Dance with me, Tim said. It was summer, a few weeks before the start of seventh grade. We were in Tim’s room, sitting facing each other on adjacent single beds. Midnight had come and gone, and outside the window a streetlamp loomed like a hostile giraffe, its head heavy at the end of a curved metal neck, seeming to peer with glowing eyes at the two boys in their beds.
Dance with you? I said after a moment. That’s your dare? Yes, Tim said, his voice low and fluttery. I dare you to come over here and dance with me.
His face when he said it was that of an anxious man at a roulette table who’s just placed a large bet and now awaits the clacking tumble of the ball. His full lips were drawn into a kind of frown, and his eyes were wide and darting beneath their brown, fuzzy brows. At his collar, I could see the faint throbbing of a vein.
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