Double Dog Dare by Lisa Graff Page A

she couldn’t even come up with any terrible dares to get Kansas back.After Friday morning, the Media Club had decided that Francine and Kansas couldn’t dare each other anymore. Even if the two of them
had
accidentally won the class an ice cream party, the other members were slightly miffed that they hadn’t gotten to vote on their dares ahead of time. So now every dare had to come from them. It made sense, really, Francine thought. But a lot of good it did her now. She was still losing—three points to four—and at this rate it looked like she might never catch up.
    “I’m going to be a frog forever,” she said.
    Her mother considered that for a moment. Then she pushed herself away from the counter. “I have an idea,” she said, grabbing Francine’s hand and hoisting her to her feet.
    After leading Francine to the armchair in the front room, her mother plopped her down and told her to wait. “I need supplies!” she said, disappearing down the hallway. When she returned, she had a fistful of bobby pins and hair ties. Francine craned her neck around to inspect them, but her mother twisted her head forward again. “It’s a surprise,” she said. And she proceeded to brush and yank and tug at Francine’s hair, not in a way that hurt, but carefully,gently, the way she used to when Francine had been really little.
    “Don’t we have to go to yoga?” Francine asked.
    “We have a few minutes. Keep your head up. There.”
    Francine’s mother twisted and tucked, parted and pleated, until finally she announced, “All done!” She stuck the last bobby pin deep into Francine’s hair. “Come on, I’ll show you in the mirror.”
    Francine followed her mother to the bathroom, where she was turned around in front of the mirror. Her mom raised a handheld mirror in front of her face so Francine could see the back of her hair.
    It was all braids. Big ones and small ones, curled over and around one another. One large, green maze of hair.
    “I love it,” Francine said, gazing at herself. “Thank you.”
    “See?” Her mom set her head on top of Francine’s so that their faces were one on top of the other in the mirror. “You’re not a frog at all. You’re a frog princess.”
    Besides the teacher, there were only nine people at Mommy and Me Yoga. Which made sense, Francine thought,because who wanted to go to yoga while you were still digesting breakfast? There was a skinny twelve-year-old boy who wore his sweat shorts up so high they were practically under his armpits. Both he and his mother looked much too serious for yoga. The curly-haired sisters and their mother were all so stretchy that Francine could tell they’d been going to yoga for ages. There was also an older lady with a girl who was probably about five or six, the youngest of the group. The girl had her brown hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail, and she spent most of the time falling over and giggling. Francine thought that maybe the older lady was the girl’s grandmother, until she heard the girl call her Mrs. Muñoz.
    Francine tried her best to stand straight as a board with her left foot in the crook of her right knee, but no matter how many times the instructor, Lulu, told her to “focus your mind to find your balance,” Francine kept falling over. She decided Lulu was the one who was unbalanced.
    “Isn’t this great?” Francine’s mother asked while they were doing downward-facing dog, their butts up in the air and their legs stretched almost to breaking behind them. “Ican feel all my stress just melting away. We’re definitely coming next week.”
    Francine didn’t even have the energy to argue.
    After the class was over, Francine’s mother went to the front desk to sign them up for a month of lessons and Francine plopped herself on the bench outside the classroom to wait. She hadn’t been sitting there three seconds when the giggly girl with the sloppy ponytail sat down beside her.
    “Hi,” the girl said. “I’m