Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1)

by Rachel Cohn

It was Christmastime in New York City, the most detestable time of the year.

“Happy Hanukkah,” I said. Because I always liked to say the wrong holiday, just to see how the other person would react.

If so, find Clueless. Also misfiled, where sorrow meets pity.

I had always felt that mittens were a few steps back on the evolutionary scale—why, I wondered, would we want to make ourselves into a less agile version of a lobster?

This was why I shouldn’t have been allowed in Macy’s. Because when you turn a short span of time into a “season,” you create an echo chamber for all of its associations. Once you step in, it’s hard to escape.

It was the Christmas I realized Shrilly was the reason I didn’t get invited to birthday parties, or why I always got picked last for teams. It was the Christmas I realized I was the weird girl.

I wondered if what I really wanted for Christmas was to find someone who’d be the piece of paper to my stapler.

All I’d managed to date so far was a series of pencil sharpeners, with the exception of Sofia, who was more like a pleasant eraser.

I want to believe there is a somebody out there just for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody.

Belief. That’s what I want for Christmas. Look it up. Maybe there’s more meaning there than I understand. Maybe you could explain it to me?

“Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around”?

It was one of those moments when you feel the future so much that it humbles the present.

Sofia nodded. “Yes. You should never wish for wishful thinking.”

We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn’t trust a bookstore, what could you trust?

This must be part of Mother Nature’s master plan—making these boys so irresistibly cute, in such a naughty way, that the purity of their intentions becomes irrelevant.

We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it, As though we had written it.

But isn’t this a dance? Isn’t all of this a dance? Isn’t that what we do with words? Isn’t that what we do when we talk, when we spar, when we make plans or leave it to chance? Some of it’s choreographed. Some of the steps have been done for ages. And the rest—the rest is spontaneous. The rest has to be decided on the floor, in the moment, before the music ends.

I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn’t so much about plot. It was much more about character.

Males are the most incomprehensible species.

But love needs to have a future.

‘A dream deferred is a dream denied.’ ”

The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There’s no getting over that.”

“I mean, what if love isn’t a yes-or-no question? It’s not either you’re in love or you’re not. I mean, aren’t there different levels? And maybe these things, like words and expectations and whatever, don’t go on top of the love. Maybe it’s like a map, and they all have their own place, and then when you see it from the sky—whoa.”

“Right person, right time is the wrong concept, Dash,” she said.