement. I tried to take Italian, unsuccessfully, as a freshman. “This seems rather . . . er . . . well, not quite . . . right,” Mr. Donaldson, my freshman adviser had said carefully when he saw my course request list. “The goal is to learn a new language. Is it not?”

  Well, maybe, but they weren’t stopping all the Phillites who’d been summering in Provence since infancy from taking French. And my Italian is pretty nonexistent. According to my dad, that’s the way it is with the grandchildren of Italian immigrants. He and his siblings all understand Italian from hearing it being spoken around them, but none of them speak it. Sienna speaks Gucci; Leo has a pretty decent arsenal of Sicilian insults. I arrived at Willing knowing a lot of food names and a couple of curse words. But Mr. Donaldson nixed the Italian request. I guess he just assumed I was already fluent. I assume because my name is Marino. They called Frankie into the office once freshman year to ask him to inform a table-linen deliveryman that there were holes in several of the tablecloths.

  “He was Vietnamese,” Frankie grumbled on returning. “I don’t even speak enough Korean to have a conversation about table linens. I told them to call me if they ever needed someone to translate Sanskrit. That oughtta make their heads spin a little.”

  Of course Frankie doesn’t speak Sanskrit, either. He takes Spanish. His last name is Hobbes. Must be the eyes they were going on.

  The last of the French 5 class filtered down the hall. “Hey, I got one for you,” a skinny Bee Boy in a kilt and Timberlands announced. “How did the slumlord end his suicide note?”

  “How?” someone dutifully asked.

  “J’ai le cafard!”

  There were as many groans as laughs. A girl already in her soccer kit bumped the jokester with her shoulder. He bounced off the wainscoting.

  As they turned the corner at the end of the hall, I half levered myself off the floor. I needed to close the door so I could start sketching again. Suddenly, Alex Bainbridge was there, framed by cavorting angels. I froze.

  He didn’t even look at where I was crouching. “Merci, Madame Grey,” he called over his shoulder. “Salut.”

  “Ahem. Monsieur Bainbridge. Salut . . . ?”

  Alex rolled his eyes, knowing Mrs. Grey couldn’t see him as the doors, weighted for fire code, started to swing shut behind him. “Pardonnez-moi, madame. Au revoir.”

  “Très bien. Au revoir. Dude.”

  Alex grinned and slung his backpack over his shoulder. It gaped open. No wonder he loses books. He turned toward me then, and I suddenly felt like a spotlight had flashed on. I swallowed. And waved a little. He blinked.

  “Jeez . . . uh . . .” I could see the wheels turning. It had, after all, been almost a week. “Ella. I didn’t see you. I mean, I did, I guess, but I thought you were . . .” He gestured vaguely down the hall. There are busts and standing statues all over the place at Willing.

  The Willings, of course, were patrons of the arts. Some of the sculptures are really beautiful: gods and goddesses and the occasional family member. Others are pretty creepy. There’s a bumpy Vulcan in the dim hallway outside the biology lab that makes people move a little faster. I wondered for a sec what sort of statue Alex thought I was.

  “You going in?” he asked just before the silence got deafening. He reached back for one of the doorknobs. Willing boys are supposed to be that polite. Most of them aren’t.

  “Oh, no,” I managed finally. “I’m . . . um . . . sit
ting . . .” I pointed to the floor under my butt, like a complete idiot, and slowly sat back down. “Well, drawing. The door.” I dipped my right shoulder quickly and lowered my chin, my long-perfected move to make sure my hair is covering me and my eyes are down. Alex was wearing retro-looking suede Adidas. One of them was coming untied.

  “Drawing the door. Right. Do you draw a lot of doors?”

  Truth: Yeah.

  “Um . . . well, yeah. Doors, windows. Railings.” I heard myself, but too late, of course. Ella Marino. Freak. She draws windows.

  I looked up, and waited for him to walk off. Or roll his eyes, or whatever. He narrowed them. Then turned around to look at the door. He touched a dancing demon. “Wow. Cool. I can’t believe I never noticed that before. Is it the same on the inside?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m in Basement French. Shoulda known better. Italian girl.”

  “Yeah? Sonno davvero allergico ai palle!” He turned back and smiled at me, clearly delighted with himself. There are so many parts of Alex Bainbridge to stare at. But that mouth, the way it actually curves up at the corners . . .

  It almost killed me to tell him, “Sorry. I have no idea what you just said.”

  “Yeah? Crap. It’s all I remember from our trip to Tuscany a few years ago. My mother made me say it, like, a thousand times until I had it down. It means, ‘I’m majorly allergic to nuts.’”

  “Oh. Are you?”

  “I am. Not go-into-anaphylactic-shock-and-die allergic, but I get pretty sick. So is it my accent? I mean, that you couldn’t understand.”

  “Actually, it was everything other than sonno,” I admitted. “And allergico, but that one just because it sounds like it does English.”

  “Wait. I thought you said you were Italian.”

  And here we go. “One grandmother came over. Everyone else is old-school South Philly. We speak menu Italian.” Which gave me a pretty good idea that whatever Alex was telling people he was allergic to, it wasn’t what he thought it was.

  I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t another killer smile. “I hear that. My mother’s from Ukraine. I can name thirteen types of vodka, but not much else.”

  “No words for homicidal almonds?” Who is this girl? I almost asked aloud. Chatting with Alex Bainbridge like it was no big deal. I had a feeling I wouldn’t recognize her in a mirror.

  “Not a one. The only time I was there, we ate meat and potatoes. All the time. But, man, the food in Italy . . . Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Never been.”

  “But . . .” He seemed to think better of whatever he was going to say. “You will.”

  “I will.” And I did yet another thing so completely unlike me that it made me a little dizzy. I shared something only maybe three people know about me. “It’s the very top of my Things to Do Before I Die list: Go to Florence. For the art.”

  “Cool. And what else?”

  “In Florence? Well, I guess I would like to see—”

  “No. On your list. What else is on it?”

  It’s a long and occasionally lofty list, but of course all that sprang to mind was the unmentionable: boring Cut my hair short once and humiliating Lose my virginity.

  “Oh . . . uh . . . Paris,” I managed, which is somewhere in the top twenty. “I’d like to go to Paris.”

  “For the art.” His mouth curved.

  Well, no. For the lights and cafés and boys with floppy dark hair and sultry accents, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. So I just nodded. Then, because it seemed like something I could do right then, I asked, “What does ‘J’ai le cafard’ mean?”

  Alex stared down at me. “Really?”

  “Basement French,” I reminded him. I didn’t mention that I was, at best, scraping by at Basement French, and only that because Sadie, of French 3 excellence, insisted on checking my homework. “So?”

  “It means you have la tristesse.” When he didn’t get so much as a glimmer from me, he repeated, “Really?” Only it wasn’t mean, just kinda teasing. “Melancholy. The blues.”

  “Ah.” I wondered if Bee Boys were generally humor-impaired, or just ones in kilts and lug soles. “Okay.”

  “Of course it literally means you have a cockroach.”

  “Ah,” I said again. “Okay.”

  Alex braced one arm above my head and leaned forward, tenting me between his legs and the wall. There was a small, L-shaped tear in the left knee of his jeans. Through it, I could just see a patch of shadowed skin. He smelled like fabric softener and fresh grass.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “Do I . . . ?”

  “Avoir le cafard.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Non.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “That’s good.”

  If all rational thought had not fled my brain, I would have figured out that he was having a look at my drawing. I would probably have covered it. As it was, I simply swallowed as he leaned down farther and pointed to one of the demons I had sketched.

  “Especially that one. He looks like he’s going to jump that angel.” We both jumped as his backpack swung forward off his shoulder. He caught it just before it thumped me in the forehead. I saw the corner of a book wobble precariously in the open flap. “I should go,” he said, shoving away from the wall, away from me.

  “I saw yours.” It was out before I could think about it.

  “My what?” He sounded slightly alarmed, and I imagined what he was thinking. That I’d been peeping in the locker room or something.

  “Your drawings. The ones in your history book.”

  “What?”

  “They’re good,” I said. “No, amazing. Like Suzuki Harunobu. Or Utagawa Kuniyoshi, maybe. The mermaid, especially, with all the detail. But modern. With all the little pictures. I really, really liked the rocket . . .”

  All of a sudden he was looking at me like I was un cafard. I shut up, fast, but too late.

  “Those are private.”

  “Right.” It started, that quiet rushing sound in my ears. The one that would turn into a roar, the Niagara Falls of humiliation. Something there is that doesn’t love . . . doesn’t love . . . “I didn’t—”

  “What the hell? You went through my stuff?”

  It didn’t matter that I hadn’t, that the papers had fallen out of the book and that it would have been almost impossible not to see them. I can’t handle it when people go angry-flat like that, closing up like oysters or freezer doors. It makes me want to curl up and disappear.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Right. Whatever. I have to go.”

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m . . .

  It was the worst moment imaginable. Until it got even worse.

  “Hey, Romeo. I’ve been calling you for, like, five minutes. Did you lose your phone again?”

  Amanda Alstead was catwalking down the hall, hips and hair swinging. A half step behind her were, as always, Anna and Hannah. They all glided to a swishy stop next to Alex. I could tell the instant Amanda saw me. Her smile wavered for a nanosecond, then went sharp.

  “Oh. You. Did you fall down?” she asked, so sweet.

  “I’m sitting.”

  Someone, either Anna or Hannah, like it mattered, stifled a giggle.

  “Sitting. Okaaay.” Hannah, angelic in a fuzzy white sweater, looked down her button nose at me. “Things a little . . . challenging for you these days?”

  Alex’s feet were still so close that I could have bumped his toes with mine. He didn’t say anything. When I darted a glance up, I saw that he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring at the wall. He looked bored.

  Amanda tossed her hair back, displaying a column of perfect pale skin. “You know, if you need to talk about . . . problems, I’ve worked on the school crisis line since freshman year.”

  I could almost see the graphic bubble over her evil goddess head: Knowledge is power, and I know everything. I couldn’t think of a sin
gle person I would be less likely to confide in. With the Hannandas of the world, it was no wonder I talked to Edward.

  “It’s all completely confidential.” Another hair toss, more perfect skin.

  If I decide to use what I hear, the bubble read, believe me, I will, and I’ll still come out smelling like a rose.

  “I’m fine,” I managed, the two words coming painfully through my tight throat.

  “Because mistakes like drugs and alcohol,” she went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, “. . . whatever . . . can have even more damaging consequences than just loss of memory and motor functions. I mean, you can seriously screw up your whole life with a few bad choices.”

  Like talking to my boyfriend.

  I got it already.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated.

  “Whatever. I’m just trying to help.” She exchanged looks with her attendant duo. What did I expect, trying to be nice to a loser? “Come on. I hate this hallway. It’s like something out of a bad horror movie.”

  They went, Alex and the Hannandas.

  Anna hadn’t said a single word. That wasn’t surprising. Anna hadn’t talked to me in more than two years, since our first day at Willing. That wouldn’t be surprising to anyone at the school, either, unless they learned that Annamaria Flavia Lombardi and I had known each other since infancy and had, through our Sacred Heart middle-school years, even been pretty good friends, part of a group of a half-dozen girls who moved as a happy, woolly pack. Even when her dad’s building business started mushrooming and her mom arrived one day to pick her up from school in a huge, sparkling Escalade, we stayed friends. We took the Willing entrance tests together, joked about burning our Sacred Heart uniforms in the courtyard trash can.

  Then, the July before freshman year, Annamaria disappeared. It turned out she was in Loveladies, at the Jersey Shore, in her new five-bedroom beach-block house, two streets down from the Alsteads’ eight-bedroom beachfront house. In September, it was Anna Lombardi who arrived at Willing, tan and skinny, paying the full tuition, and dealing in gossip.