Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (28 page)

Below that, he’d drawn two figures 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 majorette 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 first 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 finally knew.

I nudged his arm.

I said:

“Wake up, Dash.”

Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
have written three books together. Their first,
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
, was made into a movie starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, directed by Peter Sollett. 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 email them to each other without planning anything out beforehand. That’s the way they work.

Rachel’s previous books include
Gingerbread, Shrimp, Cupcake, You Know Where to Find Me
, and
Very LeFreak
. David’s previous books include
Boy Meets Boy, The Realm of Possibility, Are We There Yet?, Wide Awake, Love Is the Higher Law
, and
How They Met, and Other Stories
.

For more information about Rachel and David, you can find them at
rachelcohn.com
and
davidlevithan.com
, respectively. You may also catch them in the aisles at the Strand.