Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by David Levithan, Rachel Cohn Page B

Christmas is turning out not so swell, sweetheart. I promise you we’ll make it up to you on New Year’s Day. You take good care of Langston today and then have a nice Christmas dinner at Great-aunt Ida’s tonight. That will make you feel better, right?”
    My silence returned in the form of my head nodding up and down.
    Mom said, “What have you been doing with your time, dear?”
    I had no desire to tell her about the notebook. Not because I was UPSET about Fiji. But because it, and he,seemed to be the best part of Christmas so far. I wanted to keep them all for myself.
    I heard a moan from my brother’s room. “Lillllllllllllllyyyy …”
    For the sake of expediency, I typed a message to my parents rather than speak or write it on the eraser board.
Your sick son is calling to me from his sickbed. I must anon. Merry Christmas, parents. I love you. Please let’s not move to Fiji.
    “We love you!” they squealed from their side of the world.
    I signed off and walked toward my brother’s room. I stopped first at the bathroom to extract a disposable mask and gloves from the emergency preparedness kit to place over my mouth and hands. No way was I getting sick, too. Not with a red notebook possibly coming back my way.
    I went into Langston’s room and sat down next to his bed. Benny had decided to be sick at his own apartment, which I appreciated, since tending to not one but two patients on Christmas Day might have tipped me over the edge. Langston hadn’t touched the orange juice or saltines I left for him a few hours earlier, the last time he called “Lillllllllllllllyyyy …” to me from his room, at about the approximate time when on a normal Christmas morning we should have been ripping through our gifts.
    “Read to me,” Langston said. “Please?”
    I wasn’t speaking to Langston that day, but I would read to him. I picked up the book at the point where we’d left offthe night before. I read aloud from A Christmas Carol . “ ‘It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.’ ”
    “That’s a nice quote,” Langston said. “Underline it and fold down the page for me, will you?” I did as instructed. I can never decide what I think about my brother and his book passage quotes. Sometimes it’s annoying that I can never open a book in our home and not find some part of it that Langston has annotated. I’d like to figure out what I think about the words myself without having to see Langston’s handwritten comments, like lovely or pretentious BS next to it; on the other hand, sometimes it’s interesting to find his notes and to read them back and try to decipher why that particular passage intrigued or inspired him. It’s a cool way of getting inside my brother’s brain.
    A text message came through on Langston’s phone. “Benny!” he said, grabbing for it. Langston’s thumbs went into hyper-motion in response. I knew Mr. Dickens and I were finished for the time being.
    I left his room.
    Langston hadn’t even bothered to ask if we should exchange presents. We’d promised our parents we would wait for New Year’s Day to do our gift exchanges, but I was willing to cheat, if asked.
    I returned to my own room and saw I had five voice mails on my phone: two from Grandpa, one from Cousin Mark, one from Uncle Sal, and one from Great-aunt Ida. The great Christmas merry-go-round of phone calls had begun.
    I didn’t listen to any of the messages. I turned my phone off. I was on strike this Christmas, I decided.
    When I told my parents last year I didn’t mind if we celebrated Christmas late this year, I obviously hadn’t meant it. How had they not figured that out?
    This should have been a real Christmas morning of tearing through presents and eating a huge breakfast and laughing and singing with my family.
    I was surprised to realize there was