Excerpt: Can We? Shall We?

Well then.
If that’s what he thinks. If he thinks that I’m a paranoid, obsessive-compulsive worrier… then he… well… he’s wrong. I’m not. I’m just… careful.
But honestly, I’ve known Giggle Pocket my whole entire life, since forever. And he seriously thinks that I don’t take any risks? That I live life too cautiously? Who’s he to say that? He’s got no right to tell me I’m being a teenager the wrong way.

“Tustin,” he said to me, with that annoying smirk of his. “Tustin, live a little, will you? I dare you.”

I had to stop at that. Giggle and I had grown up together. I wouldn’t say we were friends, necessarily, but our mothers were, and we were neighbours, and so we had been stuck together for the past sixteen years. Anyway, when we were younger, we were crazy on dares. Everything was a dare. Even stuff that didn’t need to be a dare was a dare.

“Hey Tustin,” Giggle used to say. “I dare you to pass me the salt.”

Naturally, as we grew up a bit, the dares became less frequent. Mostly because Giggle’s dares became too out-there for me, and I refused to do them. I guess that’s where he gets the impression that I’m… careful. Like, when I was twelve, I didn’t want to eat an ant. Or the time I wouldn’t walk around the block, by myself, at midnight. Yeah, these would be about the time Giggle had me labelled as a goodie-goodie and stopped daring me.

I turned around to look at Giggle and his stupid, annoying smirk. “Oh. Right. You dare me. Giggle, the last time you dared me, I broke my arm. So, sorry if I don’t drop everything to “live a little”.

“Aw, come on Tuzzy-“

“My name is not Tuzzy, Giggle. I would have thought you’d noticed by now that I don’t like any of the nicknames you’ve tried to give me over the years.”

“Not even [BEGINNING OF EMBARRASSING NICKNAME HERE]-?”

“And especially not [EMBARRASSING NICKNAME HERE]!”

Later that night, I was in my room, getting ready for bed, when I heard a crashing noise outside. I pulled my dressing gown around me, and walked over to my window.

“Hey! Tuzzy! Sure you don’t want to go to Luca’s party with me?”

It was Giggle. He insisted on sneaking out his bedroom window when he was going out, for the sake of his friends, who stood on the road waiting for him. They all thought he was some cool, risky rebel. I knew he actually kissed his mum goodbye each time, and promised her that he would be back before his curfew. Also, there hadn’t been a time to date that he hadn’t made his curfew. He wasn’t really all that more rebellious than I was. He just liked to pretend.

“Aw, it’s a shame, Giggle,” I said sarcastically. “I totally would have, but I have other plans tonight.”

“Oh, pity. Let me guess. You’re hanging out with Edward and Bella.”

“Ooh, close. Actually, it’s Harry,” I held up my well-worn copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. “But hey, maybe next time, right?”

“I’m going to hold you to that, Tustin Johnson.” By this point, Giggle had jumped the fence between our houses and was leaning on my open window. “I dare you to come with me the next time I go out.”

I leant on my window too, our faces just centimetres apart. I looked over to the road, and then back to Giggle. “I think your friends think you ditched them to hang out with Harry and me,” I said, hit him over the head with my novel, and shut my window, smiling.

As he walked over to his friends, Giggle waved to me over his shoulder. I watched them start to walk down our street, and then continue on to dance around the corner.