Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

Author:Rachel Cohn & David Levithan [Cohn, Rachel & Levithan, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Christmas & Advent, Love & Romance, Holidays & Celebrations, Juvenile Fiction, Social Issues, Friendship
ISBN: 9780375866593
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2010-10-25T20:00:00+00:00

ten

(Lily)

December 26th

“You’re grounded.”

Grandpa stared at me in all seriousness. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

Grandpas give out dollar bills and bicycles and hugs. They don’t give punishments to grandchildren! Everybody knows that.

Grandpa had unexpectedly driven back to NYC, all day and night, all the way from Florida! Once he got home, he immediately went looking for me and my brother to check on us, only to find my brother passed out in bed, lost under a sea of blankets and snotty tissues, and worse, his Lily Bear not only not upstairs in her Lily pad but nowhere to be found in her own family’s apartment.

Luckily, I arrived home around three-thirty in the morning, within minutes of Grandpa’s discovery of my disappearance. He’d only had enough time to nearly have a heart attack, and to search for me inside every closet and cabinet in the apartment. Before Grandpa had a chance to call the police, along with my parents and several thousand other relatives to instigate a full-on worldwide panic, I waltzed in the door, still breathless and flushed from the night’s club scene excitement.

Grandpa’s first words to me when he caught sight of me were not “Where have you been?” That came second. First was “Why are you only wearing one boot? And dear God, is that my sister’s old majorette boot from high school on your foot?” He spoke from the kitchen floor in my apartment, where he was lying down, trying to determine, I believe, if I was hiding beneath the sink.

“Grandpa!” I cried out. I ran to smother him in day after Christmas kisses. I was so happy to see him, and exhilarated from the night out, despite how I’d ended it by sacrificing one of my great-aunt’s shoes to the gumshoes and neglecting to return the notebook for Snarl.

Grandpa wasn’t having my affection. He turned his cheek to me, then went for the “you’re-grounded routine.” When I failed to meet his pronouncement with fear, he frowned and demanded, “Where have you been? It’s four in the morning!”

“Three-thirty,” I corrected him. “It’s three-thirty in the morning.”

“You’re in a world of trouble, young lady,” he said.

I giggled.

“I’m serious!” he said. “You’d better have a good explanation.”

Well, I’ve been corresponding with a complete stranger in a notebook, telling him my innermost feelings and thoughts and then blindly going to mystery places where he dares me to go….

No, that wouldn’t go over so well.

For the first time in my life, I lied to Grandpa.

“This friend from my soccer team had a party where her band played a Hanukkah show. I went to hear them.”

“THIS MUSIC REQUIRES YOU TO GET HOME AT FOUR IN THE MORNING?”

“Three-thirty,” I said again. “It’s, like, a religious thing. The band’s not allowed to play before midnight on the night after Christmas Day.”

“I see,” Grandpa said skeptically. “And don’t you have a curfew, young lady?”

The invocation not once, but twice, of the dreaded young lady term of endearment should have put me on high fear alert, but I was too giddy from the night’s adventures to care.

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