Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

e ecting a candle glow to our atmosphere. The sign read:

BEWARE!

In case you didn’t read the huge sign on the wal

outside the door, please read this one:

DUDE! How many times do you have to be reminded?

The storage door locks from the OUTSIDE.

Be sure to keep the key on you to open it from the inside,

or you won’t be able to get out.

No.

No no no no no no no.

NO! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

I turned to face Dash.

“Um, Dash?”

“Um, yes?”

“I kind of locked us in here.”

I had no choice but to cal my cousin Mark for help. “You’ve awakened me, Lily Dogwalker,” he barked into the phone. “You know it’s my

tradition to be asleep long before that stupid bal drops in Times Square.”

I explained the predicament.

“Wel , wel ,” Mark said. “Great-aunt Ida can’t save you from this one, now can she?”

“You can, Mark!”

“I might choose not to.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would. For the emotional blackmail you placed upon me that got you and your punk friend into this situation.”

He had a point.

I said, “If you don’t come help us, I’l cal the police to get us out.”

“If you do that, the Post and News reporters wil hear it on the police sca

arrive home to the newsstands at JFK. I’m going to take a guess here and presume that they and Grandpa think you’re spending the night at a

girlfriend’s and not out with a fel a, and your cohorts Langston and Mrs. Basil E. are backing you up. This scandal gets out, and your folks wil

never leave you alone again. To say nothing of the fact that the media incident wil ensure I lose my job. And, Lily? The worst part of al ?

Teenagers the world over wil lose access to the secret stash of OEDs in the basement at the Strand, al because of you and your bookish lit le

pervert friend’s reckless desire to peruse the volumes on New Year’s Eve. Can you live with that, Lily? Oh, the horror!”

I paused before answering. Dash, who’d heard the conversation standing next to me, was laughing. That was a relief.

“I had no idea you were this evil, Mark.”

“Sure you did. Now Markypoo wants to nish his sleep. Because he’s such a sport, he’s going to get up at seven a.m. and come rescue you two

from your lit le predicament. But not before the sun rises.”

I tried one last tactic. “Dash is get ing very frisky in here with me, Mark.” What I wanted to say was I wish Dash was get ing frisky in here with

me.Dash raised an eyebrow at me again.

“No he’s not,” Mark said.

“How do you know?”

“Because if he was, you wouldn’t be cal ing me to rescue you now, Googly Eyes. So here’s the deal. You wanted to get to know this fel ow.

Here’s your chance. You’ve got the night to yourselves. I’l be there after my good night’s sleep. There’s a toilet in a closet in the corner at the back

of the storage room if you can’t hold it. Might not be so clean. Probably no toilet paper.”

“I real y hate you right now, Mark.”

“You can thank me in the morning, Lily bear.”

Dash and I did what any two teenagers stranded in the Strand would do alone together in a basement storage room.

We sat side by side on the cold oor and played hangman in the red notebook.

S-N-A-R-L.

Q-U-I-E-S-C-E-N-T.

We talked. We laughed.

He made no untoward moves on me.

I thought about the bigger picture of my life, and about the people—and particularly the guys—I would encounter during my lifetime. How

would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed … co

“Lily?” Dash said at two in the morning. “Do you mind if we go to sleep? Also, I sort of hate your cousin.”

“For imprisoning you here with me?”

“No, for imprisoning me here without any yogurt.”

“No, for imprisoning me here without any yogurt.”

Food!

I’d forgot en I had some lebkuchen spice cookies inside my purse, along with an obscene amount of Rice Krispie treats. I couldn’t eat another

Rice Krispie treat or I’d surely turn into a human snap-crackle-pop, so I reached for the plastic bag of cookies.

As I fumbled inside my purse, I looked up once and saw that most dashing face just looking at me. In that certain way I knew had to mean

something.

“You make real y good cookies,” Dash said, in that Mmmm … donuts voice.

Should I wait for him to make a move, or dare to make it myself?

As if he were wondering the same thing, he leaned down. And there it was. Our lips nal y met—in a ful -on head bang that wasn’t anything

close to a romantic kiss.

We both pul ed back.

“Ouch,” we both said.

Pause.

Dash said, “Try again?”

It had never occurred to me the mat er would require conversation rst. This lip-maneuvering business was complicated. Who knew?

“Yes, please?”

I closed my eyes and waited. And then I felt him. His mouth found mine, his lips grazing mine softly, playful y. Not knowing what to do, I

mimicked his moves, exploring his lips with my own gently, happily. The honest-to-God smooching went on like that for a good minute.

There was no word in the dictionary adequate to describe the sensation other than sensational.

“More, please?” I asked him when we separated for air, our foreheads leaned in against one another.

“Can I be honest with you, Lily?”

Uh-oh. Here it was. Al my hopes and fears about to be dashed by rejection. I was a bad kisser. Before I’d even got en a good start.

Dash said, “I’m seriously so tired I feel like I’m going to pass out. Could we please sleep on this, and resume tomorrow?”

“With great frequency?”

“Yes, please.”

I’d set le for one bang of a kiss fol owed by one sensational minute of kissing. For now.

I rested my head on his shoulder, and he rested his head on mine.

We fel asleep.

As threatened, my cousin Mark arrived after seven on New Year’s morning to rescue us. My head was stil nestled on Dash’s shoulder when I heard

Mark’s footsteps coming downstairs and saw a light burst on underneath the doorway.

I needed to wake Dash. And believe that this hadn’t al been a dream.

I looked down at the red notebook, sit ing on Dash’s lap. He must have woken up in the night while I was asleep and writ en in it. The pen was

stil in his hand and the notebook was open to a new page l ed with his scrawl.

He’d writ en out the word and meaning for anticipate, next to which, in big block let ers, he’d writ en: DERIVATIVE: ANTICIPATOR.

Below that, he’d drawn two gures who looked like action heroes in a cartoon. The sketch pictured two caped crusader teens, a fedora-wearing

boy and a girl with black glasses and wearing majoret e boots, passing a red notebook between them. The Anticipators, he’d labeled the drawing.

I smiled, and kept the smile on my face as I prepared to wake him. I wanted the rst thing he saw when he opened his eyes to be the

welcoming face of someone who liked him so much, someone who on this new morning, in this new year, was going to do her best to cherish this

new person, whose name she nal y knew.

I nudged his arm.

I said:

“Wake up, Dash.”

Rachel Cohn & David Levithan have written three books together. Their rst, Nick & Norah’s In nite

Playlist, was made into a movie starring Michael Cera and Kat De

Their second, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, was named a New York Public Library Book for the Teen

Age. For their third book, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, David wrote Dash’s chapters and Rachel wrote

Lily’s. Although they did not pass the chapters back and forth in a red Moleskine notebook, they did