Double Dog Dare (12 page)

“Dares?” Kansas’s voice was squeakier than a chipmunk’s.

“Yes.
Dares
.” Mrs. Weinmore frowned. “Is there any truth to that statement?” Kansas shook his head, whip-fast. “Ah. So then what, may I ask”—Mrs. Weinmore reached into the trash can and pulled out a mound of used ketchup packets—“is all
this
?”

“
Um … ketchup?”

Mrs. Weinmore shot the ketchup packets back into the garbage. Flecks of red splattered her fingers. “Young man,” she spat, “I realize you’re new to our school, but let me be the first to tell you that pranks and high jinks will not be tolerated here. Nor,” she went on, “are they the way to make girls fall in love with you.”

Kansas’s eyes went wide. Girls?
Love?
What the heck was she talking about?

“I expect you to be on your very best behavior from now on, do you hear me, Kansas Bloom?”

Kansas nodded. And then, as quietly as he could manage …

“Aaaaaaaah-oo—”

Mrs. Weinmore stuck a fat, red finger right in his face. “I’ll be keeping a very careful eye on you. Do you understand?”

Kansas nodded. His legs had gone numb. He was pretty sure his
spleen
had gone numb.

“Now,” Mrs. Weinmore went on, her face as cold as stone, “why don’t the two of you race on back to class before the tardy bell rings, hmm?”

Kansas and Luis didn’t need to be told twice.

“Jeez,” Kansas whispered as they scuttled down the hallway. “Is she always that scary?”

“Yes,” Luis replied quickly. He checked over his shoulder just as they arrived at Miss Sparks’s room. “Who do you think ratted you out about the dares?”

That was one question Kansas knew the answer to right away. “Francine,” he replied. That sneaky little fink, trying to get him in trouble so she’d win the war. “It was definitely Francine.”

The way Ginny was hopping from one foot to another, it either meant she was super excited or that she had to pee.

“We’re going to the park!” she sang. “We’re going to the park!”

Kansas rolled his eyes at her as she danced her way toward the pick-up spot in front of the school. At least she didn’t have to pee, he thought.

“Ginny, calm down. You’re making me bonkers.”

“Park park park park park!” she sang, still hopping. She was wearing her sparkly tutu again. Now that she knew it
had helped Kansas’s class win an ice cream party on Friday, she said she wanted to wear it to school every day so she could win ice cream too.

“He’s not even here yet,” Kansas said. “Why don’t you just wait to do all your hopping till he actually picks us up?”

Ginny stopped hopping. “Don’t say that. He’s coming, and you know it. And then when he lives here, he can take us to the park all the time. You want to see me cartwheel?”

With that, Ginny was halfway down the front lawn, turning hand over face as she attempted one cartwheel after another. It was about as impressive as her headstand.

Kansas was so busy watching Ginny, making sure she didn’t break her leg or worse, that he didn’t even notice Francine until she was standing right in front of him.

“Kansas Bloom!”
she hollered. She didn’t look sick anymore, just angry. Kansas had liked her better when she’d been queasy.

Kansas pulled his attention away from his sister. “What do you want?” he growled at Francine.

“Ha!” she cried. “You didn’t do it. You were supposed to howl.”

“
School’s over,” he replied. “And I already got the point.”

Francine stuck her hands on her hips. “Why don’t you just give up already?” she said. “You don’t even care about Media Club.”

“Why don’t
you
give up?” Kansas asked. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.” Then, because he could, Kansas decided to really get her where it hurt. “You’re never going to win anyway. It’s five to four. You know you’ll never beat me.”

Francine was just opening her mouth—to say something obnoxious, most likely—when from across the lawn came the sound of Ginny’s voice.

“
Kan-
sas!” she hollered. “
Kan
-SAS! You’re not watching me! You gotta watch me cartwheel! I’m going to cartwheel in the talent show and win the prize!”

Kansas whirled around. All he could make out was a sparkly white tumbling blob. “Just a second!” he shouted back to her. “Sheesh!”

“Who’s that?” Francine said. “Your lame sister?”

Kansas spun back around. “You leave my sister
alone,
” he told her.

“
Oh, yeah?” Francine said. “And what if I don—”

Kansas didn’t know where the growl came from, but it was fierce.
“MY SISTER KNOWS KUNG FU!”
he bellowed. It was so loud he was pretty sure the entire state heard it. It was loud enough to startle Francine. “You leave her alone,” he said again, and then he turned and crossed the lawn to watch Ginny cartwheel.

“You just wait, Kansas Bloom!” Francine hollered at him as he walked away. “I’m going to win, you’ll see! You just
wait
!”

Kansas waited awhile, but it wasn’t for Francine. Fifteen minutes later, when everyone else had cleared out of the parking lot, Kansas and Ginny were still standing there. Waiting.

“Ginny?” He looked over at her as she swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. She was done cartwheeling. Kansas sort of wished she’d start again. “I’m sure he’s just stuck in traffic or something,” he said. “Stay here, okay? I’m going to call him.”

Inside the office, Kansas asked if he could use the
telephone. “My dad’s late picking me up,” he told the secretary. She nodded.

Kansas dialed his dad’s new cell phone number, the one he’d given them the day before. The phone rang once, then twice, then three times. Kansas was gearing up to leave a message when his father answered.

“Nicholas Bloom.”

“Dad?” Kansas said. “Where are you?”

“Kansas! Hey, champ. I just hit Mount Shasta on I-5. Making good time. How was school?”

“Dad?” All of a sudden Kansas felt a lump in his throat. He’d known it all along, that their dad wasn’t going to pick them up, and now his throat had gone
lumpy
? What was his throat going to lump at next? The sky being blue? “You’re driving home?”

“Yeah. I was supposed to be at work today.” Kansas could hear traffic rushing past on the other end of the line. “The boss is going to be furious. Good seeing you yesterday, though. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye this morning.”

Kansas could see the secretary watching him across the
desk, but her eyes darted away quickly when she noticed him looking. He turned and faced the door. “But you were going to take us to the park,” he said, and he knew even as he said it that he sounded pathetic. He could see his own sniveling six-year-old self, crying on the phone three years ago: “But you said … you
promised
!” Kansas swallowed hard, but the lump was still there. “Ginny was really excited about it,” he said.

“Oh, yeah,” his dad replied. “But the park will still be there next time, right? I really have a lot I need to get done this week. Should’ve driven back last night, really.”

“But—”

“Listen, champ, I’d love to chat more, but I’m not supposed to talk on the cell when I’m driving. Wouldn’t want your old man to get a ticket, would you? But I’ll talk to you soon! Tell Ginny I love her.”

Kansas gripped the receiver so hard he could feel his heartbeat in his palm. “Tell her yourself,” he said. And he hung up the phone.

When he turned back around, the secretary was looking at him with a slight frown.

“
Everything all right?” she asked him.

Kansas wiped his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I just …” She looked concerned. What right did she have to be
concerned
about him? She didn’t even
know
him. “I just got confused. Someone else is supposed to pick me and my sister up.”

“Oh.” She nodded, but Kansas could tell she didn’t believe him. “Okay.”

“Can I make another call?”

“Go right ahead.”

Kansas’s mom was still at work, so Kansas called Mrs. Muñoz, who seemed more than thrilled to pick him and Ginny up from school.

“You got it all worked out?” the secretary asked after he’d hung up, her voice all sugar sweetness.

Kansas pretended he hadn’t heard her and shuffled out of the office without saying a word.

“When’s he gonna get here?” Ginny said as soon as Kansas reached her. They were the only two people left outside. All the kids were gone; all the cars were gone.

Kansas blinked.

“He’s not,” he said.

“
What do you mean he’s not?” Ginny asked. “What did you say to him? Why isn’t he coming?”

Because he never comes
. That’s what Kansas wanted to say.
Because he’s the worst dad in the world, and you should just give up on him now and save yourself a lot of trouble
. That was the truth, and if Ginny could just figure it out, she’d be better off in the long run. Kansas had figured it out, and look how well he was doing.

“He …” Kansas opened his mouth to say it, but the words wouldn’t come. “He had an emergency,” he said at last. “At work. He really wanted to come, but he couldn’t.”

Ginny started crying again then. They weren’t the big blubbery tears she usually cried, but silent, sad, gulpy ones. Somehow those seemed worse.

Kansas put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it—not super tight so she’d think he was actually trying to hug her, but just enough so that maybe he really was. “He”—he took a breath—“he says to say he loves you.”

Ginny was silent for a long time, and Kansas just stood there, awkwardly, in his semihug-semipat, praying that every car that passed by the school would belong to Mrs. Muñoz.

Jeez, how slow did she drive anyway?

Ginny pulled away from Kansas and sat down on the curb, her arms cradling the pink Barbie backpack in her lap.

“Ginny?” Kansas sat down next to her, but she didn’t look at him. “Ginny?”

When she answered him, her voice was a whisper. “What’s kung fu?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“You told that girl I know kung fu. When you were shouting, before.”

“Oh.” He let out a tiny laugh. “Kung fu’s like karate.”

Ginny scratched her head. “I don’t know how to do it,” she told him.

“I know,” Kansas said. “I was lying.”

“Oh.”

Kansas stared at the street a while longer, focusing and unfocusing his eyes so the cars became blurry streaks as they whizzed by.

“Hey, Kansas?”

“Yeah, Gin?”

“Don’t lie anymore, ’kay?” she said. She kicked a pebble on the ground in front of her. “I don’t like when people lie.”

Kansas was helping Ginny with her homework at the kitchen table when the doorbell rang.

“Subtraction is, like, the easiest thing on earth,” he told her for the twelfth time. “You could get it if you tried.”

The doorbell rang again.

“You gonna get the door?” Ginny asked, her forehead wrinkled in that way it did when she was in a particularly bad mood. She’d been acting rotten ever since Mrs. Muñoz had driven them home. Kansas didn’t see what she was being so terrible to him for. He wasn’t the one who ditched them to drive back to Oregon. “Or you gonna be a dumbhead some more?”

“Don’t call me a dumbhead,” Kansas replied.

“Dumbhead, dumbhead, dumbhead, dumbhead …”

Kansas got up to see who was at the door.

It was their mother, holding two armfuls of groceries. “Thanks,” she said, pushing past him when he opened the door. “I couldn’t get the doorknob. There’s three more bags in the car, will you help?”

Kansas grumbled his way out to the driveway and picked through the trunk until he found the lightest bag. “Ginny!”
he hollered as he came back into the kitchen. “Mom said you have to help with the groceries!”

“I’m doing subtraction, dumbhead!” she shouted back at him.

Kansas’s mother was putting vegetables into the refrigerator. “How was the park?” she asked him. “And where’s your dad? I didn’t see his car.”

“We didn’t go to the park,” Kansas told her, setting the bag by the sink. He headed back out the door. Unloading groceries was better than talking to his mother. “And Dad’s in Mount Shasta!”

Even from the driveway Kansas could hear his mother’s
“What?”

“What?” she asked again, as soon as he’d walked back in the door. She grabbed the grocery bag from him and set it on the table, right on top of Ginny’s subtraction homework.

“Hey!” Ginny hollered.

“Kansas, what do you mean your father’s in Mount Shasta? How could he be there already when he just picked you up from school?”

“Well, he’s probably not even there anymore,” Kansas
said, pulling a box of Fruit Roll-Ups out of the grocery bag and ripping it open. “That was, like, two hours ago. He’s probably home by now.” He tore open a fruit roll and chomped on a corner, without even bothering to unroll it all the way.

“Kansas, dinner’s in a half hour,” his mother said. But she just watched him eat the fruit roll, didn’t grab it from him like she normally would have. “And what are you talking about?”

“Daddy didn’t take us to the stupid park,” Ginny said, shoving the paper bag off her homework. “He didn’t pick us up. We missed the bus, so Mrs. Muñoz had to get us.”