✅ A Dose of Humiliation

49. Who You Can Trust

"Does a girlfriend not count?"

"Oh, hell no. Seriously, don't even mention the idea around her. Her head might explode. Women are the property of men, you know, and can't make their own decisions. You don't want her to get started on those views. She'd say we're sick or something."

"Better not to say anything," Marcie finished up, shaking her head. "That's a reason to find our own place, more than anything else. But this isn't the day to be talking about crazy parents. This is Ellie's special day, a day for fun stuff. Lorna! Truth or dare?"

"Da– Hey!" I stammered, taken by surprise. "Isn't it my turn? I just did the..."

"Your choice," Elspeth answered with a shrug. "But choose now. As the birthday girl, I'm adding a new rule. If a serious conversation starts and the person whose turn it is doesn't give somebody a truth or dare, it goes back to my turn, or Marcie's, to make sure fun keeps happening. So you can do a dare, or you can ask somebody else. But it's up to whoever has the current turn to make sure that the fun keeps flowing."

"Sure," I said, wondering what kind of dare Marcie would give me. I couldn't deny it, there was a part of me that was really excited at the thought of doing something embarrassing. I was sure that if Clint hadn't left so early, I would quickly have been told to do something more intense to bring us closer together; and I would have loved it. But I didn't know how much of that excitement was down to me, and how much was the drugs trying to rewire my brain and let Anti-Lorna take control. And I promised myself that I wouldn't keep putting myself in situations where my opposite self was likely to get too assertive.

"Okay," I said again, after taking a deep breath. "Still my turn. Marcie, truth or dare?"

"I... uhh... truth!" Marcie answered, seeming just as surprised as I had been. I didn't have a clue what I'd been planning to ask her, but I knew that we wanted to keep this party going. Despite all the weird circumstances, and the sudden absence of any Y chromosomes in the room, I didn't want that sense of fun to just dissolve. And I could see that we were all feeling the same. One idea came to mind, although it was awfully meta. But given the responses of my friends so far, I was starting to think that they were all more interested in the silliest, most unexpected dares than they were in anything that might embarrass or arouse us.

"You've been thinking about dares for everyone all night," I said, and the sudden flicker of movement as her eyes met mine and then looked away told me that I was right. She was embarrassed by some of the things she'd thought of. "I can tell how much you're enjoying this game. And I bet there's things that you imagined daring us to do, but felt that you couldn't because they're too extreme, or too intimate, or maybe inappropriate to ask your friends. So that's the truth I'd like to see. What's the most extreme thing you might have dared me to do, if you had no inhibitions and no unspoken rules of decency or respect?"

"Hey!" She said, visibly squirming in her seat. "That's not fair! I mean... that's a perfect question, I didn't think you were so good at this."

"Going to answer, babe?" Elspeth asked. "Or should we give you a dare instead?"

"Okay, okay," she answered. She was embarrassed, I was sure, and a little bit scared. But it was the terror of a person on a roller coaster, looking forward to ninety seconds of sheer, terrifying exhilaration. "I was just thinking I could dare you... Oh god, I don't know if I can say this. It's a horrible thing to think of."

"Babe," Elspeth was the one to reassure her, backing up the words with a hug. "It's an idea that came to your mind. We can't control what inspiration we get, our choice is in what we do with it. Just like I wouldn't blame you for noticing that someone's hot, because you can't control that. I'd only get mad if you acted on it."

"Yeah. And I can trust you guys. But it is really... Well, I don't know if it would make me a bad person. But I seriously thought about asking you to strip for us. Like... like what we made Serena do before. I kind of wondered how far each of us would go with that. And I figured that if one person was doing the sexy striptease thing, there would be a kind of peer pressure to make everybody else go along with it, and I thought that with that stuff messing with your head, you'd be likely to go furthest if someone dared you. I seriously thought about just daring you to strip down to the absolute minimum you're comfortable with, and try your best to turn us on."

"Damn," I said. "I can tell you right now, that's tempting. And I know that's Anti-Lorna talking, but if nobody stopped me I know I would have done my best to shock everyone."

"Anti–" Nikki started, and then stopped herself. "Oh, I like that. Easier way to refer to it, anyway. Like someone else in your head, the person Becker wants to turn you into. I guess it's better to have a name for it, right?" I just nodded. I hadn't even thought about it, but now I did I was kind of impressed with whatever corner of my subconscious had come up with the moniker.

"But nobody's going to ask you that," Serena said, with a knowing smile. "And I think I know you well enough to say a part of you was hoping somebody would try it now. For the irony, after you got Marcie to say it."

"Maybe," I mumbled. I hadn't even realised, but as soon as she said it, I knew that the thought had been hovering just below my awareness. A little sabotage from my subconscious, just hoping that it could put me in a situation where the other side of my personality could take over. If someone had said it, even as a joke, I knew I would have lost myself. And I wanted to thank her for saving me, even as that dark side of my personality resented the interference. But I couldn't say any of that. It was too embarrassing a confession. But one other thing to say did come to my mind: "You could dare Marcie to do that, though. It was her idea, after all."

"Oh no," Marcie said, with a smile that flashed up for just a second before she put her serious expression back on. "My mum would kill us. Nothing like that today, okay?"

"Yeah," Elspeth nodded. "And if you really want to do those kinds of dares, please talk to me about it first. It's not like we've not all seen each other in changing rooms before, but there's a big difference between that and... like, deliberate nakedness."

"You wouldn't..." Marcie started, and then furrowed her brow in confusion. "Wait. I'd never actually do something like that. Getting friends involved in that would be like cheating on you. Nothing to discuss, nothing to think about."

"I think we're getting too serious again, dear. Talk about it later."

"Oh, yeah. Nikki.. What, she's asleep this time? Okay, Serena. Truth or dare?"

And after a little bit of seriousness, the game could go back to light-hearted chaos.