Temporal Exploring 101 - Cultural Immersion

II.12 A deed and a dare

The next day, after classes we all took the bus to  Arlesten. As usual, we spent most of the time there shopping and window shopping. Natty bought a new bag to replace the one that had been destroyed in the fire, and she acquired the newest Dylan album at the Music Store.

The town of Arlesten was effectively cut into two parts of about equal size by the big four-lane urban motorway.  On the one side there were the old medieval castle and the old town complete with fountains and cobblestones and the traditional farmers' market. On the other side, there were the promenade along the banks of the river Laime and the new plaza with all the cafes and ice cream parlors and tourist traps and the fashionable little shops and stores  that catered to the needs of both visitors and locals.

Altogether three bridges crossed the urban motorway and connected those two parts of Arlesten. One of them – the Ramond bridge – was reserved for pedestrians only.

On our way back to the bus stop, we were walking across that bridge when Jessica Burns suddenly stopped, bringing the rest of us to a halt as well.

"This would be a good time for Hart to do the dare, wouldn't it?" she suggested. "I mean, since we are here on the bridge, and all of us together for once."

Below us, on the motorway, cars were crawling along at a slow pace.

"What are you talking about? What dare?" I asked.

My classmates all sort of looked at each other and grinned.

"What dare?" I repeated.

Nancy took it upon herself to explain it to me.

"See, it's like this: to become fully and officially one of us, you need to do a deed and a dare. To do the deed, you have to act selflessly to help a member of our group out of some sort of calamity. You did that already, a few weeks ago when you took the blame and the punishment for Nat's theft at the Music Store, and thereby prevented her from getting kicked out of this school as a repeat offender. This means, you are almost one of us, now. All that remains to be done is for you to complete the dare."

I was gradually losing patience. "Alright, I got that. So what is that mysterious dare?"

"Uh yes, I was kind of coming to that." Nancy was fidgeting. I noticed that her face had turned a light shade of pink.

Mallory Carmichael came to her help. "To do the dare, all you have to do is flash the commuters in their cars down there on the motorway."

I frowned. "Flash them? What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you show them your boobs," Jen Turner translated for me.

"Yes, your bare boobs. For at least fifteen seconds," her sister Debbie elaborated.

"What?" I looked at them incredulously. "You've got to be kidding me."

"No, we are quite serious," Mallory insisted.

"Alternatively, you could also moon them," Jen helpfully suggested.

"What do you mean, moon them?"

Nancy was looking at me, nonplussed. She was not the only one.

"Cathy, you are from the States and you don't know about 'mooning'?"

"Exactly my point," Mallory Carmichael muttered.

I shot Mallory a dirty look. "Sorry, but as it happens, I don't. So would you please explain, so we can get on with this?"

"It means, you show them your bare butt," Jen kindly informed me.

I glared at her. "And how would that be better than showing them my boobs?"

"Because that way those people don't get to see your face?"

I had to admit, she did have a point there.

Wait a second, was I seriously considering this now?

"No way." I crossed my arms. "Come on, you can't tell me you all did that." As I looked around, they all nodded solemnly. Even girls like Dorothy Barnett and Eleanor Bradford. I frowned. "You did? Seriously? All of you here, even Barnett?"

I focused on Dorothy, who turned bright red.

"Well yes, I did," she muttered. "Mind you, I am not saying I particularly enjoyed it."

"If you enjoyed it, it would not qualify as a dare," Mallory reasonably pointed out.

"Remind me again why you are doing this. Wait, don't tell me. It is yet another ancient time-honored ritual, right?"

"Actually, this was Carmichael's idea originally," Carol Mellon observed.

I rolled my eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

Mallory grinned. She turned towards me. "So, how about it, Hart? Are you going to do the dare or not?"

I made a face. "Alright, then. What about them, though?" I cast a skeptical look at the small groups of tourists and Arlesten citizens that were crossing the bridge. "How are they going to react when they see me um, doing that thing?"

"Don't worry about it. The rest of us will position ourselves in such a way that you are going to be shielded from view. Those people are not going to see anything."

"They are going to hear it, though," Jess quipped.

"Hear it? What's that supposed to mean?"

There was no reply, but the other girls positioned themselves to form a small semicircle behind me as promised.

I was not overly enthusiastic about showing my bare ass to what looked like a major part of Arlesten's population down there on the motorway, but if all of my classmates had done this, so could I.

Stepping backwards until I was close to the railing, I raised my skirt and lowered my panties.

The reaction was immediate. Below us, cars were starting to honk their horns like mad. A wild, excited ruckus. All that noise just because they were getting to see my butt?

"I don't believe this," I muttered.

Helen Langden shrugged. "Most of those drivers are men."

Meanwhile, Mallory had been counting seconds. It was difficult to hear her over all that noise.

"Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen."

I yanked up my panties and smoothed down my skirt. Below us, the ruckus subsided.

"Congratulations, Hart," Mallory told me. "Now you are officially one of us."

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A / N : Do you think it was wise of Cathy to agree to do the dare? Perhaps she needed to do so in order to blend in.

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