The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  “I hope it hurts,” Alex muttered, even as he was moving, shoving Chase quickly and efficiently toward the garden door. “Not here, you dipshit.” They disappeared into the shadows. A moment later, the unmistakable sounds of retching filtered through the music.

  I started to creep away. I didn’t get the chance. Amanda stalked toward me, eyes narrowed, effectively pinning me to the wall. Anna and Hannah lockstepped behind her. I thought of jackals, watching the kill. Amanda stopped a few inches from me. She was just tall enough to loom.

  “Look, Freddy Krueger, if I thought there was a chance in a gazillion that Alex would even feature you in a nightmare, I might not be saying this so nicely. But I feel sorry for you, so I’m going to give you a tip.” The p was sharp, harsh. She leaned in, close enough that I could see the pale, shimmery lipstick caked in the corners of her mouth. “This thing you have for him just makes you look like the world’s most pitiful loser. Did you really think you had even the smallest chance with him? Did you?”

  I didn’t answer. Maybe a no would have satisfied her. Maybe not.

  “You are a skank and a freak,” she snapped, the hard sounds making me flinch. “You don’t belong here. Go back to your greaseball ’hood. The sight of you makes me sick!”

  Any girl who has ever been face-to-face with another angry girl, especially one with infinitely more spite and social standing, knows to run. It’s innate, from bunnies to baboons. Don’t mess with the alpha female. She’ll tear your throat out. So I ran, but not before I got a glimpse of Anna’s face.

  In the second before she turned away, she looked like someone had slapped her. Funny, seeing that didn’t make me feel any better.

  I hit the dance floor just as the song tempo changed. Around me, couples faltered, clearly caught in that slow/fast dilemma. I found Frankie and Connor easily. They were a solid white column in the middle of the floor, wrapped around each other and barely moving. I tapped Frankie on the shoulder.

  “I’m going,” I told him.

  “What? Why?”

  But I was already walking away. “Make sure Sadie gets home,” I called over my shoulder.

  He caught up with me quickly. “Hey. What happened?” he demanded, fingers finding mine and pulling me to a stop.

  “Nothing.” When he narrowed his eyes at me, I sighed. “Hannandas. Nothing major. I just want to go.”

  “We’ll go, too,” he declared. “We’ll walk you home then come back for Sadie.” He jerked his chin toward the sidelines. She was sitting with Walt and his friends. They were laughing. “You cannot walk home alone.”

  I snorted. “It’s Halloween in South Philly. The streets are full of little ghouls and their parents.” I remembered being maybe eight, in a nylon fairy costume, walking next to Annamaria Lombardi in her equally flammable princess dress, our mothers following ten feet behind, chatting like they’d known each other all their lives, because they had. “If I get attacked, it will be by a pack of small goblins looking for a candy fix.”

  For a second, I thought Frankie was going to argue. Then he shrugged. “Fine. Call me when you get home.”

  I went before he could change his mind. Behind me, I thought I heard someone call my name. I didn’t stop. Once on the street, I gathered up my skirts and ran, barely pausing at intersections to look for cars. Even at this hour, there were trick-or-treaters still out. I dodged a few ghosts, sidestepped chattering moms, and was home in a matter of minutes. The house was dark, the porch light off. I figured Nonna had left her post to go over to the restaurant. It was a Saturday; they would need her in the kitchen.

  I didn’t turn on any lights in the house. My bedroom window is visible from both the kitchen and the restaurant office. I figured my parents were there, and I didn’t want them to know I was home already. Their disappointment would be tangible.

  I kicked off my shoes and reached for the tie at my waist. But I didn’t undo the knot. Instead, I sat down at my desk, still fully dressed. My cell phone was there. I had a message.

  It was Sadie, yelling against the music. “Where did you go? I looked . . . thought I saw . . .” Whatever she said next was lost.” . . . want me to leave, it’s fine. Jared wants . . . outside. Call me!”

  I didn’t. I didn’t call Frankie, either. I texted him. I didn’t think he would complain about the charge. Got home OK, I typed. Tell Sadie. XO.

  XOOXOOXOOX, he sent back.

  I turned off my phone. Above me, Edward was staring out of his card, expression unreadable in the dark.

  “An excellent young man, your Frankie,” he said.

  “Yup. He is.” Exhausted suddenly, I folded my arms on the desk and dropped my head onto them.

  “Oh, Ella. I wish you’d had a better time at the ball.”

  “Fuhgeddaboudit,” I muttered. Greaseball. Freddy. Freak. “It’s not like she and I were ever going to be BFFs.”

  “I wasn’t just referring to Amanda.”

  Of course he wasn’t.

  “I’ll try,” I moaned into the crook of my elbow. “‘Oh, Lord, I’ll try to carry on.’”

  “That sounds rather dramatic, even for you.”

  “It’s Styx,” I told him. “After your time, before mine. I don’t know all the words, but those work for the moment. And for the record, I’m being ironic, not dramatic.”

  “If you say so.”

  I ignored him. “I have had my last flutter over Alex Bainbridge. I mean it. Frankie was right. How many signs do I need that we are never, ever going to have . . . anything . . . before I get it? Obviously, it doesn’t matter that we relate to the same schizo seventies songs. Or that we can discuss antique Japanese woodblock prints. Or that when he sits next to me, he kinda takes my breath away. You would think that would count for a lot, wouldn’t you?”

  Edward gets the concept of rhetorical questions, so I went on. “I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess about what makes Amanda’s pulse go all skittery, but I would bet anything it’s not Alex. And he’s still with her. He doesn’t belong with her, but apparently he feels he belongs to her. Explain that, please.”

  “Oh, Ella. We men are not always the best at looking beyond the . . . er . . .”

  “Boobs, Edward. You can say it. Amanda Alstead is all boobs and blonde hair. Beyond that, I can’t see a single thing that’s special about her.”

  “Because there isn’t a single thing. Beyond the . . . er, obvious. You, on the other hand, are a creature of infinite charms. Shall I list them alphabetically or from the top down?”

  I scowled up at him. “Y’know, you are beginning to sound a little too much like Frankie and Sadie, my deluded Greek chorus.”

  “Yes, well, I rather thought that’s what friends were for.”

  “You’re not supposed to be my friend,” I muttered. “You’re supposed to be my Prince Charming.”

  “Ahem.” Edward’s sculpted lips compressed into a grim line. “Have you looked at me lately? I am supposed to be startling and even a bit scary.”

  “Nope. Neither.” I rested my chin on my forearm. “To me, you are perfect. You are loyal and reliable and completely lacking in surprises.”

  “That is a good thing?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “It’s an excellent thing. I don’t want any more surprises, ever.”

  “Hardly an admirable goal, that.”

  “Maybe not,” I agreed, “but pleasant. Among all the other bizarreness tonight, I found something new to be afraid of. Evil girlfriends.”

  “Now, Ella. You can’t go on being afraid forever.”

  “Oh, yes, I can. As far as Amanda Alstead is concerned, I can.”

  Edward tilted his head and studied me for a moment. He looked annoyed. “Why do you insist on having these conversations with me when you ignore everything I have to say?”

  It was a pretty good question. “Fine.” I sat up straight and folded my hands in my lap. Home Truth time. “Go ahead. On this night when we celebrate the mysteries of life and death . . . Say somethin
g profound, something startling.”

  There was a long silence. Then, “Boo,” Edward said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Willing.”

  “Don’t mention it, Miss Marino. I am yours to command.”

  21

  THE WOMAN

  I decided the Monday after Halloween would be a very good day to cut classes. Not all of them. That would have provoked a call home, and I just didn’t feel like explaining to my parents why I preferred not to go to Mr. Stone’s English class with Chase and the Hannandas ever again. So I went to history, where I paid a little attention, French, where I paid none, and then to art.

  I convinced Ms. Evers that I (a) would benefit from outside time, and (b) should be excused from all further classes because I was running out of time at the archive and I needed to be there ASAP. I have no idea if she believed me. She wrote me a note anyway.

  So, long before the lunch bell rang and any possible encounter with Alex or Amanda, I was on my way to the Sheridan-Brown. I could have gone shopping; I could have gone home. I could have gone anywhere. But without Sadie or Frankie, it was all similarly uninspiring. Besides, we’d spent all of Sunday together, drinking too much coffee at Java Company and eating contraband Cinnabons in Sadie’s room.

  My sudden departure from the dance had taken surprisingly little explaining. A bent-truth tale of an Alex encounter in the hall, a brief recap of Scary Amanda’s psycho-bitch moment, and the suggestion that Chase Vere is subhuman, and they left me alone. Probably they wouldn’t have, ordinarily, but they took me at my I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it. Possibly because there were other matters to discuss. Frankie needed to analyze the end of his date. (“If he only kissed me once, does that mean he’s seeing someone else?” “Is ‘dinner with Grandma’ code for something?” “Do you think his teeth are too shiny?”) Sadie thought she might kinda, possibly, but no, really probably not have had a very nice time with Jared-the-Walt, and wouldn’t mind it if he called but couldn’t possibly, absolutely not, no way could she call him. All of which effectively kept the attention off me.

  I was still suffering very slightly from that fourth Cinnabon as I took the elevator up to the archive floor. I could have gone home to a bottle of ginger ale and an afternoon of TV talk shows. Inevitably, at least one would have been about Girls Who Love Dead Guys or Live Guys Whose Girlfriends Would Like Them to Be Dead. There always is. But for all my faults, I’m not lazy. My term project on Edward was barely a blot on paper, and December was coming faster than it should. I wanted to have a really complete outline done before winter break. So far I had half a title: Ravaged Man: Edward Willing (something something Diana something). I figured I had plenty of time to work on that part.

  I heard the music when I was still only halfway down the third-floor corridor. It was faint, but not so faint that I couldn’t make out a wild drumbeat and a series of screams. Some, I thought, were guitars, the others human. I tried to walk quietly in order to hear. I didn’t think I was getting the lyrics quite right.

  “Under armadillo, we are green . . . Under armadillo, we scream.”

  Words aside, it wasn’t bad. I could imagine Cat Vernon and her friends dancing to it in a club. A little Red Bull, an earnest but mediocre opening band, and this could even seem pretty good. It got louder the farther down the hall I went. I kept following, not quite believing the evidence, but knowing there wasn’t really an alternative.

  Maxine’s office door was open partway. Through it, I could hear the music (“Kick me in a hairy pot”) and see her sitting behind her desk. Today she was wearing a pair of thick-framed black glasses with dramatically sharp corners. I stood in the doorway, uncertain whether to knock. I waited. I was too curious about the lyrics.

  “. . . under armadillo, feed me the rubber boots. Whenever you kick me, I know we’re green roots . . .”

  I gave up and knocked on the doorframe. She gave a visible start, then slapped at a button on her keyboard. The music cut off mid-armadillo. “Oh,” she said on seeing me. “Ella.”

  “Hi,” I offered, then waited, face turned slightly toward her computer.

  It didn’t take long. “My son’s band,” Maxine said stiffly. “They’re called Genghis Khan’s Marmot.”

  Oh. I’d actually heard of them, which said something. “I’ve heard of them,” I told her. “And I’m pretty clueless when it comes to local music. The people in the know at Willing think they’re great.”

  “Really?” For an instant, her face lit with pleasure and, I thought, pride. “They’ve had some interest from a couple of indie labels. Of course, it’s a rough business, the recording industry.”

  I figured anything Maxine Rothaus called rough was, in fact, vicious and lawless and inclined to eat its own young. “They’ll get a deal,” I said. “It’s just the sort of stuff my generation wants to listen to.”

  Like I knew anything about that. But it seemed just the sort of assurance her generation would swallow.

  She hit another button with a flourish. “Give me your e-mail address. I’ll send you their demo file.”

  I did. She even hummed a little as she typed. When she was done, she folded her hands on her desk and looked at me almost pleasantly over her glasses. “So, what do you hope to find today, and is there any way I can help in the next three minutes? I have a conference call with Berlin. They have an original Man Ray photograph they might consider selling us.”

  I thought of spiky irons and disembodied eyes. “Doesn’t seem like your . . .”

  “Bailiwick? Territory? Thing?”

  Actually, it seemed exactly her thing. “I was going to say niche.”

  She shrugged. “Man Ray was from Philadelphia. Plus, I speak more German than the Dada curator. So . . . your plans?”

  I didn’t really have any. I didn’t think I should mention that. I figured Maxine probably had bathroom trips preplanned and efficiently choreographed. “I’ll go through the files one more time in case there’s something I missed. Unless there’s more . . .” I said hopefully.

  She smiled slightly, but shook her head. “Even if I had the time and desire to take you downstairs, nothing I could show you would be of much use. His niece put most of what we have into that ghastly book of hers, and trust me when I tell you that there’s a reason the rest never was published. Deadly dull.” She almost sounded apologetic when she said, “I can’t let you handle the Cézanne letters. Besides, they’re in French, which you’ve told me you don’t speak. Most of the Wharton letters are in French, too, although I wouldn’t show you those even if I could.”

  “Too racy?” I asked.

  She snorted. “Too asinine. For being such a brilliant woman in all other respects, apparently, she was completely flummoxed by sex. When she wrote about it, it was either all buttoned up or completely, pardon the expression, screwy. Between you and me, the letters to Willing are just sloppy and boring. The spicy bits read like old Cosmopolitans now. The rest is just simpering and scolding him for not writing in kind.”

  “Of course he didn’t. He loved Diana.”

  Maxine swept a shred of paper from her desk with a quick backhand. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She huffed out a breath. “The heart of the teenager.” She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a single key attached to a ruler-size wooden strip with a jump ring. She slid it across the desk to me.

  Hand-printed along the wood was “I SHALL WRING HIS NECK LIKE A GOOSE. —Tomb Curse, Egyptian 6th Dynasty.”

  “Bring that back when you’re ready to leave.” I thought I might have seen a ghost of a smile as she added, “Don’t lose it!” Then she turned back to her computer screen, as clear a dismissal as could be.

  I didn’t pull her door shut all the way behind me. I stood in the hall for a minute, waiting. The music didn’t come back on.

  I let myself into the archive room and carefully balanced the key over the door handle. Then I weighed my options. I’d pretty much expended the file cabinets. Not that I didn’t enjoy the tailors’ bills,
but they wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

  An hour later, proven absolutely right, I slid the last drawer closed, sat on the dusty floor, and had a good, sorry-for-myself “what now?” moment. My eyes fell on the bookshelves. I wasn’t optimistic, but I had time on my hands and nowhere else I especially wanted to be.

  I decided to be bold, splash out, cross a line. I would start from the bottom right this time. Most of the books there, I discovered quickly, were just like the ones on the upper left: old, obscure, and uninspiring. Heat and Light: An Elementary Textbook, Theoretical and Practical. Goethe’s Theory of Colours. Instructive Rambles Extended in London and the Adjacent Villages, Designed to Amuse the Mind and Improve the Understanding of Youth.

  Occasionally, I am convinced that the amount of my brain over which I have control could fit into a pistachio shell. Taking its cue from no message I was sending, it led my eyes right to the faded, green leather spine of The Flora of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands by Heinrich-Franz-frigging-Alexander. Then to Love, from the French, followed by The Romances of Alexandre Dumas.

  Okay, so I was feeling grouchy and a little sad, but I figured I could at least take a gentle flip through that one. Who doesn’t like a good musketeer or three? The book was sandwiched firmly between Analytic Keys to the Genera and Species of North American Mosses, and the Complete English–Russian Dictionary by A. Alexandrow, which had me actually speculating on just what terrible crimes I might have committed against love and peace in a former life to have earned myself this one.

  I reached for the Dumas. As I started to pull it out, my watch caught on the frayed binding of the Alexandrow dictionary. Before I could catch it, it had tipped from the shelf, landing at my feet with a crash that sounded like it could have been made by a cannonball. My heart gave a lurch; the spine had cracked. I had broken one of Edward’s books. I started to bend, then froze, certain I’d heard the clack of heels in the hallway. He would forgive me; Maxine, I was sure, wouldn’t. But it was only the nymph clock, sounding abnormally loud in the still air.