Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

and (2) move that project to west of First Avenue, away from Grandpa’s protection shield. Langston took the latest red Moleskine notebook that

Grandpa bought me and, together with Be

could not have been further removed from who I am. I mean, French pianism? Sounds possibly naughty. The Joy of Gay Sex? I’m blushing even

thinking about that. De nitely naughty. Fat Hoochie Prom Queen? Please. I’d include hoochie as a most un-goodwil type of curse word. You’d

never hear me ut er the word, much less read a book with that word in its title.

I thought the notebook was seriously Langston’s stupidest idea ever until Langston mentioned where he was going to leave it—at the Strand, the

bookstore where our parents used to take us on Sundays and let us roam the aisles like it was our personal playground. Furthermore, he’d placed it

next to my personal anthem book, Fra

Salinger editions. We’l start there.”

If it had been a regular Christmas season, where my folks were around and our normal traditions carried on, I never would have agreed to

Langston’s red notebook idea. But there was something so empty about the prospect of a Christmas Day without opening presents and other, less

important forms of merrymaking. Truthful y, I’m not exactly a popularity magnet at school, so it wasn’t like I had alternate choices of

companionship over the holidays. I needed something to look forward to.

But I never thought anyone—much less a prospect from that highly coveted but extremely elusive Teenage Boy Who Actual y Reads and Hangs

Out at the Strand species—would actual y nd the notebook and respond to its dares. And just as I never thought my newly formed Christmas

caroling society would abandon me after only two nights of street caroling to take up Irish drinking songs at a pub on Avenue B, I never thought

someone would actual y gure out Langston’s cryptic clues and return the favor.

Yet there it was on my phone, a text from my cousin Mark con rming such a person might exist.

Mark: Lily, you have a taker at the Strand. He left you something in return. I left it there for you in a brown envelope.

I couldn’t believe it. I texted back: WHAT DID HE LOOK LIKE?!?!?

Mark answered: Snarly. Hipster wa

I tried to imagine myself befriending a snarly hipster wa

get good grades. I am the captain of my school’s soccer team. I love my family. I don’t know anything about what’s supposed to be “cool” in the

downtown scene. I’m pret y boring and nerdy, actual y, and not in the ironic hipster way. It’s like if you picture Harriet the Spy, eleven-year-old

tomboy wunderkind spy, and then picture her a few years later, with boobs she hides under a school oxford uniform shirt that she wears even on

non-school days, along with her brother’s discarded jeans, and add to her ensemble some animal pendant necklaces for jewelry, worn-out Chucks

on her feet, and black-rimmed nerd glasses, then you’ve pictured me. Lily of the Field, Grandpa cal s me sometimes, because everyone thinks I am

so sweet and delicate.

Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to venture to the darker side of the lily-white spectrum. Maybe.

I sprinted over to the Strand to retrieve whatever the mysterious notebook taker had left behind for me. Mark was gone, but he’d scrawled a

message on the envelope he’d left behind for me: Seriously, Lily. Dude snarls a lot.

I ripped open the package, and … what?!?! Snarl had left me a copy of The Godfather, along with a delivery menu for Two Boots Pizza. The

I ripped open the package, and … what?!?! Snarl had left me a copy of The Godfather, along with a delivery menu for Two Boots Pizza. The

menu had dirty footprints embedded on it, indicating perhaps it had been on the oor at the Strand. To go along with the unsanitary theme, the

book wasn’t even a new copy of The Godfather, but a tat ered used copy that smel ed like cigaret e smoke and had pages that were crinkled and a

binding that was at death’s door.

I cal ed Langston to decipher this nonsense. No answer. Now that our parents had messaged us that they’d arrived in Fiji paradise safely, Be

was probably o cial y moved in, the door to Langston’s room locked, his phone o .

I had no choice but to go grab a slice and ponder the red notebook alone. What else could I do? When in doubt, ingest carbs.

I went to the Two Boots location on the delivery menu, on Avenue A just above Houston. I asked the person at the counter, “Do you know a

snarly boy who likes The Godfather?”

“I wish I did,” the counter person said. “Plain or pepperoni?”

“Calzone, please,” I said. Two Boots makes weird Cajun- avored pizzas. Not for me and my sensitive digestive system.

I sat at a corner booth and ipped through the book Snarl had left for me but could nd no viable clues. Wel , I thought, I guess this game is

over as soon as it’s started. I was too Lily white to gure it out.

But then the menu that had been tucked inside the book dropped to the ground, and out of it peeked a Post-it note I hadn’t noticed before. I

picked up the Post-it note. It was de nitely a boy’s scrawl: moody, foreign, and barely legible.

Here’s the scary part. I could decipher this message. It contained a poem by Marie Howe, a personal favorite of my mother’s. Mom is an English

professor specializing in twentieth-century American lit, and she regularly tortured Langston and me with poetry passages instead of bedtime

stories when we were kids. My brother and I are frighteningly wel -versed in modern American poetry.

The note was a passage from my mother’s favorite of Marie Howe’s poems, too, and it was a poem I had always liked because it contained a

passage about the poet seeing herself in the window glass of a corner video store, which never failed to strike me as fu

poet wandering the streets and spying herself in a video store window re ected next to, perhaps, posters of Jackie Chan or Sandra Bul ock or

someone super-famous and probably not at al poet-y. I liked Moody Boy even more when I saw that he’d underlined my favorite part of the

poem:

I am living. I remember you.

I had no idea how Marie Howe and Two Boots Pizza and The Godfather could possibly be co

answer.

I read and re-read the passage. I am living. I remember you. I don’t real y get poetry, but I had to give the poetess credit: nice.

Two people sat in the booth next to me, set ing down some rental videos on their table. That’s when I realized the co

of the corner video store. This particular Two Boots location also had a video store at ached to it.

I dashed over to the video section like it was the bathroom after I’d accidental y ingested some Louisiana hot sauce on top of my calzone. I

immediately went to where The Godfather was. The movie wasn’t there. I asked the clerk where I’d nd it. “Checked out,” she said.

I returned to the G section anyway and found, mis-shelved, The Godfather I I. I opened up the case and—yes!—another Post-it note, in Snarl’s

scrawl:

Nobody ever checks out Godfather I I. Especial y when it’s mis led. Do you want another clue? If so, nd Clueless. Also mis led, where sorrow

meets pity.

I returned to the clerk’s counter. “Where does sorrow meet pity?” I asked, ful y expecting an existential answer.

The clerk didn’t look up from the comic book she was reading under the counter. “Foreign documentaries.”