"Dare" - alternate entry composed but not submitted for NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest 2021

 

I dream about Aleck. Not just the crazy stuff we do, but the warmth of her freckled arms and the sunscreen-and-watermelon smell of her skin, her laughing eyes, the vicious curve of her lips as she dares me to do something damn-foolish. It’s sick love. I’m afraid that if I told her my feelings, I’d never see her again except school.

Instead, I let her risk my closeted ass all summer.

It started with Truth or Dare at Blue’s slumber party. Aleck’s eyes bored into mine. I knew she was gonna ask me who my crush was, but I was too chickenshit to say you, so I said “dare.” Without batting a sandy eyelash, she dared me to let Mae shoot me in the backside with a BB gun and rock salt.

That hurt like blazes. It’s gonna scar, that’s what Blue says, but whatever. I welcome the scars. It’s Aleck writing her name on me. Body’s a passport, they say. Get it stamped. Every scar a forbidden kiss.

There’ve been so many dares, like driving the backroads blindfolded, like letting her bury me. We didn’t even need the “Truth” anymore. We knew.

She commands all. I dare all. I blaze with love we can’t talk about. I’d’ve swum a lake of Tabasco. She let me sacrifice myself.

So when she licked her lips and said, “Sunny, I dare you…” Yeah, I dared.

“Hey Sunny, I dare you to climb up the quarry pool wall and fire off this roman candle.” She wagged a firework and matchbook in a baggie.

Probably illegal. Aleck’s got no commitment to the law.

“Naked,” she added salaciously.

I licked my lips. I hated heights. Hated being seen naked.

Scorn was already curling her ruddy lips. “Unless you’re chicken…”

“Gimme.” I snatched the jumbo size Ziplock. It was sealed up tight. “You sure this’ll light?”

“If you keep your powder dry,” Aleck laughed. The meanest eyes in the world raked me. A slow fire lit somewhere south of my navel.

Shit.

“When?”

“After dark, doofus.”

I popped my gum and grinned with confidence I didn’t feel. “You got it, bish.”

“Hide it!” she hissed.

I stuffed the baggie in my backpack. The firework bulged like Satan’s jockstrap, so I took off my windbreaker and crammed it in to pad it. Then I jittered for the rest of Miz Bishop’s barbecue, feeling cold even though it was a scorcher.

Worth it. Aleck’s eyes were on me for the whole event.

We snuck off after dinner. Aleck beckoned our friends, and soon we had the whole troop. Our folks expected it and didn’t care: they thought traveling in numbers kept us safe.

“What’d you dare her to do now, Smart-Aleck?” Blue asked, driving us in her Chevy.

“Gonna be good.” Aleck nodded ominously.

Blue looked at me dubiously. “One of these days, she’s gonna get you killed, Sunny.”

“’Least I’m gonna live before that,” I said.

“FOMO,” Mae-Mae laughed.

We had to sneak through the fence, of course. We’d spent a fat slice of summer swimming the quarry pool, but it was different at night. Pitch black except the glaring safety lights at the ticket booth.

I licked my lips. They tasted like barbecue.

“Strip,” Aleck commanded.

I hesitated. Everyone stared. We all hushed so as not to attract strangers.

“Do it!”

I did, stuffing my socks into my shoes. I was gonna have to swim to the other side to climb the sheer face, where it was pitch black except for the glistening brick edges. I got down to my bra and underpants. The cruel angle of Aleck’s brows told me to take it all off. I shivered in the warmth, naked as a plucked chicken.

“Can I take my backpack?”

“Sure.” All magnanimity.

Blue whimpered. “I dunno what you’re gonna do… but maybe don’t?”

“FOMO,” Mae said again.

I shouldered the pack and saluted Aleck, gladiator style.

“Aleck, please,” Blue whined.

Aleck actually winced. “You can always pick ‘Truth,’ Sunny.”

“I never lie,” I grinned. We both knew better.

We nodded at each other, and I waded into the pool, avoiding the lights, trying to keep my backpack dry. “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

“Stop clowning. Light up my world.”

I stopped fucking around and swam hard for the steep side wall of the quarry pool. Boys used to climb it until someone fell. Now it had road-cut netting draped over it. Good deterrent, but it actually made climbing easier.

Or so I thought until I started. Yes, it provided handholds, but it was floppy and treacherous, and sagged away from the wall underfoot. My knees got scraped up on the brick-cut rocks. My palms screeched.

Stamp that passport, I told myself. Brand the letters of her name into your skin.

I climbed.

Halfway? Maybe. Across the water, I heard a splash, and almost fell trying to find out what had happened. I couldn’t see Mae’s curves down there, even though Blue and Philly were there jumping with nerves and Aleck’s rangy silhouette burned hot in my vision. Mae had probably stripped and leapt in, trying to get Aleck’s eyes on her.

I was pretty sure Aleck’s eyes were only for me in my stupid moment of danger, so I climbed.

My knees were bleeding badly by the time I floundered onto the ledge. The pool was a gleaming black hole. I couldn’t see anyone. I fumbled with my wet backpack zipper with half-numb fingers, wrenching out the Ziplock, and hunched to get the firework out and try to light it.

It took six matches to light it up. It blazed like a road flare, then flashed, rapid-fire. Pink fireballs shot out in dazzling spark showers. I held it up like Lady Liberty, screaming. Burning cardboard snow scorched my skin. It sounded like war, smelled like brimstone, thundered forever.

Dazed, afterward, I heard Aleck’s shout. “Jump!”

I looked down the slope at the glittering blackness. Fuck no.

“Truth,” I yelled. “I love you, Smart-Aleck!”