Strike two had been when we’d gotten back to class, and both me and Rebecca had stood in front of the fan to cool off because it had been hot as hell outside. I’d made the mistake of saying that I wondered what the fan felt like as it spun around, and Carl had dared us to do that. This ended with us in adjacent cubicles in the ER, lucky to still have our fingers, and covered in blood from where those fingers were being stitched up. This was when we’d all been called into the principal’s office and asked what the hell we were thinking. Explaining our theory that when dares were issued they were mandatory to action, had made complete sense at that age, but sadly it turned out that it only made complete sense to us. The detention we’d all received had seemed unfair, the pain Rebecca and I were in was immense, but our resolve to never turn down a dare regardless meant we called ourselves ‘The Daredevils’ from that point onwards. Every group of friends has a certain ‘thing’ that they all bond over and this was ours, and it became our way of life, ranging from silly small dares to ‘oh, fuck my life’ sized ones. We had obviously gotten wiser with age, so stupid dares that endangered our lives, or that would lead to major injuries, could be vetoed, but smaller dares that added an edge to life? It was like an obsessive-compulsive thing – we had to do them. My approach to dares continued even after I’d left school, and I’d been lucky to have some pretty non-judgmental people come into my life as I grew up who’d just accepted it as one of my quirks. As it turned out, the dare thing wasn’t all stupid because my issues had come in handy when my ex-husband had smirked at me after I’d caught him with Rita and dared me to call the police. Maybe he should have paid more attention and dared me not to call them? I wish I’d been able to record his face when I’d just shrugged and said, “Accepted.”
I’d looked up things like this online and it turns out it’s a form of OCD. When you routinely do something throughout your childhood, you get into a routine with it and then it becomes part of your life and habits. Things like brushing your teeth, bathing, putting on underwear, putting on deodorant, sleeping on a certain side of the bed, accepting dares because it’s what you do… everyone has something. I couldn’t care less if someone said it was immature or stupid, because if they thought long and hard about it, they’d realize they had something from childhood that had stuck with them, and if dares were my worst vice, so be it.
Which led me to now. I had been anxiously wondering what the hell Ellis had in mind for tonight as I waited for him to pick me up. It’d been two days since he’d said his dare, and in that time I’d gone from idea to idea for what he had planned, but the truth was that I didn’t have a clue. He’d also told me to bring Olivia with us, so that opened up possibilities at the same time as closing others. The key word from the part about me anxiously wondering about the plan for tonight was ‘had’ though, just like I had been pulling my clothes on so that I could go and get Liv dressed to go out, but that had all screeched to a halt roughly twenty seconds ago. I’d already done my hair in a style that looked casual – and like I hadn’t expended any effort on it when it had actually taken me ages – and my makeup was done the same way. I’d decided while I was in the shower that I was going to wear cutoff jean shorts and a Bon Jovi tank top, so I’d had those ready to go, and had only just gotten my shorts on when I’d seen it. Or it had seen me? No, I’ll rephrase that – or it had been hunting me. Regardless, it was the biggest spider I’d ever seen in my whole damn life, and it was standing between where I was and the door, reared up on its hind legs. I’d frozen when I’d first noticed it, and then I’d shoved my fist in my mouth and tried to figure out if I could jump over its head without it launching itself up and biting me in the vagina. Then I’d decided that I wasn’t going to take that chance for a number of reasons. What if it didn’t let go after it latched on? Obviously, the first thing you convince yourself of is that it was venomous, and I’d seen on a wildlife documentary that showed how some spider and snake venom ate away at the flesh – who wanted that on their vagina? There was also the fact that I doubted I could even jump over it to begin with. I had zero co-ordination, so I’d probably lose my footing and then skid my lady garden into its jaws on the tile floor. Who wanted to be the one who accidentally put their vagina in a spider’s face? And how the hell would you tell a doctor in the ER that you’d been bitten in the cooter by a hooter of a spider?