Let Them Dare novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Rehearsal

Robby's POV

The graduation rehearsal ran an hour over because the principal wanted every senior to practice standing up.

I sat in the folding chair marked FITCH, two rows behind the one marked FLANAGAN, and watched the back of Selah's head.

She had her hair down for once.

She kept turning pages of a speech she had already memorized, and tapping her pen against her knee.

Nobody had put a hand on her shoulder all afternoon, but people kept stopping at her chair to say a thing and move on.

A girl said sorry about the video.

A boy said he'd thought about leaving the Dare Game on the first day and hadn't.

Selah answered each of them the same way, plainly and without making it easy.

I liked that about her, and I'd liked it since ninth grade, when she had told our biology teacher the grade book was wrong and had been right.

The empty chair on her other side was marked HILDEBRAND.

Nobody sat in it.

When the principal finally let us go, I took my time folding my chair.

I'd left something in the truck, and I'd been waiting four days for the right minute to hand it over.

Selah caught up with me in the lot.

"You're avoiding me," she said.

"No."

"You folded that chair three times."

"It's a bad chair."

She was almost smiling.

The sun was low and yellow on the hood of the truck, and the tailgate was down.

I took the paper bag off the seat and held it out.

"What's this?"

"Open it."

She pulled out her cardigan.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Let Them Dare from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.