Snippet #1817296

Felix tried to remain as detached as possible from the selection process; it was the best shot he had at holding his nerve. This dare sounded like social suicide; he knew Jack wasn’t the sort of person to help anyone out through altruistic motives. Felix had seen for himself the potential benefits of taking part in this ‘dare’, but he wasn’t going to kid himself. Jack was setting them up to fail. Whatever names were on those pieces of paper, they would be of girls from whom gaining attention would require a near miracle (or large sums of cash). He wouldn’t even be surprised if Jack had prepped the girls to ignore every guy who approached them for the duration of the dare.

But Felix needed a quick way to change his image and win credibility with the ‘in’ crowd. To that end, this dare was a do-or-die mission. Failure was likely and costly, but no more damaging than refusing to take part.

He kept his eyes down until he was called to draw a name from the hat, then looked up and tentatively reached out. He tried to stop his mind from running through the faces of girls he expected to be included in the pool of names...mostly cheerleaders, preps, class presidents, the usual shower of totally inaccessible females a guy could only hope to be seen with to earn respect, irrespective of whether or not he actually liked the girl in question.

He took a step back and slowly unfurled the paper. He had to read the name three times before he could believe what he was seeing. Vivianne? He’d been expecting girls from the ‘in’ crowd. At least that would have been a step in the right direction even if he failed. The problem with Vivianne was that she fell a little too close to the kind of person he used to hang out with. What’s worse is that even when he hung out with the gamer nerds, Vivianne would still have been an impossible conquest. They say no man is an island...well, Vivianne was not only an island. She was Alcatraz. An island with fifty foot walls and gun emplacements that would shoot you down before you’d even requested permission to land.

He folded the scrap up, gulped and looked up at Jack.

“No problem.” He muttered, unconvincingly trying to convey a false sense of confidence. “Looks like I got off easy. Shouldn’t be too much of a challenge.”