Peter wasn’t quite sure why, exactly, he agreed to this childish game of Truth or Dare with his younger sister and her honey-haired new friend Stella.  They’d picked a spot in the living room out in the center of the carpet, sprawled in a circle with the tiny freshman seated on the ground, flanked on either side by the bare legs of each towering girl that essentially formed curved cliffsides for him, so there wasn’t really a way to try sneaking off now under the pretension that he had other things to do, when Jessica knew perfectly well he didn’t.  More importantly, he’d agreed to hang out with her this evening after so many missed occasions for bonding, and he had to honor that promise.

                So here he was, watching the massive girls occasionally reaching out into a plastic pink bowl containing a rainbow assortment of M&M’s as they took turns asking each other for candid opinions on their classmates, and occasionally him for admissions as well, though none of them were particularly taxing yet.  Mostly it had to do with things he’d seen or done during his brief tenure at the high school, and thankfully he hadn’t been there long enough to have accrued a particularly daring history.  His sister had set a generously portioned and crunchy red chocolate candy into his lap to be eaten at his leisure.  However, Peter was still pretty full from the popcorn at the movies, so mostly its shell was just melting into his hands.

                He suspected his willingness to join this eagerly proposed game had something to do with the fact that he was so cosmically elated after the time he’d spent with Lisa this evening that he was fairly certain he’d willingly comply with any request, from dragging the mountainous garbage can outside on his own, to dressing up in a tuxedo for Jessica and going on a follow-up date with one of her Barbies like she’d enacted innumerable times in her elementary school years.  Considering the range of options, it wasn’t hard to say yes to this seemingly simple request.

                Unfortunately, the more he glanced over to Stella, he was beginning to feel the tiniest twinge of regret.  Not much, as he reminded himself for the umpteenth time that younger acquaintances deserved a free pass for staring at him because they didn’t know any better.  Still, he’d have been lying to say it was a bit unnerving to see the cross-legged teenage dancer eyeing him so openly without even the courtesy of doing it when she thought he wasn’t looking.  Evidently, she wasn’t bothered with the possibility of him feeling intimidated by her already impressive five-foot-seven frame, considering she’d only just escaped the window of the tweenage years.  Peter guessed it was ideal for leaping about the dance floor on the balls of her feet, though for his purposes of having to watch her monumental being looking upon him like an especially enrapturing zoo exhibit, it wasn’t much appreciated.

                If anything, her eyes only widened when she received his returned attention, her slender brows bouncing a few times at him, and the rest of her body reacted in subtle ways as well.  Her feet were encased in thin lint-trekked gray socks that were resting on their sides a mere matter of paced away from where he sat on the carpet amongst the twin titans.

                The long toes within the tight fabric scrunched aggressively as if to wave to him, and though he couldn’t be certain, they seemed to be crawling closer and closer to him as the minutes ticked by, with Stella steadily stretching out her leg to put Peter closer to the fabric-covered underside of her foot.  However, he decided it was best not to get needlessly paranoid over the random bodily motions of a young girl, and instead refocused his attention on the game.

                “Okay,” Stella said, a conspiratory grin spreading over her lips in such a way that Peter couldn’t help but feel even more insecure.  Even vulnerable, though with Jessica seated right beside him, he couldn’t imagine why.  “We’ve done a lot of truths now… I think it’s time we make it a little more fun.  Right?”

                “Right!” Jessica giggled with an egregious nod.  She herself had been picking more truths than dares in comparison to the apparently youthful daredevil that was her dance class compatriot, and was clearly willing to jump at the chance to prove herself given the divide.  In fact, in her eagerness, she’d completely forgotten to turn to Peter to request his opinion, something she generally did without even thinking.

                “Great!” Stella said, clearly content to disregard Peter’s view on the matter as well.  “I’ve got just the thing, then.”  Her fingers slid into the immodestly short shorts that revealed such a generous length of her thin legs, toned by rigorous routines and bounds in front of a floor-length mirror.  Incredibly, she actually managed to fish something out of a hidden pocket, returning with a gleaming quarter centered in her expansive palm, which Peter was only able to see by craning his neck.

                “Are… you going to flip it to decide what we do?” Jessica questioned, still smiling but clearly nervous at the prospect of what she might be asked to do if she received the dreaded secondary option of the game.  She played nervously with the ends of her bleach-blonde locks, batting at them with her thumb with sharp, jutting movements: something Peter noticed, and reflected as something she generally only did when especially anxious.  At least he was in good company in this regard.

                “You got it!” Stella chuckled, tossing the coin over in her hand, allowing it to topple through the air for a fleeting moment before capturing it again under her folding fingers with a soft slap of her flesh against the warm metal.  “Trust me.  It makes this waaaay better.  No one can chicken out of what they get.  Fair’s fair, for everybody.  You know?”

                “I guess that makes sense,” Jessica agreed.  At last she looked down to her tiny brother beside her leg, smiling in search for reassurance.  “Ready to play, Peter?”

                “Of course he’s ready to play,” Stella cut in before the boy could open his mouth and consider voicing a potential objection to the loss of agency here.  She, too, looked to Peter, letting the glow of her eyes sink into him.  “I mean, it’s not like he could be afraid of a dare.  He’s a big high school boy, after all, right?”

                Jessica didn’t react, clearly missing the subtext of that jab, but the curved smirk that quickly played across Stella’s youthful lips to Peter with immediate effectiveness that she was poking fun at him, even challenging him.  Which made him feel all the more foolish to let some stupid dreg of pride get the better of him and spew out the words in a frigid tone before he could stop himself: “I’m not afraid of anything.”

                “Awesome.  I didn’t think you were,” Stella responded coolly, nodding her head and raising an eyebrow again to indicate she was more just placating him like an overexcited toddler than actually accepting his answer as an admission of reality.  Which, Peter supposed, wasn’t terribly inaccurate of her, since he was indeed afraid of numerous things in the world, many of them entirely practical considering the risk of being trodden into paste beneath a tennis shoe tread.

                “Who goes now?” Jessica asked quietly.  “Do we start over?”

                “I think it’s your turn now,” Stella said.  An impish curl on her lips, she tossed the coin over to Jessica, who fumbled awkwardly and caught the currency against her chest, at last cupping it into her palm.  “Which means your big high school brother gets to challenge you, whatever it is.  Heads is truth, tails is dare.”

                “Okay…” the girl sighed, giving the quarter a flip and letting it cascade onto the back of her hand.  She flinched at the sight of the eagle, but seemed to relax a little when she remembered it was her caring sibling issuing the dare rather than the edgy thirteen-year-old across from her.

                “Get her good,” Stella hissed good-naturedly down to Peter, causing to wince almost as broadly as his sister.

                “Okay.  Um… I dare you to… call up the pizza place down the street, and try to order a stir fry,” Peter drawled, attempting to make the command easier with each syllable.

                “Sure!” Jessica laughed.  There was evident relief in her voice that he hadn’t asked her to prank call her crush or toilet papering the neighbors’ hydrangeas.  She whipped her cell phone out and immediately began pounding the digits in after double-checking the number.

                “Wow,” Stella groaned under her breath, clearly more than underwhelmed by the ease of the dare.  “You guys go hardcore, huh?”

                “You bet we do,” Peter retorted almost defensively, though he kept a smile on his face as he watched Jessica carry out the dare and mostly fail to hold back her giggling as she made the absurd request to the hapless restaurant and finally close the device up again.  She placed a hand over her mouth, still quivering with erupting chuckles: “They hung up on me.”

                Next up was Stella, who tossed the coin into the air with impressively pinpoint accuracy to keep it centered over her hand.  It spun end-over-end at least ten feet up before plopping directly back into her creased palm again, which Peter couldn’t help but be impressed by.  When it came up heads, her shoulders visibly deflated.

                “You didn’t want truth?” Jessica snickered.

                “Truth sucks,” Stella declared, crossing her arms.  “All right, Jess, what are you givin’ me?”

                “Have you… ever made out with someone?” Jessica posed delicately, clearly enamored with learning this spicy tidbit at first but quickly becoming embarrassed to even mention such a longshot of a fairy tale.

                Stella sputtered out a demeaning chortle.  “That’s it?  You’re sure?  Yeah, of course I have.  Plenty of times.  Probably with… three different boys.  No, four.”

                “Wow,” Jessica uttered, bowled completely over emotionally and almost physically as she placed her hands down against the carpet, nearly bumping Peter in the knees with her thumb.  The concept of lip-locking, let alone with wrapping tongues and saliva exchange, was obviously such a foreign concept to Jessica that she’d been half-joking when she selected the question.  “That’s… that’s…”

                “It’s not a big deal,” Stella said, blowing it off just a little too haughtily, and churning her tongue around the inside of her cheeks.  “Okay.  Big high school boy.  You’re… up.  And I choose your challenge.”

                Peter tried not to let his frown become too visible as he lifted the edge of the coin up from the carpet where Stella had placed it.  There was no sense feeding into the girl’s impolite games by giving her a reaction.  He was the older one, after all.  It was on him to set an example and inspire some maturity, however much he was starting to doubt it would be possible with someone as thoroughly self-confident as the pixieish dancer.

                Trying not to grunt too loudly at the awkwardness of his grip, the miniscule freshman lugged the coin up against his stomach and gave it enough of a toss for the quarter to flip a few times in midair and plunk back onto the ground.

                Tails.

                Of course.

                “Perfect,” Stella huffed shallowly, clearly just a little too excited about this opportunity.  From the sound of her voice, Peter couldn’t help but wonder if she’d suggested the inclusion of the coin in the rules exclusively to arrange this exact scenario between the pair of them.  It was only now he realized that, based on where they started in the line-up, she’d made it possible to control his fate in the game.

                An instant later, it went from a suspicion to an essential confirmation.

                “I dare you… to stick your face in my sock,” Stella sniggered triumphantly, lowering her voice enough that no one outside the room could’ve picked up on her vindictive tone.  “And take a deep breath.”