"She's really great, Gee." Ray tells me the next day. We're all hanging out at home while Eve is at school.

"I know. She's been around a month and there's still so much I don't know about her, though." I say, remembering last night. "Like, guys, she can speak French!"

"Wait, like, for real? Not just a few sentences?" Frank asks, intrigued.

"Yeah," I nod. "I asked her to tell me some random thing about herself and that's what she told me!"

"Rad."

"That's pretty cool," Mikey agrees. "Man, I wonder what else she's hiding."

"I wonder that too," I nod, "But, she's been opening up a lot more recently."

That's when we hear the front door open and soon, Evelyn walks in. Emerald's mom brought her home today.

"Oh, everyone's here. Hi!" She's surprised to see us all gathered in the living room.

"Bonjour!" Frank yells.

"Bonjour, mes amis!" She laughs.

"Hey, Eve. How was day two?" I ask.

She shrugs, "Meh, it was alright, but gym class is actual Hell." She says sassily then goes upstairs to take her bag to her room.

"Oh, Gee, your sass is rubbing off on her!" Ray says.

A couple minutes later she comes back down to the living room. "Idea, idea, idea!" She yells excitedly, running in.

"Does someone have an idea?" My brother asks sarcastically.

"Let's play truth or dare!" Eve says, doing jazz hands. How could I say no to that? I mean, I'd probably say yes anyway, but her excitement makes it that much more convincing.

"Yes!" Frank yells, almost jumping up off the couch.

"Well, I think Frankie wants to play." Eve giggles. My child is adorable. "How about you guys?" She asks the rest of us.

"Let's do it." I say. Ray and Mikey nod in agreement.

"Do you know what you're getting yourself into, Eve?" Ray asks her as we gather in a circle on the floor. It's reminiscent of a group of girls at a sleepover, but instead it's three grown men, a smaller man, and one thirteen year old girl.

"Oh, I think I do." She smirks, "Do you?"

"I thought I did, now I'm not so sure."

"So, who goes first?" She asks.

"I think you should," Mikey suggests. "It was your idea."

"I was hoping you'd say that!" She rubs her hands together before pointing at Ray, "Ray! Truth or dare?"

"Oh, um, dare?"

"I dare you to... no I should save that one for later," She mumbles and Ray turns to us looking scared. "Sing the highest note you can hit."

"Oh, that's an easy one!" He says. We all cover our ears when he does it.

"Truth or dare, Gee?" He asks Gerard.

"I'm gonna go with... dare."

"Okay, how about this: depict a human life in the form of interpretative dance." We all laugh, and I must admit, that was a pretty good one. I can't explain exactly what happened next, but he definitely did it... I think. He then picks me.

"Truth or dare, Eve?" He asks me.

"Truth!"

"Alright... oh, I actually have a good one." Oh no. "What was your first impression of me?"

Oh no, oh no. I begin to mull over my options in my head: My first impression of Gee was peoples' depictions of him in fanfictions online... but I didn't really know him then, so does it really count? But, if I don't tell the truth there are two main problems with that: 1) I'm not playing the game right, and 2) I'll have to live with this secret forever and I don't know if I can do that either.

"Earth to Eve," Frank says, waving a hand in front of my face.

"Huh? Oh, right, um..." C'mon Eve, make a decision! "Well— oh no, I'm regretting this already— remember how when we first met you asked if I'd ever heard of My Chemical Romance?"

"Yeah..." Gerard replies, looking slightly apprehensive. "You said no."

"Well, you see, that wasn't entirely true. I didn't really know who you were, but there are these fanfictions online—"

"Okay! Enough said." He cuts in.

My eyes widen, "No, no, no, um, they were nice stories? They took me away from my own life for a while. And again, I didn't actually know who you were, I was just reading them cause I liked them."

"I think that's sweet," Frank says.

"I agree. It's just, you know... but yeah, sweet!" Gerard stutters a bit throughout his sentence. I get what he was thinking; I'm not that innocent.

"Yeah, sweet and all, but what a coincidence, am I right?" Ray exclaims.

He is indeed very right about that.

A few rounds later and it's Mikey's turn to give me a dare.

"I dare you to call a pizza place and order a pizza with jalapeños on it, but make sure to pronounce the J."

Frank, Gee, and Ray all lose it and I cover my face with my hands, "That should be so easy, but oh my god, they're gonna think I'm stupid!"

"Make sure to really enunciate that J," Frank adds.

I grab my phone and Gerard tells me the number he's somehow memorized.

"Hi, can I get a large pizza, please? With... Jalapeños? ... uh, huh, jalapeños..."

I'd rather pretend that conversation never happened. The guys couldn't stop laughing and I cracked up as well as soon as I hung up. Is it even that funny? Probably not.

"Should... should we call back and cancel that?" Frank asks, between laughs.

"Um, probably but I'm never speaking to anyone ever again," I say.

Gee catches my eye and nods slightly to let me know he has my back, "I'll do it, hold on." He takes out his own phone and dials the number quickly. He cancels the order, stifling his giggles while doing so, and then we're on to the next round. My turn.

"Okay, Frankie, truth or dare?"

"Dare."

"Take a measuring cup and go ask the neighbours for a cup of sugar."

He snickers, but stands up and goes to the kitchen to grab the cup. Before he gets there, though, he turns around and asks Gerard, "Do you even know your own neighbours?"

"Yeah, of course I do. They're... you know, fuckin' Janice and Preston." He obviously made up those names on the spot.

Frank shakes his head before rummaging around in the kitchen for a measuring cup and I giggle at the pair of them. A few minutes later he has left, then returns holding an empty measuring cup, a sheepish grin on his face.

Before I can say anything, he raises his hands, "I did it, I swear! I just tripped on the way back and spilled the fuckin' thing."

"You did not!" I yell, cracking up again.

"I did... you can check. There's sugar on the sidewalk."

Sure enough, when I look out the window I see that there's a messy pile of sugar on the pavement just outside.

I shake my head, "Well, you still did it, so it's your turn now."

"Okay," he turns to Ray, "Truth or dare?"

He thinks about it for a second before settling on dare.

"Yes!" Frank laughs evilly, "I dare you to style your hair using mayo."

I've never seen a grown man look so disgusted and distressed. "Frank Iero, you- ugh, fine."

We all get up and follow him to the kitchen. I whisper to Frank on the way, "That's the exact thing I was waiting to ask him, how'd you know?"

He shrugs, "It's the obvious dare, right? He has the perfect hair to fuck up, you know?"

Now, I myself may have been wanting to ask Ray to style his hair with mayonnaise, but I'm glad I'm not getting the blame for this one. It was gross, to say the least.

"I hate this. I hate this so much," Ray says over and over as he spreads it in his hair.

I don't even want to describe the end result, and I'm sure Ray doesn't want to remember it himself. We decide to end the game there, though, before we make any more of a mess.

• • •

if this is bad let's blame it on the fact that I don't have enough friends to actually play truth or dare