Truth or Dare (2 page)

“Leave that to me.” Strolling over to the lounge chair, Emerson stopped short in front of him and cleared her throat. Joey looked up in surprise but, of course, he said nothing. Emerson leaned over him, her face tilting toward his. For a second it almost looked like she was going to kiss him, and his eyes widened slightly. But then she paused, and even from where Sydney was standing, she could hear it: “You’re in a No-Rabies Zone, Bakersfield.” It was something people had been saying to Joey forever—an allusion to the old rumor that he’d had rabies as a child. Emerson straightened back up, making a shooing gesture with her hand.

Sydney turned away. She’d seen enough of Emerson and her games this summer. At school, with its back rows to sit in and darkroom to escape to, it was easy to avoid girls like Emerson. But here at the Club, it
was Sydney’s
job
to be around her. And she was sick of it. She just wanted to finish draping these stupid garlands and get home to her roll of film. She couldn’t wait to spool the negatives and let the images spill out around her. Sydney and Calum had made their way through most of the tables on the deck when her phone dinged.
1 new message
, the screen blinked when she extracted it from her pocket. She thumbed in her password, wondering if her mom had gotten stuck covering yet another overnight shift. One of the other nurses in her ward was out on maternity leave, which meant her mom was pulling double duty. Sydney hated the bags that were starting to bloom under her eyes, so dark they could almost pass for bruises.

But it wasn’t her mom who had texted her. It was Guinness.

Her heart rate went from 60 to 120 in one second flat.

“Be right back,” she mumbled to Calum. Slipping out of her flip-flops, she took off for the beach. She wanted to read the text in private.

“Where’s the fire?” Calum called out behind her. She ignored him, but his words only made her heart race faster. Jogging down the stairs to the beach, she wrangled her way past the families lining up for umbrella rentals. There were kids playing and parents yelling and down by Cabin Crab, someone calling out order numbers, but she barely heard any of it. She dropped down in the sand, tucking her legs beneath her.

Guinness had finally texted her. She wanted so badly to be angry with him. To forget him, to swear him off. She should probably delete his text without reading it.

But instead, she took a deep breath and clicked it open.

Hey Blue, long time no chat. I’m in town. Looks like for a while. When can I see you?

Sydney couldn’t help but smile at Guinness’s old nickname for her.
Blue. He used to call her that all the time, because of the turquoise-blue eyes he thought made her so photogenic. She read his text again, and then a third time. Her face felt hot. Considering his radio silence since she sent him her last batch of photos a month ago, she’d been sure he’d moved on. Found someone else, maybe, someone older and more talented.

But now he wanted to see her. And he was around for “a while.” That had to mean he was at his dad’s summerhouse. She felt a sudden urge to ditch the Club and drive straight there, but she forced the idea out of her head. Things had changed. She couldn’t just run back into his arms as if nothing had happened.

“Hey, Syd! A little help?”

Sydney looked up. Calum was leaning over the pool-deck railing thirty feet away from her, waving energetically.

Sydney hauled herself to her feet, slapping the sand off her palms on the back of her shorts. “Coming,” she called back. But she couldn’t resist reading over Guinness’s text one more time, especially that last part:
When can I see you?

“I finished up the garlands, but Tony wants us to do a final sweep of the deck before we clock out,” Calum said as Sydney jogged up the stairs. He held up an empty trash bag. “You sweep, I’ll bag?”

“Yeah, sure.” Sydney automatically took the broom Calum handed her. On the other side of the pool, she saw Emerson and Marta laughing extra-loudly, begging for attention, but for once she couldn’t care less. She wondered how long she should wait to text Guinness back. A couple of minutes? An hour? Longer? She decided to go with two hours. He always made her wait for
his
responses, after all. Sometimes for months.

“So, you going to the party tonight?” Calum asked, pulling her out of her thoughts.

She looked up, surprised. Calum had gone away to boarding school in seventh grade, and ever since he’d switched back to Winslow Academy last year, he hadn’t exactly been the life of the Echo Bay social scene. Not that she was either. “Party?”

“Yeah, haven’t you heard? Tenley Greer’s back in town. Remember her? She’s throwing some huge end-of-summer bash.”

“Nah,” she said, carelessly shoving the broom toward the back of the deck. Her stomach flipped; maybe she would even see Guinness tonight. Or would that be giving in too easily? “I’ve got better stuff to do.”

Tenley had been in Sydney’s grade at Winslow Academy until she’d moved away in eighth grade. Sydney had never understood everyone’s obsession with her. As far as she remembered, Tenley had been just like Emerson and Marta: a pretty, rich girl who thought
employee
was another word for
loser
.

But every girl at Winslow had acted like Tenley was the second coming or something—vying desperately for invites to her ridiculous games of truth or dare. Sydney had witnessed one of those games down on the beach once. From where she’d been standing, it had looked anything but fun.

Sydney pushed her bangs out of her eyes. Thinking about the girls at school always made her wish she’d never won that scholarship to Winslow back in second grade. But she had, and her mom would never let her give it up. Besides, she knew there wasn’t a public school on the planet with a darkroom like Winslow’s.

“Well, I plan on going,” Calum continued. “Apparently
all
the
lifeguards are invited.” He grabbed his whistle off his chest and gave it a big, fat kiss. “I knew this baby would come through for me one day!”

“Mmm,” Sydney murmured, rounding the edge of the deck. Her thoughts were already zooming back to Guinness. He was so different from the guys at her school. And it wasn’t just his age, either. It was how he held himself, too, and the things he cared about. She was pretty sure he’d never watched a game of football in his life. Maybe she could text him back after an hour, actually. One hour was plenty to make him wait, right?

“Uh, Syd? I think you might need this.” Calum bent down, pulling something she’d just swept into the trash bag back out. It was a flip-flop. She looked closer. It was one of
her
flip-flops. She’d forgotten to put them back on after running down to the beach. Calum arched his eyebrows at her. “You sure everything’s okay?”

Guinness’s words rang through her mind.
When can I see you?
It wasn’t like she was rushing off to meet him, she told herself. She was just texting him back.

“Syd?” Calum’s dark brown eyes were filled with concern.

“Everything’s fine,” she promised, offering him a smile.

And it was.

Guinness was in town, and he wanted to see her.

Saturday, 3:15
PM

I’D SAY A FIVE,” CAITLIN DECIDED, FIDGETING A LITTLE
on the couch. This was something they’d been doing for years in her therapy sessions—rating her nightmares on the Richter scale. One was a blip on the nighttime radar; ten was earth-shattering.

“A five.” Dr. Filstone tightened her sleek auburn ponytail, looking thoughtfully at Caitlin through black-rimmed glasses. “That’s an improvement, Caitlin.”

Caitlin gave her a weak smile. The truth was, last night’s nightmare had been more like a nine. She was alone in that awful red basement, and she knew there was something important behind her, something she had to see. But when she tried to turn, hundreds of hands shot out from the wall, reaching for her. They smothered her face and covered her eyes and wrestled her to the ground, until all she could see was blackness.

She knew if she confessed any of that to Dr. Filstone, though, she’d be forced to talk about the kidnapping yet again. Her nightmare last
night was the same one she’d been having forever, the one that took place in the basement where she’d been held. Just the thought of having to revisit the whole thing made slivers of pain prick behind Caitlin’s eyes. When she was first sent to therapy at the end of sixth grade, her kidnapping—and her resulting nightmares—were all they’d talked about. But more than five
years
had passed since she was kidnapped.

“… Caitlin?”

Caitlin’s head snapped up. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked how you felt about going back to school on Tuesday.” Dr. Filstone rested her chin on her hand in the
talk-to-me
gesture Caitlin knew so well.

“I’m a little anxious about it,” Caitlin admitted. She looked out the window at the long, gallery-lined road known as Art Walk. If she strained her eyes, she could just make out the green awning of Seaborne, the gallery her mom owned. “I used to love the first day of school,” she said. “I just know it’s going to be a crazy year. Between my APs and college applications and running for student-body president, I feel like something’s going to have to give—and right now sleep seems like the only good option.”
Especially
, she added silently,
if these nightmares keep up
. Dr. Filstone gave her an encouraging nod.

“On top of that,” Caitlin continued, “I told Emerson I’d try out for cheer squad, and I want to keep up my hours at the animal shelter because supposedly Harvard likes community service on applications, and somehow I got roped into signing up for the Fall Festival Committee, which means I’m going to be working on that all next week, too. Oh, and did I tell you that Abby Wilkins decided to run against me for president? Miss Purity Club Founder herself.”

Now that she’d started talking, she couldn’t seem to stop. “Emerson says I have nothing to worry about, but I don’t know… People
might not like Abby, but they
respect
her. They look at her and they see… Hillary Clinton. And if you had a choice, isn’t that who you’d want working with your principal?” Caitlin leaned back against the couch, pain stampeding across her temples. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate her looks—her light blond hair and willowy frame and big green eyes—but sometimes she worried they kept people from taking her seriously.

Dr. Filstone made a sympathetic noise. “Do your breathing,” she urged. Caitlin closed her eyes, counting to ten as she breathed in and out, in and out. She felt the pain in her temples begin to recede, just a little. “Would you like to try hypnosis again?” Dr. Filstone asked gently. “It might help you relax….”

Caitlin nodded. When Dr. Filstone had first brought up hypnosis, a month ago, she had balked at the idea, imagining swinging pendulums and sleepwalking drones. But after Dr. Filstone explained that hypnosis just put people in an extremely relaxed state, Caitlin had agreed. She’d been so stressed all summer, and the promise of relief, however temporary, had been too tempting to refuse.

And Dr. Filstone had been right. With her eyes closed and Dr. Filstone’s lulling voice taking her
down, down, down
in an elevator, she’d felt amazing. It was as if all the worries and fears and nerves that had been jamming her up for so long were suddenly nothing but bubbles, light enough to float right out of her.

As Dr. Filstone began talking her through the mental exercise, Caitlin quickly succumbed to her voice. Slowly, she could feel the knots working their way out of her neck, the pressure lessening in her head. “The elevator opens and places you in your private garden,” Dr. Filstone said, her voice low and soothing. “Step out and feel the sun on your shoulders, the flowers tickling your ankles.”

Caitlin felt her worries float away from her, dissipating into the blue sky. Somewhere far back in her consciousness, she knew she wasn’t really here; she knew she was on a couch in her therapist’s office. But as she walked into the garden, leaving the elevator behind, the knowledge receded, too. She was in her garden now. Nothing else mattered.

She breathed in deeply, feeling every last muscle in her body relax. Slowly, her eyelids floated shut. But instead of drifting off, she suddenly tensed. Out of nowhere, something in the air had shifted.

Her eyes flew open. She was no longer in the garden, but in a basement. The basement. Her heart began to pound. The room looked exactly the way it did in her nightmares: red walls, red carpet, red curtains. The color of blood.

But somehow she knew: This was real. Not planted in her head like the garden, not haunting her sleep like the nightmare, but a memory—digging its way out. And just like in her nightmare, she was sure there was something behind her. Something she had to see.

Slowly, she turned around. This time, no hands reached out for her; no fingers sealed her eyes shut. Instead, she found herself facing a wooden bookshelf. A toy train on the middle shelf caught her eye. It was made of painted steel, and was clearly meant to be some kind of circus train. Each car was carrying a different animal: perfectly sculpted steel tigers and lions and elephants. She reached out. Her fingers closed on cold metal….

“Caitlin?” Dr. Filstone’s voice reached her from a distance. Caitlin pulled away from the lion car. “Caitlin? It’s time to come back now.”

On command, Caitlin blinked. Slowly, the world came back into focus. The big walnut desk. The diplomas hanging in their gilded frames. Dr. Filstone in her leather rolling chair. Caitlin sucked in a breath. That train… it was so familiar.

“How was it?” Dr. Filstone asked. “Were you able to fully let go?”

Caitlin felt a tremor run through her. She’d let go, all right. But what exactly had she seen? Could it have been some kind of repressed or lost memory? Her time in that basement was nothing if not lost—blanketed in a thick haze, thanks to the drugs her kidnapper had slipped her. But maybe Dr. Filstone’s hypnosis had cleared away some of that fog.

The thought made the hair on her arms stand up. She wasn’t so sure she
wanted
to remember. “Not this time,” she lied, her voice wavering slightly.