Truth or Dare (7 page)

Smirking, Tenley met his eye. “If you go in first,” she said. “We’ll join you after you’ve tested the water.”

Calum looked from Tenley to the water and back again. “This is actually happening,” he murmured dazedly, sounding as though he would have liked someone to pinch him. Squaring his shoulders, he turned to face the water. With a shout of “Geronimo!” he took a flying leap off the rocks. His legs scissored wildly as he plunged toward the
ocean. “Cold!” Tenley heard him gasp a few seconds later. “Cold cold cold!”

Tenley smiled over at Caitlin. “Looks like it’s our turn for hypothermia.” Grabbing Caitlin’s hand, she pulled her over to the edge of the rocks. Below them, Calum’s blond head bobbed up and down, up and down, his arms tracing circles through the water. The waves rolling toward him were so dark they were almost inky.

Next to her, Caitlin squeezed her hand. “Missed you, Ten,” she whispered.

Tenley breathed in deeply, letting the familiar smells of Echo Bay rush in: the salt water and the mossy rocks and the faint scent of Caitlin’s citrus lotion. She turned to Caitlin, and for a second they just looked at each other. “Missed you, too, Cait,” she said.

Then, in unison, they threw themselves forward, hands held tight, as the world dropped away around them.

Sunday, 2
AM

THE RED BULB IN THE OVERHEAD LIGHT GAVE
Sydney’s kitchen an almost otherworldly glow. Her makeshift darkroom might not come close to the state-of-the-art facilities she used at school, but it got the job done. Sydney kept her eyes trained on the bin of developer as she rocked it, waiting for the moment when the image would materialize on the blank page—the moment when something would emerge from nothing. Usually the process drew her right in. Usually it made everything around her fade, leaving only shades of black against white.

But not tonight.

Not when Guinness
still
hadn’t texted her back.

She’d waited a full hour and a half to reply to his text. She’d drafted about a thousand different responses, but they’d all felt wrong. Too excited, too ambivalent, too uninterested. Finally she’d settled on short and to the point:
Name the time.
Which, of course, he hadn’t. It was
two
AM
, and the only text she’d gotten all night was one from her mom, saying she’d be at the hospital late again. Sydney couldn’t help but feel like one of the fish she’d been photographing lately: hooked and reeled in, only to be left dangling helplessly in the air.

Why did Guinness always have the control? Things had been amazing between them up until this summer. They’d talked on the phone every day and swapped photos almost as often. The second school let out in June, Sydney made the five-hour drive to New York, where Guinness had a photo internship at
Vanity Fair
. She was dying to see him in person again, to feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek instead of the cold plastic of the phone.

But the trip had gone nothing like she’d planned. She’d been hoping for a romantic night on Friday, just the two of them. But Guinness had seemed distracted. He’d dragged her to a crowded party, where he introduced her as his friend and treated her more like a tagalong cousin. Then Saturday morning he took off for a last-minute “assignment,” leaving her in his apartment with his joint-smoking roommate, who spent the day completely ignoring her and watching
Family Guy
reruns on the couch.

By Saturday night, Sydney was at her breaking point. Her hair reeked, her clothes felt grimy, and she’d eaten dinner alone in a greasy pizza joint, watching the lights of the city flicker outside. The only alone time Guinness had spent with her all weekend was when he’d taken a red marker to her latest batch of photos, circling every problem he could find. She’d come to New York ready to say the three words she’d been thinking in her head for months—
I love you
—and instead, she’d been met with this. Her whole life she’d promised herself she wouldn’t become a doormat like her mom. And yet here she was: open
for stomping. Enough was enough. First thing in the morning, she was out of there.

She
almost
kept her resolution. She slipped out while Guinness was still asleep, draped across two-thirds of the bed as usual. Her bag was already in the trunk by the time he came outside, all messy hair and bleary eyes. He was still warm with sleep when he wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Things have just been really tough at work. But don’t leave. We’ve barely had two minutes alone together.”

And whose fault is that?
she wanted to say. But then he kissed her, and it was her favorite kind of Guinness kiss: soft and slow, as if she were a delicious dessert he was savoring. And all her determination melted. She let him pull her inside and onto the bed. When he kissed her lips and neck and shoulders, nothing had ever felt so right.

By the time she made the drive home, she was dizzy with happiness. She’d held on to that feeling for weeks, even when day after day, Guinness didn’t call. He responded to her voice mails with quick texts, saying he was swamped with work and stuff for the Royal (Pain) Wedding—also known as the marriage of his asshole father to some hillbilly gold digger. But soon the whole summer had passed, and he hadn’t called a single time. It was as though that amazing day they’d spent cuddled together in bed had never even happened. As if those words she wanted so badly to say—
I love you
—had faded into dream.

Shaking her head, Sydney forced herself to focus on her work. She snatched the photo up with her tongs and moved it into the water bath. The image had emerged clearly now, and she bent closer to examine it. It was for a new series she was working on.
Fissures
, she planned to call it. She was trying to peel back the shiny veneer that covered Echo Bay,
to strip it raw until all that was left were the cracks and crevices underneath. She’d chosen local fishermen as her first subjects, and for a week she’d been getting up at dawn to shadow them. She wanted to photograph their hundred-dollar catch dying right in their hands—to seize that single moment of reality, the fish as they really were: scaly and hooked and flopping.

Even in the dim red light of the dark room, she could tell she hadn’t gotten it. This photo, of a fisherman’s brow creased in concentration as he studied his catch, just looked… boring. Frustrated, Sydney lifted the photo out and dropped it into the trash can. She was just about to start on the next one when she heard her mom’s key turn in the front door. That was the perk—and downside—of living in one of the Dread’s tiny apartments: very little went unnoticed. Sydney quickly set to putting the kitchen back to normal.

“Hey, hon,” her mom said wearily. She dropped down at the kitchen table just as Sydney moved the last of the bins to the hallway. She was wearing her blue scrubs, which like usual looked way too big on her gaunt frame. “You’re working late on a Saturday.”

“Says the queen of the double shift,” Sydney retorted. Her mom tossed her keys into the fruit bowl and Sydney quickly fished them out, hanging them on the hook where her mom would have no problem finding them in the morning. She’d learned long ago that if she didn’t keep her mother organized, no one would.

“True,” her mom said with a yawn. “Did you do anything fun tonight?”

Sydney shrugged. She’d never been one of those girls who collected friends like stamps, never craved the sleepovers or gossip or shopping trips. But after she was sent away to the Sunrise Center the summer after eighth grade, making friends became almost impossible for her.
The girls at school just felt so foreign, as if there were an invisible barrier between them and her. And she’d accepted that. She had her photography. And she had Guinness.

Until Guinness had disappeared on her this summer. Suddenly she had no one to share her photos with, no one to vent to about work or the annoying tourists or how she could go days without seeing her mom. The highlight of her social life became joking around with Calum “I Take Practice SATs for Fun” Bauer at the Club.

But now Guinness was here….

“You hungry?” Sydney asked. Thinking of Guinness made a neon
REDIRECT!!
sign flash in her mind.

“I ate,” her mom said vaguely. She leaned back in her chair, letting her eyelids flutter shut.

“Let me guess. Cheez-Its and… M&M’s?” Her mom’s version of the food pyramid had candy and junk food at the base.

Her mom opened her eyes, a tiny smile playing on her lips. “Dinner of champions.”

Sighing, Sydney went to the fridge and pulled out what was left of the dinner she’d made earlier: couscous with mushrooms and tofu in a honey soy sauce. “How was work?” she asked as she dumped the food into a pan to warm it up.

“Oh fine,” her mom said. She shook her head, letting her long, dark hair sweep over her shoulders. Sometimes when she did things like that, Sydney felt like she was looking in a mirror. Her mom was only twenty when she had Sydney, and with their identical hair, similarly skinny builds, and matching turquoise-blue eyes, Sydney knew they looked more like sisters than mother and daughter.

“Here,” Sydney said, pushing the couscous over. “Eat.” She sat down across from her mom, resting her chin in her hands.

Her mom shoveled a big bite of couscous into her mouth. “Yum, delicious,” she said. “So, listen to what Dr. Stern said today….”

As her mom launched into a work story, Sydney found her thoughts wandering. She couldn’t believe her phone
still
hadn’t rung. What was keeping Guinness so busy that he couldn’t type out a freaking text message? Maybe the curtness of her text had annoyed him. Or maybe something was wrong. Maybe she should call him to make sure—

“… your dad.”

“What?” Sydney snapped to attention. “What about Dad?”

“I was just saying I got a call from him.” Her mom scraped her fork against the bottom of her bowl. “He… wants to see us.”

“Why?” Sydney recoiled. Her dad lived five minutes away and she could count his attempts to see her the past few years on one hand. “What does he want?”

“He doesn’t
want
anything, hon. He’s just been calling me more often lately. He misses us. He was thinking we could all go to dinner one night. You know, like a family night out.”

“He is not family, Mom. At least not mine,” Sydney said frostily. “Family doesn’t just disappear and then show up again whenever it suits them.”

Her mom rubbed her eyes. “He’s your dad, Sydney. Your blood. That makes him your family, no matter what. And he sounded a little… lost on the phone. I think he needs us right now.” Her mom sighed. “Sometimes in order to help someone we love, we need to forgive.”

“And forget?” Sydney asked dryly.

Her mom looked down at the table and Sydney wondered if maybe she already had—forgotten all the tears and screaming and locked doors. “It’s just a dinner,” her mom said quietly.

“No!” Sydney snapped. “It’s you letting him walk all over you again.” The instant the words were out of her mouth, Sydney felt the guilt hit her, powerful as a wall. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. She reached across the table and squeezed her mom’s hand. “I’m just… tired.”

“I know. Me too.” Her mom stood up and leaned over the table to kiss Sydney on the forehead. “We’ll talk more tomorrow, okay? Right now I’m going to crawl into bed and dream sweet dreams about a tornado sweeping away the hospital.” She yawned as she made her way to her bedroom. “Just kidding, of course,” she called over her shoulder.

As her mom disappeared into her bedroom, Sydney slumped down in her chair. She felt that old, familiar anger brewing inside her. How many times had she watched her mom get pushed around by her dad? It used to break her heart every time, but eventually she’d learned that it was a whole lot easier—and a whole lot less painful—to get angry instead of sad. Taking a deep breath, Sydney stood up and stretched her arms over her head. She was just about to head to her room when her cell dinged. Her hand went instantly to her pocket.

Guinness. Finally.

The time is now
, he had written.
Meet @ Landing Spot?

The Landing Spot was a seedy all-night diner in the Dread, a few blocks away from Sydney’s apartment building. Sydney’s fist tightened around her phone. What did Guinness think, she was just waiting around for him to text? That the second he beckoned, she’d come running? And to the
Landing Spot
of all places? Well, she was not that girl. She was not her mom. She didn’t just forgive and forget.

Don’t think so
, she wrote back.
Past my bedtime
. But the second she pushed send, she regretted it. In spite of everything, she wanted so badly to see him again.

Guinness responded almost immediately.
Y? It’s not like u need
beauty sleep.
Sydney felt a flush creep into her cheeks. From any other guy, that line would sound completely cheesy. But Guinness didn’t do cheesy. She was so tempted to give in.

No. As much as she wanted to, she wouldn’t let him think he could just waltz in and out of her life.

Another night
, she wrote back. At the last minute she added the nickname she loved to tease him with:
Corona.
Then she quickly turned off her phone before he could find a way to change her mind.

Sydney rolled her shoulders a few times. Despite what she had written him about her bedtime, she was far from tired and she needed a change of scenery. Grabbing her camera and car keys, she slipped out of the apartment.

Outside, the bite to the air hinted that fall would arrive within days. That was how the seasons worked in Massachusetts. They changed swiftly—no hesitation, no looking back. It wouldn’t be long before she was cranking up the heat in her car. But tonight she rolled the windows down, letting the cool breeze lift goose bumps on her arms.

Without thinking, she reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the photo she kept tucked behind her registration. The shot itself wasn’t anything special—a mediocre image of buttercups sprouting between blades of grass. But it meant more to her than any other photo she’d ever taken. It was her first attempt at photography. And the first photo she’d taken with Guinness.