Dare You To--A Life Changing Teen Love Story by Katie McGarry

Author:Katie McGarry [McGarry, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781488086403
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

BETH

I pump my hands harder into his chest and ignore the world around me. My wrists hurt, but I must keep the heart going. I must. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

“Breathe!” I yell.

Lacy tilts the head back and blows into the mouth. The chest moves up, then back down. Lacy begins to pull away.

“No, Lacy, check the vitals.” She puts her ear near the mouth and nose. I wait. She places her fingers against the artery in the neck. I wait again. Lacy shakes her head. Nothing.

“Your turn,” I tell her. I’m frightened that I won’t be able to give the heart enough pressure if I go another round. Lacy scrambles toward his chest and I slide my body near the head. She counts out loud with each compression.

A long beeping noise comes from the team next to us. “Flat line,” says Mr. Knox.

“Yes!” says Chris. “This is ours!”

Of our entire health class, it’s down to me and Lacy against the combo of Ryan and Chris. With his hands clasped together, Ryan pumps his dummy’s chest.

“Breathe!” says Lacy.

I blow air into the mouth, check vitals, and freeze. With my fingers against the neck, I feel something. It’s faint, but there. Lacy gestures for me to pump, but I shake my head. Our dummy—he’s alive!

The boys start compressions again and a wretched noise blares from their machine. Mr. Knox unplugs it. “You boys forgot to check vitals.”

Chris swears and Ryan falls onto his ass. Suck it up, boys. Get used to losing.

Mr. Knox glances my way. “Congratulations, Lacy and Beth. You’re the only two who kept your patient alive. Good call on the vitals, Beth.”

Good call on the vitals. Mr. Knox walks away as if this isn’t the most amazing moment of my life. I did something. I saved a life. Well, not really, but I saved the dummy. But I did something right. This unspeakable, overwhelming sense of… I don’t know… I’ve not experienced it before…this feeling of…joy? Anyhow…it floods me. Every part of me.

I—Beth Risk—did something good.

Lacy points at Chris, then at Logan standing over his dead dummy. “We won.” In her sitting position she moves her shoulders in a crazy little dance. “We won. We won. We won.”

“Your girl is a sore winner.” Logan edges closer to us.

“It’s kinda hot though,” says Chris. “Now that you experienced the rush, are you going to take on more dares from us, baby?”

Lacy laughs. “I didn’t take the dare. Beth did.”

Logan and Chris nod at me in appreciation. I shrug in return. For the past week, we’ve been feeling each other out. Lacy talks to me. Ryan talks to me. Sometimes, I talk back. On Monday, I caved to their brow-beating and began sitting with them at lunch. When Ryan’s feeling bold, he takes my hand. When I’m feeling bolder, I hold his hand back.

At the mention of the dare, I fish a black marker out of my pack. Ryan’s last words before we started CPR were that Lacy and I couldn’t hold out; that we were too weak to outlast the combination of him and Chris.

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