Foes & Cons by Carrie Aarons (i am malala young readers edition .txt) 📗

Before I know what’s happening, Sawyer flips me, coming down on top of me until I can feel him hard against me, right at my center.

“Already?” I gasp.

“I’ve wanted to touch you, taste you, be inside of you for so long, I don’t think a lifetime of this will satisfy me.”

I don’t get to respond, because his mouth captures my lips, my heart, and then my brain just shuts off completely.

34

Blair

The weather warms, being an unseasonably nice April, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Almost the entire senior class is congregating in the parking lot of the high school, except today is Saturday, so it’s a strange sight to see.

“As you all know, we are not bailing anyone out of jail. Do not mention the scavenger hunt if you get arrested. We’re also not down with vandalizing property, nonconsensual acts, or fucking with the principal’s house. Just disclaimers. Don’t any of you fuckers get us in trouble.”

Benji, a senior and nose tackle on the football team, stands above the crowd on the bed of his pickup truck. He is the organizer of this year’s senior scavenger hunt, a forty-eight hour free for all of debauchery and danger. No, that’s not just the way he described it when he sent out the list of tasks, that is really how the next two days are going to unfold.

Every year, the seniors put on a scavenger hunt. You get a team of four to eight people, contribute your fifty-dollar team fee, and are sent the list of a hundred to a hundred fifty tasks to complete within the designated weekend. Tasks range from kissing a stranger to getting the Pythagorean theorem tattooed on your body, and the dicier tasks obviously have more points attributed to them. At the end of the weekend, Benji and a jury of four others, appointed by the class, will go through all the video footage and crown the champions. They then win the whole pot of money, which is over five thousand dollars.

The school has absolutely nothing to do with this half-cocked insanity-fest, but the parking lot is the best place to meet at five in the morning. Sawyer is hugging me from behind, his hands in my sweatshirt pockets, and I’m gulping down the extra-large coffee we picked up on the way over.

“Have fun. Do dumb shit. Don’t get caught. Be back here with your tapes on Sunday at midnight.” Benji blares a horn sound through his phone, and everyone races off.

“Get in the van, now!” Matt orders us.

It’s Matt, Sawyer, Glavin, Nate, Laura, and I on a team, and Matt has volunteered his Mom’s van as our vehicle, house, and headquarters for the next forty-eight hours. Since the scavenger hunt has tasks in multiple locations up and down the coast of New Jersey, and even into New York City, we’re going to be on the road for the majority of this. While we’re in the car, we’ll get some of the sedentary tasks done.

Matt is steering us toward the shore, the destination we mapped out to tackle first. Tasks include playing a boardwalk game and winning a stuffed animal, taking a picture in front of the Jersey Shore house, running into the frigid ocean naked, eating an entire bucket of boardwalk fries, and getting a piercing at one of the bodega stands.

“Is anyone willing to get the theorem tattooed on themselves. It’s worth the most points in the whole hunt, and whichever team does it will probably win.” Laura scans her gaze down the three-page list in her hands.

“We’re not that dumb.” Glavin snorts.

“The fact that you’re saying that means we’re really not doing it.” Nate laughs.

“All right, so what can we get done on the hour car ride?” Glavin snatches the list from Laura.

We begin some of the tasks, with Glavin burping the National Anthem for fifteen points, two of our team members making out—obviously Sawyer and I—for ten points, Laura flashes the camera for a whopping twenty, and Matt drives blindfolded for a minute while the rest of us hold our breath because we might just die.

Sawyer does the spoonful of cinnamon challenge for a grand total of fifty points, then vomits into a plastic bag. Nate prank calls his grandmother for ten points, and I round out our little trip by eating an entire pack of Oreos in thirty minutes for thirty points.

By the time we get to the Seaside boardwalk, I feel like I might hurl at any moment. We all complete the task of standing in the ocean barefoot for a minute for five points each, Matt is the one who dives in naked and subsequently yells that his balls are going to freeze off, and Nate gets his cartilage pierced.

I play a ring toss game and give Sawyer a giant stuffed monkey, while Laura rides the bull in one of the bars, killing two birds with one stone because she also got in using a fake ID. All in all, we’re racking up points and there are still a ton more tasks to complete.

We pull up to Lucy the Elephant, the world’s largest elephant structure, and have to climb all the way to the top to snap a photo. It’s no secret that you’re not allowed to climb all the way up there, but this is where the no arrests talk from Benji comes in. We have to be stealthy.

Unfortunately, we’re not the only team here.

“Well, well, well.” Hailey strolls up in the tightest yoga pants and crop top I’ve ever seen, while myself and Laura are traipsing around in oversized sweats.

Her team is behind her, a bunch of the other cheerleaders, and they look exhausted and pissed off. These girls don’t have true friendships to begin with, so being stuck in a car together for hours on end must have them all about to rip each other’s hair out.

“Let’s beat them to the top!” Matt yells, and he and