Fiction Fantastic 2025 Winning Story: “Triple Dog Dare” by Violet Dunlop

The story below is a winner from our Fiction Fantastic Young Writers Contest, open to all youth in Lane County. For more information on this contest, including how to enter, visit here. Support this program with a donation.

You can purchase this story in the 2025 Winners Anthology, Echoes of the Future.

“Triple Dog Dare” by Violet Dunlop, Kennedy Middle School

First Place, Middle School Level, 2025

Triple Dog Dare

By Violet Dunlop

Kennedy Middle School

July 4th, 2007

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Star Girl said.

She reached her arms up, fingers straining as if she were grasping for the stars. The warm dusk breeze carried the scent of hyacinths from her mother’s garden up to the two of us on the roof.

“What is?” I asked her as I draped my arm around her waist.

“This feels so right, being with you. How could this be wrong?” She sat up, picking at her plastic cup, not meeting my eyes. “But everyone keeps telling me we’ll go to hell because of it.”

I frowned at her and sat up, too, reaching out to take her hand.

“I don’t believe in that crap. If there were such a thing as heaven, most of us would never make it there. However people are gonna act, nobody’s a saint. And anyways, no one should be damned to eternal torture just for being in love.”

Star Girl’s fingers tightened around mine.

“Maybe you’re right,” she whispered, leaning up against me, and looked up at the fireworks showering the sky with glittering sparks.

August 10th, 2012

My name is Blake Ellis. Five years ago, I fell in love with a girl. Now I’m going to Seattle on a bus packed full of strangers, heading towards the one person I never thought I’d see again.

This is our story.

January 20th, 2007

Boys slept in the living room, girls in her room; those were her mother’s rules.

I dried my hands and shut off the light in the bathroom, making sure to open the door quietly before tip-toeing back down the hall to Star Girl’s room. When I opened her door, I saw her sitting up in her bed, her back to me.

“Blake?” she asked, turning her head from the window to look at me.

The two other girls she had invited to her birthday party were already passed out in sleeping bags on the floor. I cautiously stepped over them to get to Star Girl’s bed.

“Hey,” I whispered, sitting down next to her, resting my chin in my palm with a smile.

“Why are you up?” she asked, toying with her hair while she made room for me next to her.

“Bathroom,” I answered.

She nodded.

“I’m sixteen now, can you believe it?” Star Girl smiled at me, the flickering glow from a streetlight outside illuminating her features.

“Not at all, you’re so old now!” I giggled. Her hands flew up to my mouth to stifle the sound while I grabbed her shoulders and gently shook her. “We can officially go on road trips together.”

“I know!” She grinned, shaking my hands off of her as she lay down again, facing the window.

“Blake,” she said after a while. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?” I answered, looking at the back of her head and leaning against the headboard of her bed, heart in my throat.

“Hypothetically, if someone were to ask you out, like, right now, what would you say?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” I said, my heart beginning to quicken its pace.

“What if it were a girl asking, what would you say?” She shifted.

“This girl?” I poked her back.

“This girl,” she answered after a few seconds of silence. “If this girl were asking, what would you say?”

“I’d say yes,” I answered simply, hoping that my tone was level and not as bubbly as I felt. “I’d say yes, and then I would ask her why she didn’t wait for me to ask her first.”

She turned to me, sitting up, her hand just barely on my knee.

“So . . .” she whispered, nodding her head.

“But all of this is still hypothetical, right?” I asked bluntly, raising my eyebrows.

Star Girl froze for a few seconds before breaking into a grin.

“Shut up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered, giving her a mock salute. “Does this mean we’re dating now?”

She huffed as I draped an arm over her shoulder, moving closer to me.

“My mom would kill me.”

“But?” I prompt.

“But she doesn’t have to find out,” she smiled, closing her eyes.

“I’ll be your secret, Star Girl,” I whispered, my stomach turning somersaults.

August 10th, 2012

My head bumps against the window, condensation melting against my forehead as I stare out at the fields flashing past.

A few months ago, I found her social media account, messaged her, and we started talking again. She suggested I come up to see her, so I bought bus tickets and packed my bags to visit.

Time has changed us both. I know it has. She won’t be the girl I remember and I’m certainly not who she remembers.

I used to read books about people getting separated and going on long quests to find each other again. I fantasized it, romanticized it.

I saw it coming a mile away. Our story was doomed from the start, but I thought I could be a hero. I thought I could be the knight rescuing the princess from the tower and returning her to her kingdom. I think I forgot that life wasn’t fantasy, that I was no knight, and that there isn’t much a kid can do.

July 4th, 2007

“That is absolute bull.” Star Girl threw her hands up, the sudden gesture disrupting the bucket of popcorn on her lap and sending it spilling onto the backs of two annoyed students in the bleachers in front of us.

“I can’t believe we lost.”

“I can.” I sighed. “It’s the third time this year. Are you really surprised?”

“I thought we would at least have learned something from losing so much.” She propped her arm up on her leg, picking a piece of popcorn from her lap and pushing it into her mouth slowly. “I had high hopes for us.”

I raised an eyebrow, smiling slightly.

“You don’t even like football. Why are you here?”

“Because you’re always complaining how boring it is to sit by yourself and watch your brother lose.” Star Girl cracked her knuckles. “But now that it’s over, we can get out of here. Tell your parents you’re sleeping over and we’ll watch the fireworks at my house.”

I smiled, standing up.

“You got it.”

“Great, I can’t stand it here.” She handed the kids in front of us the remnants of her popcorn bucket and we took the bleacher stairs two at a time, racing back to her car as soon as our feet hit the pavement.

***

I tossed Star Girl a bottle of Dr Pepper before I swung my leg up and onto the roof of her house. She grasped my hand and pulled me up to the slope of the roof, and slowly we made our way to the top.

“I love tonight,” Star Girl said when we were settled against each other, looking up at the stars. “I love it all.”

“Why?” I asked her.

“Because I’m free,” she said, squeezing my hand and raising her index finger to point at a group of stars. “That’s Andromeda. After she died, Athena turned her into a star. She turned Perseus into one, too, so they could be together until the end of time.”

“That’s sweet,” I whispered.

“Isn’t it?” she whispered back, then a long silence settled over the both of us.

“What if this is as free as I’ll ever be?” Star Girl asked me just before the fireworks started. “What if I never get out of here?”

“You know it won’t be,” I said, watching the stars shine in the sky. “You’ll leave, and go to college, and get degrees, and win awards for all of the amazing things you’ve done. I know you will.”

“Yeah.” Star Girl hummed, following my gaze, and watching as a plane drifted through the sky, leaving a trail of red, white, and blue smoke along the bleak horizon. “But I’d rather enjoy the now. I have no idea what will happen in the future, and frankly I don’t think I want to. I just want to live in this moment for as long as I can.”

I smiled, taking the bottle of soda as she handed it to me.

“Yeah, me, too. Let’s do that.”

“Good.” She pressed a kiss to my cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I replied, smiling at her and pouring Dr Pepper into our plastic cups, then letting the empty bottle roll down the roof and drop into the yard as we raised our cups in a toast.

“To us,” Star Girl said.

“To us,” I agreed, knocking our cups together as fireworks exploded behind the tree line.

August 10th, 2012

The bus lurches to a stop and I tug out one of my earbuds, grab my bag, and stand up as people start to file out of the bus and onto the busy Seattle streets.

Now all I have to do is find the cafe.

I don’t like remembering what happened after that.

I like to close my eyes and pretend that after we drank all of the soda left in the bottle and watched fireworks on top of her roof, we went back down to her room and binge watched trash TV.

I like pretending that the next morning, I woke up and we made pancakes and then went to watch a movie.

Then I pretend that two years later we graduated and went to college, and Star Girl animated a cartoon series that everyone loves now, and I got a degree in history and I teach at a school where everyone is amazing and nothing bad ever happens.

But bad things happen to good people.

Good people get sent to Bible camp every summer. Good people are told that they’ll go to hell when they die. Good people get yelled at for accidentally looking at a girl in the locker room. Good people are forced into therapy for something they can’t change.

And good people believe they deserve it.

July 4th, 2007

“Come on.” Star Girl poked her head through her window, looking at me as I attempted to lower myself onto her windowsill. “It’s not that hard, I’ve done it a thousand times.”

“You live here,” I protested, getting one of my legs through her window.

Star Girl laughed, her eyes soft in the dim light.

“Whatever, hurry up.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled myself the rest of the way through her window.

***

“You know,” Star Girl said, pausing the show we were watching and looking over at me. “I’m glad you’re here.”

I smiled at her, bumping our shoulders together.

“Me, too. You’ve changed my life, really, and no matter what happens to us you’ll never stop being the brightest star in my life.”

“Yeah?” She smiled back, moving closer to me.

“Yeah,” I said, my hand moving to her cheek, brushing some hair behind her ear.

“You’re such a sap.” She laughed softly, her eyes half lidded. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I whispered, closing the space between us and pressing my lips to hers.

If I had been more careful, things wouldn’t turn out half the way things did. Maybe if I had paid more attention, I would have heard her mother’s footsteps coming up the stairs, maybe I would have heard the doorknob twist open. Maybe I would have–

July 4th, 2007

“Selene Fifer.” Her mother said her name roughly, her voice was harsher than I had ever heard it before.

Star Girl whirled around to face her, quickly moving off the bed and away from me.

“Mom. I can explain,” she pleaded, thrusting her arms out in front of her, hands trembling.

“You.” Her mother’s eyes narrowed at me. “Blake Ellis, I knew you were a bad influence on her. Get away from my daughter.”

“Mrs. Fifer,” I mumbled, my heart beating a mile a minute and my stomach churning.

“I’m calling your mother. Selene, get away from her this instant.” She sounded disgusted. “Blake, get out of my house,” her mother continued. “And stay away from my daughter. There will be consequences if I see you with her again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I stammered, trying to catch Star Girl’s eyes as I walked out of her room, but her eyes were on the floor, tears streaking down her cheeks. And tears began to pour down my own cheeks as I started to walk faster, and soon I found myself slamming the front door open and bolting to the sidewalk.

I crouched down on the curb. My throat was closing up. My chest was tight. My eyes were blurry. My head spun.

I felt like my heart was about to stop beating, but all I could think about was how badly I had failed her.

I had failed her.

I had failed her, and I had ruined her life, and I was so, so, painfully, horribly,

alone.

I ran my fingers along the seams of my jeans, trying to scrape my thoughts off the pavement. Finally I pulled my phone from my pocket.

“Fuck.” I sniffled, wiping the tears and snot from my face with the back of my sleeve.

My fingers trembled as they dialed my mom’s number.

The phone rang for a few seconds before she picked up.

“Mom. Mom,” I said, my voice shaking as I wiped my nose. “Can you come pick me up?”

August 10th, 2012

It hurt for a really long time. But thinking back on it, there is nothing I would have changed. Loving her was an experience I will never forget, and I’m so grateful to have met her, she changed my life. I’ve never been able to see the world the same since meeting her.

***

I look down at my phone, then back up at the cafe in front of me, skyscrapers loom over me, making the world feel almost claustrophobic. I take a deep breath, trying to steady my heart, as I push open the glass door.

August 10th, 2012

“Hey, Blake,” she says, her gaze meeting mine with a bittersweet smile.

“Hey, Star Girl.” I smile back, swallowing down the tears threatening the back of my throat. “I’ve missed you.”

You said, “You’ll have me there, If it’s a triple dog dare”

—Lucy Dacus, “Triple Dog Dare”