Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by David Levithan, Rachel Cohn Read Free Book Online

eggnog, gingerbread, lebkuchen spice, mint kiss, and pumpkin. I’d decorated the spritz cookies with appropriate sprinkles and candies according to each one’s flavor and wrapped a bow around the cookie tin.
    I took out my headphones and tuned my iPod to Handel’s Messiah so I could concentrate on writing. I resisted the urge to mock-conduct with the pen in my hand. Instead, I answered Mystery Boy’s question.
    My only bad Christmas was the year I was six .
    That was the year that my pet gerbil died in a horrible incident at show-and-tell at school about a week before Christmas break .
    I know, I know, it sounds funny. It wasn’t. It was actually a gruesome massacre .
    I’m sorry, but despite your DON’T request, I must leave out the horrific details. The memory is still that vivid and upsetting to me .
    The part that really scarred me—separate from the guilt and loss of my pet, of course—was that I earned a nickname after the incident. I had screamed like heck when it happened, but my rage, and grief, were so big, and real, even to such a little person, that I couldn’t make myself STOP screaming. Anyone at school who tried to touch or talk to me, I just screamed. It was like basic instinct. I couldn’t help myself .
    That was the week I became known at school as Shrilly. That name would stay with me through elementary and middle school, until my parents finally moved me to a private school for high school .
    But that particular Christmas was my first week as Shrilly. That holiday, I mourned not only the loss of my gerbil but also that bizarre kind of innocence that kids have, believing they can always fit in .
    That was the Christmas I finally understood what I’d heard family members whisper in worry about me: that I was too sensitive, too delicate. Different .
    It was the Christmas I realized Shrilly was the reason I didn’t get invited to birthday parties, or why I always got picked last for teams .
    It was the Christmas I realized I was the weird girl .
    When I finished writing my answer, I stood up. I realized I had no idea what Mystery Boy had meant by telling me to leave the notebook behind Mama’s behind. Was I supposed to leave it on the stage in front of the screen showing the movie?
    I looked over to the concession stand, wondering if I should ask for help. The popcorn looked especially yummy, so I went to get some, nearly knocking over the cardboard cutout in my hungry stomach’s sudden urgency. That’s when I saw it: Mama’s behind. I was already behind it. The cardboard cutout was a picture of the black man playing fat Mama, whose rear end was particularly huge.
    I wrote new instructions into the notebook and placed it behind Mama’s behind, where no one would likely see it except for the one who came looking for it. I left the red Moleskine along with the box of cookies and a tourist postcard that had been stuck to a piece of gum on the floor in the movie theater. The postcard was from Madame Tussauds, my favorite Times Square tourist trap.
    I wrote on the postcard:
    What do you want for Christmas?
    No, really, don’t be a smart aleck. What do you really really really supercalifragiwant?
    Please leave information about that, along with the notebook, with the security lady watching over Honest Abe . *
Thank you .
Yours sincerely ,
Lily
    * PS Don’t worry, I promise the security guard won’t try to feel you up like Uncle Sal at Macy’s might have. I assure you that wasn’t sexual so much as he’s genuinely just a huggy kind of person .
    PPS What is your name?

five

–Dash–
    December 23rd
    The doorbell rang at around noon, just when Gramma Got Run Over should have been getting out. So my first (admittedly irrational) thought was that somehow Lily had tracked me down. Her uncle in the CIA had run my fingerprints, and they were here to arrest me for impersonating someone worthy of Lily’s interest. I took a practice run for the perp walk as I headed over to the peephole. Then I