The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  “Personality?” I offered.

  “Yes!” she said, delighted. “Personality.” She reached behind her without looking. Her boyfriend immediately twined his fingers with hers. They left, unfolding the map again as they went, she chattering cheerfully. I think she was telling him he had personality. They might as well have had exhibit information plaques on their backs: “COUPLE.” CONTEMPORARY DUTCH. COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF LOVE, FOR THE VIEWING PLEASURE (OR NOT) OF ANYONE AND EVERYONE.

  Truth: When Alex and I got together—his house, my house, empty classrooms at school, there was never anyone else around.

  Truth: He was happy to be with me.

  Probability: He just didn’t want anyone else to know that.

  I wondered what he was doing the following night and why he hadn’t told me.

  Harrison Kinuye of the YouTube video and doorman was part of the Phillite circle. He was on the lacrosse team. He and Alex were buds. I wondered if Alex was going to the party. Taking me out of the equation, it would have almost been a certainty.

  I gathered up my things and moved on. The Impressionist galleries seemed to be full of tourist couples: young and hip and clearly from faraway places I might never see. There were only two people in my Duchamp room, a pair of older women in matching marled wool sweaters, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of Nude Descending a Staircase.

  “Let’s go to Paris,” one said dreamily.

  The other promptly whipped out a Droid and tapped away. “March.”

  “Perfect.”

  I could have told them that Duchamp had become an American, a New Yorker, but that would have just been envy talking. I wanted to pick up and run for Paris, too.

  I wandered upstairs to the reconstructed tea garden, where I was chased out of any possibility of Zen by a group of schoolkids, each paired with another so they wouldn’t get lost. Because that’s who’s in an art museum midday on a freezing Friday right before Christmas: woolly older women, bored schoolkids, and lovers on holiday. I gave up.

  So it wasn’t even quite three when I bundled myself into my coat and hit the front steps. Everyone knows the steps. The movie Rocky made them famous. There’re always a few runners or tourists jogging up, just to say they could.

  For a bitterly cold day, the steps seemed crowded. It didn’t seem to be by either athletes or tourists, but by people around my age. For the most part, they were coatless, wearing layers of thermal shirts or hoodies, all in heavy knit caps. They were heading up the stairs, milling around the top level in groups of five or six, hunched on the balustrades. I could feel something in the air—not a threat, but a palpable excitement. I quietly moved to the side, where I had a view of both the plaza and the stairs, and waited.

  It wasn’t long. In the distance, a clock chimed the hour. In front of me, the plaza erupted. Fifty people, mostly male, suddenly had skateboards in their hands. Skateboarding is pretty fiercely forbidden at the museum. I hadn’t even noticed the backpacks and duffels and other bags that were now quickly being folded into themselves. With a series of shouts and clatters, the boarders were off.

  Some went down the stone ramps that flanked the stairs, going at breakneck speed, jumping between the levels. Unbelievably, a handful tried the steps themselves, flying off each landing to slam into the next. Most did the descent in a combination of boards and running and big leaps. A few fell on the jumps; a few more veered and tumbled, trying to avoid hitting one another and uninvolved stair climbers. A few of the falls looked bad to me. But they were up in a beat, chasing boards or finishing their descent.

  I watched one, a girl with dozens of braids flying out from under her helmet, take the last ramp. She looked almost fluid as she lifted off, one hand on her board as she soared. Then she hit the pavement at the bottom with an audible bang, veered sharply to the right, and disappeared from my sight. The back of her hoodie had “YES!” across it in huge yellow appliquéd letters. A big Yes to . . . whatever. Everything, maybe. Stupid, yeah, probably the whole endeavor had been stupid. Dangerous, absolutely. But as far as bravery and joy went, it was pretty amazing.

  By the time security got out onto the plaza, the show was over. I knew there were a couple of boarders in the bushes below, nursing what I hoped weren’t bad injuries. No one ratted them out. Who would even think of it?

  It was still too early to go home. I ended up at Pat’s King of Steaks, a usual happy-place, where I bought myself a Coke and a cheesesteak. My cup had pictures of candy canes all over it. Christmas had arrived in Philadelphia pretty much the day after Halloween. There were still three weeks to go, and the cardboard Santa and reindeer taped to the windows looked ready to call it a year already and take off for Boca. In spite of the cold I took a seat at one of the sidewalk tables. It felt like a slab of ice under my butt. I shivered, but stuck it out.

  “Hey, Loco Girl!”

  Shout out “Hey, Gorgeous!” or “Einstein,” and I don’t budge. But this one had me at “Loco.” Go figure. I looked across the sidewalk to see Daniel’s face, so much like Frankie’s, framed in the window of his Jeep. I felt a sad little tug in my chest.

  “You are aware it’s only forty degrees out there, aren’t you?” he asked. I shrugged. “Meeting someone?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Then get in. Your hands look like wax. It’s seriously creepy.”

  I looked down at the hand gripping the blindingly cheerful cup. He was right.

  He also got out to open the passenger’s-side door for me. I was a little charmed, until he pointed at my partially eaten cheesesteak in its wilted paper wrapper. “You are not bringing that thing into my car. It’s an abomination.”

  I eyed the cigarette he’d dropped in the gutter. He did his teeth-baring thing. I tossed my cold meal in the trash, knowing I wouldn’t have eaten it anyway. The inside of the Jeep wasn’t all that much warmer than out. “Here.” Daniel took off his black leather jacket and held it out for me. It was heavy and smelled a little bit like a burned cookie. It went on over my own coat; the sleeves went past my fingertips. “You look like frozen—”

  “Don’t say it,” I muttered as I settled into the battered seat.

  “You have no idea what I was going to say,” he shot back, grinning. “Something rotten in the state of Marino?”

  “And you ask that because . . . ?”

  “Really? It’s four in the afternoon, and instead of being with Sadie and my brother or at home, eating something colorful, you’re sitting outside by yourself here. Not exactly rocket science. Care to share?”

  “Do I have to?” There was a comforting hollow in the seat. I snuggled into it, coat and all.

  “Nope.” There was a pair of thick wool gloves on the dash. Daniel handed them to me, then pulled away from the curb. “I’ll take you home. I’m on my way to drop some stuff in Fishtown.”

  I looked around; the backseat of the Jeep was filled with sealed cardboard boxes. They looked like they’d been loaded in a hurry. There was also some sheet music. And an empty condom wrapper.

  Maybe it was because I was wearing his stuff, or maybe it was just that he was there and looked just enough like my best friend. “Tell me about your girlfriend,” I said.

  The music—this time it sounded surprisingly Irish and traditional—was loud enough that I had to shout a little.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Right.”

  Daniel looked at me just long enough to make me squirm, and only just avoid flattening a granny who was crossing against the light with her shopping cart. “Excuse me?”

  I sighed. “Let me guess. She’s as tall as you are and looks like she spends her leisure time in a lace bra and angel wings.”

  “Jesus, Ella, what was in that cup?”

  “What? Guys like you always have girlfriends like that.”

  He reached out and jabbed a button on the dash. It took two tries, but the music stopped. “Sounds good to me, but there’s no girlfriend—”

  I
got it, a little late. Apparently, I’m slow that way. “Ah. I get it now.” I slapped my forehead. It was unsatisfactorily silent; his glove was that thick. “Slow. Okay.”

  “You look like an ordinary girl, but in truth—”

  I gave him the Hand. It looked silly in his glove. “Truth: I am a completely ordinary girl. There are tons of us around. Always have been.”

  Here’s the thing about South Philly. My part of it is small. Daniel was already turning onto my street. There was an electrical crew fixing the light in front of the Grecos’. They were holding doughnuts.

  I was halfway out the door before Daniel had even stopped. I slipped off his coat and gloves. “Thanks,” I told him.

  “Hey.” Quick as a snake, he leaned across the passenger seat and thrust out his hand, stopping the door from closing. “Hey! I have something to say here.”

  “Absolutely. Shoot.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “That’s the something?”

  “Nope. That’s a something. This is the something . . .” He pinned me with those almost-black eyes, and I had absolutely no doubt as to why his invisible girl climbed happily into the back of the Jeep with him. “You listening?”

  “Sure.” A little hypnotized, maybe, but functioning.

  “There is not a single ordinary thing about you, Loco Girl.” He pulled the door closed with a snap and was gone.

  “He’s right, you know,” Edward was saying almost before I’d made it into my room. I had crept through the house unnecessarily. No one was home.

  “Your assertions have lost a bit of their value these days, Mr. Willing.”

  “You know,” he repeated.

  I tossed my coat onto the bed. The stark black and white of my quilt was broken by a purple stain now, the result of a peaceful interlude with grape juice turning into a gentle wrestling match. The stain was the size of my palm and shaped like, I thought, an alligator. Alex insisted it was a map of Italy. Later, we’d dripped the rest of the juice onto the thick pages of my drawing pad, finding pictures in the splotches like the Rorschach inkblots used in psychology.

  “Well,” he’d said in response to my pagoda, anteater, and Viking, “verdict’s in. You’re nuts.”

  The pictures were tacked to my wall, unaccustomed spots of color. I’d penciled in our choices. Viking (E), pineapple (A). Lantern (E), cheese (A). Crown (E), birthday cake (A) were over my desk, over Edward.

  I turned on my computer. It binged cheerfully at me. I had mail.

  From: abainbr@thewillingschool.org

  To: fmarino@thewillingschool.org

  Date: December 15, 3:50 p.m.

  Subject: Should you choose to accept . . .

  Tuesday. I’ll pick you up at 10:00 a.m. Ask no questions. Tell no one.

  —Alex

  “Ah, subterfuge” came from over the desk.

  “Shut up, Edward,” I said.

  As much as I disliked the sensation of keeping secrets, I hated being one so very much more.

  30

  THE PARTY

  There was no doorman outside Harrison Kinuye’s house, just a Phillite senior leaning into a huge stone urn. He extricated himself as I reached the door. “Hey,” he greeted me, sending out plumes of condensed breath and beer fumes. “Thought I was gonna heave.”

  “Okay,” I said. Apparently, that satisfied him, because he opened the front door for me with a clumsy flourish.

  I was in. That simple. I’d spent the entire walk over worried that I wasn’t going to get past the door. I’d watched Harrison’s YouTube video (cleverly posted under the complicated name “Harrison Kinuye’s Party”) three times to be sure of the password. The whole video consisted of Harrison holding a piece of paper with the address, date, and time of the party. Of course, it read backward, but that wasn’t much of a challenge, and I suspected it wasn’t deliberate on his part. At the eighteen-second mark, he opened his mouth and let out a massive, echoing belch. Fade to black. I’d been afraid that was the password and that I would have to burp for admittance.

  The music was deafening. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard it from outside. But I figured that’s the way it was with these houses. Harrison actually didn’t live all that far away from me—maybe seven blocks, but there were only four houses on his, all with gates and front gardens. None of them touched their neighbors’. We can set our clocks by the Channel 6 Eleven O’clock News theme that comes through our walls from the Grecos’ every night.

  The hall opened into a massive living room. It was full of familiar faces: mostly Phillite juniors and seniors, but I saw a few sophomores, too, and even a handful of Bees. One was wrapped around Chase Vere. I edged away. He looked pretty involved and pretty intent.

  I scanned the room. Everyone seemed to be having a grand old time. The boy who’d let me in was now talking intently to a group of my classmates, waving a half-filled bottle of something clear. He offered it to one of the girls. When she lifted it to take a swig, I could see it was Hannah. I shuddered and ducked behind a convenient sophomore. Where Hannah was to be found, Amanda and Anna wouldn’t be far away. There was a group dancing to the crazily loud music in one corner. I was pretty sure Amanda was in the middle of it.

  I didn’t see Alex. True, there was a lot I was probably missing, being short and half hidden, but I was also starting to think that maybe this had been a wild-goose chase and a really stupid idea. He wasn’t there. I was feeling incredibly uncomfortable and not very brave anymore.

  Wandering the seemingly unending downstairs, I peeked into a den, a closet, and what looked like a complete gym. Two doors were locked, but I figured whatever was behind them wasn’t of much interest to me. He wasn’t there.

  It was time to go home. No Alex, no one I knew well enough to chat with, and I was still wearing my coat anyway. Unfortunately, I was completely turned around. I found myself in the kitchen. It was twice the size of the one at the restaurant, with much shinier appliances. There were six miles of counter. A few people were sitting on it, but there wasn’t a toaster or coffeemaker or jar full of mismatched wooden spoons to hint that any cooking or eating actually took place there. The dinged keg in the middle of the floor looked as out of place as I felt.

  Harrison was manning the tap. “Hey, Ella,” he greeted me, looking completely unsurprised to see me there. “Beer?”

  “Um . . . no,” I said, shocked that he knew my name. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged and handed a plastic cup to a hovering senior girl. “There’s other stuff there.” He jerked his chin toward the sink. I saw a few lonely Coke cans and one bunch of celery in a bed of ice.

  I wasn’t really planning on staying. “Thanks,” I said again, and headed for yet another door.

  This one led to a dining room with a table that could easily seat twenty. Six busy Bees were grouped in one corner, playing Quarters on the shiny surface. Beyond them, I could see the hallway and the graceful sweep of a staircase. As I watched the parade of feet going up and down, a familiar pair of gray suede Adidas came into view. Feeling cold suddenly, I went out to meet them.

  Amanda was just hitting the bottom stair. Alex was right behind her.

  She saw me first. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. I probably would have taken a step backward, but a group of girls pushed behind me, heading for the Quarters game. I had a choice: hold my ground, or go stumbling forward, probably ending up at Amanda’s feet. I held my ground.

  “Are you freakin’ kidding?” She loomed over me. “Do you not understand the basic laws of nature? You are nothing. You do not exist.”

  I thought of the girl on the skateboard, who had made her existence known in such a bold and impressive way. Then I thought of Edward’s lover, who never got to show her face.

  “Is your nasty natural?” I heard myself asking. “Or did you get it implanted?”

  It wasn’t my line; it was Frankie’s. We’d all enjoyed it immensely before, and it slipped out so smoothly now. I wasn’t staring at Amand
a’s chest deliberately. But my bravado only went so far, and she was still one step up.

  “You bitch!” she snapped, and, raising one clawed hand, launched herself off the step.

  Chase was there before she touched the floor, one arm sliding around her waist. “Come on, princess,” he said cheerfully, carrying her off. “Let’s dance.”

  She kicked and hissed a little, but he was bigger and, I thought, drunker. I didn’t watch where they went. I didn’t care.

  Alex came down the last couple of steps. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.” It was that honesty thing he brought out in me.

  “Why?”

  That one was harder, not to answer, but to say aloud. “Can we talk about this somewhere other than right here?”

  He shrugged. “Want a beer?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Me, either. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” I asked. He had his hand on my back and was propelling me down the hall.

  “Elsewhere.” He pulled his black Russian coat from a pile in the foyer. “Unless you want to stay . . . ?”

  “No.”

  “Good. So . . .”

  A minute later we were on the sidewalk. He pulled on a knit cap and buttoned up his coat. I hoped he would reach for my hand, but he didn’t. He just shoved his back into his pockets.

  “Some party,” I said, staving off the inevitable.

  “Not really. He does it whenever his parents are out of the country.”

  From the sound of it, that was often. “Who cleans up?”

  “The Kinuyes have a staff of many. They’re used to it.”

  “Typical,” I muttered.

  Alex shot me a look. “Hey. Don’t get pissy at me. I don’t throw parties in my house.”

  He started walking toward South Street. I hurried to catch up. “Where are we going?”

  “That depends. Answer the original question. Why did you come looking for me?”