Playing Chicken

"Dare."

I was boiling. Capable of anything. He had set all this up just so he could tear me down in front of Harry. Yeah, so what? I had a crush. Everyone gets them. It isn't cheating. That line of argument would have been a lot more compelling if I hadn't just admitted to fucking *masturbating* to Harry too. It was just too perfect. One set me up, the other knocked me down. The idea was repulsive, but it was way too possible that they had come up with all of this together.

Tell him to get lost, I thought. It would put the rest of us out of his misery. Yeah, Paul wasn't in my good books right now, but Jack had been the one to set him off anyway. Even if I just told him to go hide somewhere else until tomorrow morning, we would all be so much happier.

But that would mean he won. He dished it out, but I couldn't take it. That just drove me fucking crazy. "Fine, asshole," I said, still not totally sure where I was going with this. I just knew he needed to be knocked down a peg. "I want you to record a video to your sister Dina, telling her all about how you watched her in the shower growing up." This was complete fabrication. But I'd met his sister when he moved in, and she was the shining star of the family. Everything Jack wasn't. Serious, smart, and most importantly, in daddy's good books. I wanted him to really hurt.

Jack smiled. "Sure. Why not?" he said.

Total anticlimax. "Be serious," I said.

"I am serious," he said. "You think I'm scared of a video? No sweat, babygirl. Watch this." He got up from the bed.

"No, dude," said Harry.

Lea's hand trailed after him. For a second she forgot about the fact that she was naked and tried to hold him back. "Jack, this is crazy, don't blow up your life. Say sorry to Violet and I'm sure she'll let it go."

I felt like I was flying. My conscience was shrinking down, down, down, breezing past any concern about his sister, or their mother, or even what would happen when they inevitably turned Jack out of Bean Hall for being a pervert. He deserved it all, in my opinion. "Yeah, Jack. Maybe if you grovel I'll consider it done," I laughed.

"No need," he said, taking out his phone and training the forward camera on his face. "Hey, Dina! Hope you're doing good. Thought I should let you know that all through ages, oh, seven to fifteen, I..." He went on and on like that, spending more than a minute describing literally impossible young depravities. If I were his sister I'd have killed myself after watching a video like that. And then, after what seemed like forever, he ran out of ideas and halted the capture.

I couldn't believe it. His pride was so strong that he was willing to do all that rather than give me a stupid apology. At a certain point, you had to respect it. "... okay," I said. "Now send it."

He grinned. "Uh-uh. The dare was to record a video. You didn't say anything about sending it."

My heart went out from under me.