Double Dog Dare (11 page)

“You’re next, champ,” Kansas’s dad told him. “You remember how I showed you to line it up?”

“I remember,” Kansas grumbled. He pulled the ball out of his pocket, lined it up, and got it through the windmill in one.

“Nice!” his dad exclaimed.

When they were all on the main part of the first hole, putting into the cup, Kansas’s dad asked him, “So, how’s the new school going so far, champ? You up to anything exciting?”

What Kansas
wanted
to say was that his dad would know exactly what he was up to if he bothered to call, like, ever.
But what he did say was, “No, not really.” He putted his ball into the hole and marked two strokes on the scorecard.

“Nothing at all?” his dad asked as Ginny lined up her shot. “You must be doing something fun.”

Ginny swung and missed, then missed again. “He’s in the newspaper club at school,” she told their father. “Aren’t you, Kansas?”

“Newspapers?” their dad asked. “That sounds pretty boring, doesn’t it?”

“It’s
Media
Club,” Kansas replied. “And I think it’s awesome. It’s the best club in the whole school, and everyone wants to be in it. I’m going to be the news anchor next semester.” Well, he probably would be. After last Friday’s dare, he was ahead four to three.

Ginny swung her sixth stroke and finally gave up, picking up her ball and plunking it in the hole. “I got six,” she told Kansas. He marked it down.

“News anchor doesn’t sound so bad,” Kansas’s father said as they walked to the second hole. It was the one with the swinging log in front of the hole. Kansas hated that kind. “But newspapers?” He scrunched up his face. “I
thought you were going to do basketball again this year. You were always pretty good at basketball.”

“This school doesn’t have basketball,” Kansas told him.

“Yes they do,” Ginny said. “’Member? Mom kept telling you to sign up, but you picked newspapers instead.”

“I didn’t have anywhere to practice,” Kansas replied.

“But Mr. Muñoz—”

Kansas poked her in the stomach.

“You know what we should do?” Kansas’s father said suddenly. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to the park. Huh, champ? I saw one near here, when I was looking for your house, and it had a great basketball court. Then you and I can get some practice in. And we can show Ginny here a couple moves too.”

Ginny was already jumping up and down with excitement. You’d think going to the park was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to her in her whole life.

Their father laughed. “Well, it’s settled then. I’ll pick you two up after school, and we’ll go to the park and shoot some hoops.”

“But Mom—” Kansas started.

“
I’ll work it all out with your mother, don’t you worry. All right, who shoots first on this hole? Kansas?”

After they’d finished all eighteen holes, their dad went inside to buy churros and soda while Kansas and Ginny waited at the tables outside. Kansas folded an old straw wrapper into an accordion, and Ginny bounced in her seat.

“Hey, Kansas, guess what,” she said.

“What?” he grumbled. She was rocking the bench so hard, Kansas felt like they were about to blast off into space.

“Dad’s gonna move here.”

Kansas looked up. “To the Putt-Putt?”

“No, silly. To California. Right near us.”

Kansas went back to his straw wrapper. “No he’s not,” he said.

“Yes he is. He said so.”

“No,” Kansas said, “he’s not.”

“He
told
me. When you were in the bathroom. He said the weather was really nice here and he missed us and he was gonna move here. And then we’ll see him all the time and—”

“
Ginny!” Kansas shouted. He couldn’t take it anymore. “He’s
not
gonna move here. He’s gonna leave again soon, just like before. So don’t get too used to having him around.”

Ginny narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re mean,” she told Kansas. “He is too gonna move here, you’ll see. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kansas let out a puff of air so strong that it blew his straw-wrapper accordion across the table. “Fine,” he told Ginny. It wasn’t worth the fight. He could see their father across the patio, walking toward them with their churros and sodas. He’d bought nachos and ice cream too. “I’m sorry.”

“You better be,” Ginny replied, just as their dad sat down beside them.

Kansas had known their dad a lot longer than Ginny—three years longer—and he knew that he wasn’t going to move to California, not ever, no matter what he said. Ginny was dead wrong for thinking he would. Kansas knew she was.

But, just for a second, Kansas wished he didn’t know it.

15.

Eighty-seven packets of ketchup

The bucket at the end of the lunch line in the school cafeteria held eighty-seven packets of ketchup. Francine knew that for a fact, because every last one of them was currently piled in front of her in an enormous heap.

“You gotta hurry,” Alicia said from across the lunch table. “You only have till the bell rings.”

Francine picked a packet off the table. “All of them?” she asked, hoping no one else could hear the quiver in her voice.

“That was the dare,” Luis replied. He frowned, as though he was starting to feel bad about his vote.
I double dog dare you to eat every single ketchup packet in the bucket in the cafeteria,
that was the dare Brendan had given her that
morning. And everyone in the Media Club had voted on it, unanimously. Even Natalie. It was totally unfair, Francine thought. All Kansas had to do was howl like a wolf every time someone said his name.

From the corner of the lunch table, Kansas folded his arms across his chest and grinned at her. “You ready to give up yet?” he said. “Because then you’d lose another point and it’d be five points to thr—”

Francine scowled at him. “You haven’t earned your fifth point yet,” she said, “
Kansas.
”

Kansas scowled right back at her, then opened up his mouth and …

“Aaaaaaaah-OOOOOOOH!”

Howled like a wolf.

Francine allowed herself a tiny smile. Maybe the dare they’d given Kansas was a pretty good one after all. She ripped off the corner of her ketchup packet.

She held it up to her mouth.

And she squeezed.

“That’s one,” she said after she’d swallowed all the ketchup down. She slapped the empty packet on the table. “Give me another one.”

Luis quickly ripped open another packet and handed it to Francine. “Two,” he said as she gulped.

It turned out that getting the ketchup dare wasn’t the worst thing to happen to Francine that day. The worst thing was that Natalie wouldn’t even look at her, wouldn’t even
glance
at her. Natalie hadn’t spoken to Francine once since they arrived at Media Club that morning, even when Francine had tried to explain about uninviting her to her house yesterday. And at first recess, Natalie had given Alicia her pudding cup.
Alicia
. She even let her have the plastic spoon.

Francine squeezed out the twenty-first ketchup packet. The back of her neck was starting to sweat.

Twenty-two. Her eyes were starting to water.

Twenty-three. Her head was just the tiniest bit achy.

Across the table, Alicia whispered something to Natalie, and they both giggled. Francine snatched another ketchup packet off the table and ripped it open.

Forty-four. Francine could feel her second wind coming on. She was guzzling ketchup faster than ever.

Fifty-one. Emma and Luis were now cheering her on, chanting, “
Fran
-cine!
Fran
-cine!”

Sixty-two. Francine was still going strong, although she
had to take a short break when Mr. DuPree passed by their table. Luis tossed his coat over the empty ketchup packets so he wouldn’t notice that they’d violated the two-ketchups-per-student rule.

Seventy. Francine burped. It smelled like rotten tomatoes. Everyone at the table inched back in their seats.

“Only two minutes till the lunch bell rings,” Brendan told her. “Feel like quitting yet?” Francine shook her head and soldiered on.

Seventy-one. Francine wiped her forehead. A long strand of green hair had fallen out of its braid, and she could feel ketchup smeared on her cheeks.

Seventy-five. She was going to make it. She would. She
had
to.

Eighty-three. Francine took a packet from Luis, and her hand shook as she held it. She stared at the ketchup for a minute, breathing deep, worried breaths. She just needed a moment. Everyone around the table sat silent, waiting.

Francine ate the ketchup.

Eighty-four. The group was becoming more excited than ever. Luis and Emma were chanting loudly, and even Alicia and Andre had joined in. “
Fran
-cine!
Fran
-cine!”

Eighty-five. Just two more left to finish.

Eighty-six. Emma cheered. Luis clapped. Alicia whooped. And then …

Ga-LOOP!

It was a distinctly awful sound, the sound of Francine’s lunch turning over in her stomach. Francine could tell by the look on the faces of everyone at the table that they had all heard it too. She felt queasier than she ever remembered feeling in her life. Eighty-six packets of ketchup, it turned out, was a lot.

“Are you gonna hurl?” Brendan asked, the sneer bright and clear on his face. “’Cause if you barf up all the ketchup, it doesn’t count.”

“Yeah,” Andre agreed. “Barfing doesn’t count.”

Francine swallowed hard. “I’m not going to barf,” she said. But—
ga-LOOP!—
her stomach disagreed.

From the corner of the table, Kansas frowned at her. “You don’t look so good,” he said. “Maybe you should go to the nurse’s office.”

“
You
don’t look so good,” Francine shot back, wiping the sweat off her forehead,
“KAN
-
sas.”

The wolf-howling
“Aaaaaaaah-OOOOOOOH!”
that
Kansas reluctantly unleashed was enough to get Francine through her very last packet of ketchup, number eighty-seven.

Francine dropped her head on the table. She’d done it. She had four points. At least for the moment, she and Kansas were tied.

Ga-LOOP!

Francine lifted her head, a ketchup packet pasted to her forehead. “Maybe I do need to go to the nurse’s office,” she said. She peeled the ketchup away from her head, slowly, then pulled one leg out from under the table and over the bench.

“I’ll go with you!” Emma said, leaping up from the table. She grabbed Francine under the armpit and hoisted her to her feet. “You okay?” she asked as they walked out of the cafeteria.

Francine glanced back at the table, where Brendan was continuing to make Kansas howl like a wolf and Alicia was continuing to make Natalie giggle. “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she said, draping her arm across Emma’s shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll be okay.”

16.

A JAR OF MUSTARD

“You think she’ll be okay?” Kansas asked as Emma helped Francine hobble off to the nurse’s office.

Brendan shrugged. “She’ll probably hurl,” he said.

“Yeah,” Andre agreed. “She’ll hurl for sure.”

“I hope not,” Natalie said, shooting worried glances toward the cafeteria door. “Maybe I should go see if she’s all right.” But she didn’t get up.

“She’s totally gonna hurl,” Brendan replied. “Anyone would barf with eighty-nine packets of ketchup inside them.”

“It was eighty-seven,” Kansas told him. “And I wouldn’t barf.”

“
Sure you would.”

Kansas shook his head. “The only dares that ever make me barf are spinning ones. Like one time Ricky and Will dared me to tie my shoelaces to the center of the merry-go-round at the park, and they spun me around a hundred times as fast as they could. And I totally puked.” Luis laughed. “Spinning always makes me puke,” Kansas said.

The bell rang, and Brendan rose to his feet. Andre rose too.

“Whatever,
Kansas,
” Brendan told him, tossing an empty ketchup packet across the table.

Kansas threw his head back and howled.
“Aaaaaaaah-OOOOOOOH!”

“Bye, Kansas!” Andre called as he and Brendan left the cafeteria.

“Aaaaaaaah-OOOOOOOH!”
Kansas wailed again.

Luis raised his camera to his face and snapped a picture. “Got it!” he told Kansas. “The perfect shot. You’re really gonna like that one.”

Natalie and Alicia had already left the cafeteria, and Kansas started to leave too, but then he noticed Luis, who
was tossing ketchup packets into the garbage. Leave it to Luis to clean up someone else’s mess. Kansas glanced at the cafeteria door, where fourth-graders were streaming out in droves, then sighed and turned to help Luis.

“Hey,” Luis said, scooping a handful of ketchup packets into the trash, “I meant to tell you. My mom moved my party from Saturday to Sunday. The weekend right after school’s out. You think you can come, or is that when you’re camping?”

Kansas focused his gaze on a particularly blobby ketchup stain on the table. “Um,” he said. Kansas didn’t really want to go to Luis’s party. It wasn’t going to be nearly as fun as camping with Ricky and Will. But what else did he have to do? “Yeah. I mean, I guess I can go.”

“Awesome!” Luis said. Kansas did his best to smile.

There was a tap on Kansas’s shoulder. Kansas could tell, by the way Luis’s face drained completely of color, that whoever was standing behind him was someone he absolutely did
not
want to see.

Slowly, he turned.

It was a large woman with a bulbous nose and
thick-rimmed glasses. She was wearing a suit, one of those lady ones with a skirt, and the fabric pinched at every button. She did not look happy.

“Kansas Bloom?” she said.

Kansas didn’t want to, but he had to. He darted his eyes toward Luis, who nodded slowly, his eyes wide with fear.
“Aaaaaaaah-OOOOOOOH!”
Kansas howled. And then he blinked. “Um, yeah,” he said. “That’s me.”

The woman pursed her lips together into one fierce line. “I’m Mrs. Weinmore,” she told him. “Your principal.”

“Oh,” Kansas squeaked. He’d just howled at the
principal
? “Um, hi.”

“A little birdie,” Mrs. Weinmore continued, studying Kansas’s face with angry eyes, “tells me that you’ve been engaging in
dares
.”