Dash And Lily's Book Of Dares: the sparkling prequel to Twelves Days of Dash and Lily

Benny rolled over and looked at the clock next to Langston’s bed. “Ay, mamacita, it’s what o’clock in the morning? Eight? Merde merde merde, and during Christmas break, when it’s like the law to sleep in till noon? Ay, mamacita … GO BACK TO SLEEP!” Benny rolled over onto his stomach and placed his pillow over his head to get started right away, I guess, on dreaming in Spanglish.

I was pretty tired myself, since I’d gotten up at 4 a.m. to make my mystery snarly friend a special present. I wouldn’t have minded taking a nap on the floor next to Langston like when we were kids, but I suspected if I suggested such a thing on this particular morning, in this particular company, Langston would repeat his standby refrain:

“Did you hear me, Lily? GET OUT OF MY ROOM!”

He actually did say that. I wasn’t imagining he might say it.

“But I’m not allowed to go to the movies by myself,” I reminded Langston. At least, that was the rule when I was eight. Mom and Dad had never clarified whether the rule had been amended as I’d aged.

“Of course you’re allowed to go to the movies by yourself. And even if you’re not, I’m in charge while Mom and Dad are gone, and I hereby authorize you. And the sooner you leave my room, the sooner your curfew gets bumped from eleven p.m. to midnight.”

“My curfew is ten p.m. and I’m not allowed to be outside alone late at night.”

“Guess what? Your new curfew is no curfew, and you can stay out as long as you want, with whomever you want, or be alone, I don’t care, just make sure your phone is turned on so I can call you to make sure you’re still alive. And feel free to get wasted drunk and fool around with boys and—”

“LA LA LA LA LA,” I said, my hands over my ears to block out Langston’s dirty talk. I turned around to step out of his room but leaned back in to ask, “What are we making for pre–Christmas Eve dinner? I was thinking we could roast some chestnuts and—”

“GET OUT!” Langston and Benny both yelled.

So much for day before the day before Christmas Eve cheer. When we were little, the Christmas countdown began a week in advance and always started with either Langston or me greeting each other at breakfast by saying, “Good morning! And happy day before the day before the day before the day before Christmas!” And so on until the real day.

I wondered what kind of monsters lurked in theaters to prey on people sitting by themselves because their brothers wouldn’t get out of bed to take them to the movies. I figured I’d better get mean real fast so I could be prepared for any dangerous scenario. I got dressed, wrapped my special present, then stood in front of the bathroom mirror, where I practiced making scary faces that would ward off any movie monsters preying upon single-seated persons.

As I practiced my meanest face—tongue wagging out, nose crinkled, eyes at a most hateful glare—I saw Benny standing behind me in the bathroom hallway. “Why are you making kitten faces in the mirror?” he asked, yawning.

“They’re mean faces!” I said.

Benny said, “Look, that outfit you’re wearing is gonna scare papi off more than your mean kitten face. What are you wearing, Little Miss Quinceañera Gone Batshit?”

I looked down at my outfit: oxford uniform school shirt tucked into a knee-length lime-green felt material skirt with a reindeer embroidered on it, candy-cane-colored swirled stockings, and beat-up Chucks on my feet.

“What’s the matter with my outfit?” I asked, smiling upside down into a … *shudder* … frown. “I think my outfit is very festive for the day before the day before Christmas. And for a movie about a reindeer. Anyway, I thought you went back to sleep.”

“Bathroom break.” Benny inspected me head to toe. “No,” he said. “The shoes don’t work. If you’re gonna go with that outfit, you might as well go all out. C’mon.”

He took my hand and dragged me to the closet in my room. He perused through the heaps of Converse sneakers. “You don’t got no other types of shoes?” he said.

“Only in our old dress-up-clothes trunk,” I said, joking.

“Perfect,” he said.

Benny darted over to the old trunk in the corner of my room, pulling out tulle tutus, yards of muumuus, #1 FAN baseball caps, fireman hats, princess slippers, platform shoes, and an alarming number of Crocs, until finally he grabbed for our Great-aunt Ida’s retired tasseled majorette boots, with taps still on the toes and heels. “These fit you?” Benny asked.

I tried them on. “A little big, but I guess.” The boots spiced up my candy-cane-colored stockings nicely. I liked.

“Awesome. They’ll go great with your winter hat.”

My winter head-warming accessory of choice is a vintage red knit hat with pom-poms dangling down from the ears. It’s “vintage” in the sense of being a hat I made for my fourth-grade school Christmas pageant production of A ChristmasCarol(ing) A-go-go, the Dickens-inspired disco musical I had to heavily lobby our school principal to allow to be staged. Some people are so rigidly secular.

My outfit complete, I walked outside toward the subway. I almost returned inside to change my shoes from the majorette boots to my old familiar Chucks, but the tapping noises from my feet hitting the pavement were comfortingly festive, so I didn’t, even though the boots were too big and my feet kept almost walking right out of them. (These boots were made for … slipping out of … la la la … ha ha ha.)

I had to acknowledge that despite my excitement to follow the trail of mystery snarl, any boy who left me a ticket to see Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer would unlikely turn out to be a keeper. The title, quite simply, offended me. Langston says I should have a better sense of humor about these things, but I don’t see what’s so funny about the idea of a reindeer going after one of our senior friends. It is a known fact that reindeers are herbivores who subsist on plant life and shun meat, so I hardly think they’d be gunning for someone’s gramma. It upset me to think about a reindeer harming Gramma, because we all know that if that happened in the real world and not in the movies, then the Wildlife Service would go hunting for that reindeer and do away with the poor antlered guy when it was probably Gramma’s fault getting in his way like that! She always forgets to wear her glasses and osteoporosis hunches her walk and slows her down. She’s like a walking bull’s-eye for dear ol’ Bambi!

I figured the whole point of bothering going to the movie at all would be to possibly get a look at mystery boy. But the dares he’d left inside my stocking with the Moleskine notebook, on a Post-it note placed onto the movie ticket, had said:

DON’T read what I wrote in the notebook until you’re at the theater. DO write down your worst Christmas memory in the notebook. DON’T leave out the most horrific details. DO leave the notebook behind for me, behind Mama’s behind. Thank you.

I believe in honor. I didn’t read the notebook ahead of time, which would be like peeking in your parents’ closet to see your Christmas present stash, and I vowed to hold off reading it until after the movie.

As prepared as I’d been to dislike Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, I was completely unprepared for what I’d find at the cinema. Outside the theater showing this particular movie, there were rows of strollers in uniform formation against the wall. Inside was complete pandemonium. The 10 a.m. show, apparently, was the Mommy and Me viewing, where moms could bring their babies and toddlers to watch really inappropriate movies while the little ones babbled and burped and cried to their hearts’ content. The theater was a cacophony of “Wah wah” and “Mommy, I want …” and “No!” and “Mine!” I barely had a chance to pay attention to the movie, what with having Goldfish crackers and Cheerios thrown in my hair from the aisles behind me, watching Legos hurl through the air, and unsticking Great-aunt Ida’s taps from the sippy cup liquid spillage on the floor.

Children frighten me. I mean, I appreciate them on a cute aesthetic level, but they’re very demanding and unreasonable creatures and often smell funny. I can’t believe I ever was one. Hard to believe, but I was more put off by the movie theater than the movie. I only made it through twenty minutes of watching the black comedian man playing a fat mama on the screen while rows of mommies tried to negotiate with their toddlers in the seats before I couldn’t take it any longer.

I got up from my seat and went outside the movie theater to get some peace and quiet in the lobby so I could finally read the notebook. But two mommies returning from taking their toddlers to the potty accosted me before I could dig in.

“I just love your boots. They’re adorable!”

“Where did you get that hat? Adorable!”

“I AM NOT ADORABLE!” I shrieked. “I’M JUST A LILY!”

The mommies stepped back. One of them said, “Lily, please tell your mommy to get you an Adderall prescription,” as the other tsk-tsk’d. They quickly hustled their tykes back into the cinema and away from the Shrieking Lily.

I found a hiding place behind a huge, standing cardboard cutout advertisement for Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. I sat down cross-legged behind the cutout and opened the notebook. Finally.

His words made me so sad.

But they made me especially glad I’d gotten up at four that morning to make him cookies. Mom and I had been making the dough all month and storing it in the freezer, so all I’d had to do was thaw out the various flavors, place them in the cookie press, and bake. Voilà! I made a cornucopia tin of spritz cookies in all the available flavors (a strong affirmation of faith that Snarl would be worthy of such efforts): chocolate snowflake, eggnog, gingerbread, lebkuchen spice, mint kiss, and pumpkin. I’d decorated the spritz cookies with appropriate sprinkles and candies according to each one’s flavor and wrapped a bow around the cookie tin.

I took out my headphones and tuned my iPod to Handel’s Messiah so I could concentrate on writing. I resisted the urge to mock-conduct with the pen in my hand. Instead, I answered Mystery Boy’s question.

My only bad Christmas was the year I was six.

That was the year that my pet gerbil died in a horrible incident at show-and-tell at school about a week before Christmas break.

I know, I know, it sounds funny. It wasn’t. It was actually a gruesome massacre.

I’m sorry, but despite your DON’T request, I must leave out the horrific details. The memory is still that vivid and upsetting to me.

The part that really scarred me—separate from the guilt and loss of my pet, of course—was that I earned a nickname after the incident. I had screamed like heck when it happened, but my rage, and grief, were so big, and real, even to such a little person, that I couldn’t make myself STOP screaming. Anyone at school who tried to touch or talk to me, I just screamed. It was like basic instinct. I couldn’t help myself.

That was the week I became known at school as Shrilly. That name would stay with me through elementary and middle school, until my parents finally moved me to a private school for high school.

But that particular Christmas was my first week as Shrilly. That holiday, I mourned not only the loss of my gerbil but also thatbizarre kind of innocence that kids have, believing they can always fit in.

That was the Christmas I finally understood what I’d heard family members whisper in worry about me: that I was too sensitive, too delicate. Different.

It was the Christmas I realized Shrilly was the reason I didn’t get invited to birthday parties, or why I always got picked last for teams.