The Daring Game (and all my usual lies)

Chapter 3: The First Game

Sebastian

We made it to the airport, garnering suspicious looks from the staff when we walked in at two in the morning with just a backpack between us. It was best not to look like we were wandering, so I started walking purposefully down the hall until Jesse pointed out that we were heading toward the international departures. He led the way up to the observation deck and went right up to the floor-to-ceiling windows to look down on the tarmac. We watched the planes take off, talking about all the places we wanted to travel. I'd never been on a plane before. Jesse said it was always exciting even just to be at the airport because you knew you were going on an adventure.

"What about right now?" I asked. Jesse grinned.

"Sorry, I didn't realize you do this every night," he said, which made me feel a bit dumb. Not that I'd thought he regularly snuck out of the dorms in the middle of the night, but he hadn't seemed nervous at all, even though he should have been. I couldn't believe Kyler had let him go alone. Even though I understood why he wanted to stay back, it seemed remarkably inconsiderate of him not to care about what his best friend got up to – especially when Jesse was overly confident, spurred on by a summer of reckless dares and his recent friendship with Victoria. Jesse tended to lose his head around girls, especially those who flirted with him. I never knew if anyone was flirting; Ty was the one who pointed it out. He also had theories on the sexuality of just about everyone in our grade, which is a bit nosey if I'm being honest, but I let him talk about it. Ty rarely talked about himself, and he clearly needed a friend. Jesse, I discovered, talked almost exclusively about himself. He obsessed over how to get proof that we'd come to the airport, trying to get in line for security so he could grab one of the clear plastic bags for carry-on liquids and almost getting us made when the agent with the ticket scanner asked him why he didn't have any luggage. Relying on a tried-and-true tactic that always worked with my younger sisters, I called him away to "show him something interesting" on the gigantic screen listing the status of all the incoming and outgoing flights. It turned out that like my sisters, he wasn't impressed by my explanation of how airport codes were invented.

We wandered around the airport some more. Jesse wanted to get something to eat, but since neither of us had brought any money, we just looked at the shops through the shutters and tried to guess what the books on display were about. Jesse said he thought he'd seen a romance novel featured in the window lying around his house, but that maybe it had been the prequel. I felt embarrassed just hearing about this, like I used to when I'd see the books in Marika's living room, an uncomfortable array of self-help books about dieting, relationships, and inner peace. Personally, I think that people should keep that type of book in the drawer of their bedside table. Then again, not everyone knows what to keep private.

"So Kyler thinks there's no way because we basically get no privacy, but I have a few ideas," Jesse said, after telling me the broad strokes of his love life in unrestrained detail, apparently unaware of how loudly he was talking and getting looks from the airport staff and a handful of business men who had started trickling in. I just kept nodding and making noncommittal humming noises because I didn't know what to say. I had no experience to relate, and there were a few terms I'd be asking Ty about later. Luckily, Jesse was the kind of person who could carry a conversation on his own.

"The storage closet in the Annex," he went on, in a voice that should have been much quieter. "There's no windows in there, and I don't think Dan goes in there very often."

The Annex was what we called the latest addition to the college, a shiny glass building grafted onto the original brick architecture. It housed the wood shop and the garage for the automotive program. It also likely had the latest technology, which I pointed out would make it more difficult to break into than if it were just a matter of picking a lock.