Dare (19 page)

Brynna shook her head, the lap of water reverberating in her head. Her mind showed a constant slideshow of Erica, first in the dress, then in the pool, and then in the ocean until she was gone.

Brynna started to tremble. She wanted to tell her mother that this was Erica's dress—not Brynna's, not the one Brynna picked out—but she knew how it sounded: crazy. If she told her mother that she even
saw
the saleslady put a different dress in her bag and that Erica must have switched them, she would sound like she had lost it.

She bit her lip. She couldn't let her mother think she was going crazy, especially since Brynna herself wasn't sure that she wasn't.

“Okay, okay, no dress.” Her mother tossed it aside and gathered Brynna in her arms. “It's not that big of a deal, okay? We'll take it back tomorrow,” she said too brightly. “Or I could take it back and I'll just get the one that you wanted. What color did you say it was?”

Brynna swallowed, her stomach turning over and over on itself. She tried to process the words her mother was saying, tried to remember the color of the dress she had actually picked. She saw white in her mind's eye, but when she tried to recall the image, the white turned into foam on the waves as they broke over her legs, and Erica was already gone.

A tittering chatter was reverberating through the Hawthorne High students when Brynna stepped on campus the following morning. Immediately, unease pricked out all over her, and she shrank back into her hoodie. The weather had made a quick shift from mostly blue to all gray over the last night, and the manic shift caught half the students still hanging on to cut-off shorts and tank tops, while the other half cuddled into chunky sweaters and knee-high boots.

Brynna liked the fall. She relished the gray, the constant spit of moisture in the air. Nobody thought of the ocean in the fall. It was all toasty cocoa and holiday shopping, and Brynna could blend in with it all. She started down the hall, her heart thundering with every step. It had already been a week. Why did people still care? How much did people know? People were shifting, turning to look at her, and Brynna was vaulted back to those first days, returning to Lincoln without Erica.

Everyone
is
blaming
me, everyone is judging me.

Her ears strained, listening to the familiar refrains “total druggie,” “overdosed,” “suicidal,” “crazy,” and Brynna tried to steel herself against it. When she saw Lauren cutting through the crowd, a lightness went through her. Lauren knew what happened; Lauren didn't judge her. Lauren was her friend.

She stopped in front of Brynna, her dark eyes glazed in fury. “I can't believe you.”

A crowd of students chattering around them went immediately silent, all eyes turning toward Lauren and Brynna.

Brynna blinked, genuinely shocked. “What are you talking about?”

Lauren's eyes narrowed to dagger-thin slits, and every inch of her oozed hate. “How could you do that to my brother?”

Her voice cracked on the last word and something peaked in Brynna. “What are you talking about? What's wrong with Evan? Is he okay?”

Lauren rolled her eyes and huffed at Brynna.

Darcy walked up alongside, and Brynna turned to her, her eyes imploring. “Darcy, please tell me what is going on. I have no idea. What's wrong with Evan?”

A sputter of laughter came from down the hall then the unmistakable sound of a body crashing against metal as someone was shoved up against a locker. Brynna craned her neck to see. “What's going on?”

“Fag!” The word cut down the hall and cut Brynna in two. It was Meatball—the letter-jacketed thug that Brynna had met her first day of school—and his gang, and they were striding forward, cutting through the kids, yanking the papers that were taped to the fronts of nearly every locker.

“What are those?”

She could see the hard press of Lauren's jaw as she gritted her teeth. Her eyes were beginning to water, tears building up on her lower lashes. Darcy leaned over and carefully removed one of the full-color flyers, handing it to Brynna. She held on to the edge, shooting a look of pure disgust at her.

“Oh my god,” Brynna breathed. “Who did this?”

It was a mock-up of a magazine cover, and someone had photoshopped Evan's face onto the body on the cover. He was surrounded by meaty men in underwear looking up longingly at him, pawing across his chest. The title of the magazine was written in with a thick black marker:
Today's Gay.
There was a fat black arrow pointing to Evan, and a myriad of horrible slogans written around him.

“This is awful. Who would do this? Who did this?”

The last thing Brynna remembered was looking from Lauren to Darcy, whose eyes were wide, blank orbs, before she felt Lauren's hands on her collarbones. Her balance was thrown off as Lauren lunged, and Brynna stumbled over her own feet, her leg crumpling as she fell to the ground. Her elbow struck first and then her hip as she gripped Lauren's fingers, trying to rip them from her shirt.

“You told the whole fucking school he was gay! He trusted you!”

Lauren was yelling and huffing, and Brynna was trying to process the spiderweb of pain shattering her elbow, Lauren's fingers digging into her flesh, the throb of students chanting “fight, fight, fight!” around them.

“I didn't say anything. I didn't do that,” Brynna tried to manage, tried to roll Lauren from her, but the girl was bigger and her thighs were clamped hard around Brynna's waist. She winced when she felt Lauren's nails dragging across her face.

Someone stepped on her hair.

The chant had gone from a throbbing, single-voiced rhythm to screeches and yells.

“What the heck is going on here?”

And then it was over.

Brynna was still lying on the linoleum floor, breathing hard, when Mr. Fallbrook yanked Lauren off her. The surrounding students scattered like roaches in light. The only two faces that remained, looking down at her with a combination of pity and hate, were Darcy and Teddy's.

“Where's Evan?” Brynna winced at the fresh blood that flooded her mouth from a cut lip but climbed to her feet anyway.

“Leave him alone, Brynna,” Darcy said, her voice soft.

“Either someone tells me what happened here, or we're all going to the principal's office.” Mr. Fallbrook's eyes were hard, sharp pinpricks as he looked from Brynna to Lauren and back again.

“It was her,” Lauren said with a low snarl. “Ask her what happened.”

Mr. Fallbrook held one of the hateful flyers in his hand. “Did you make this, Brynna? This goes beyond bullying. This is a hate crime.”

Brynna stepped forward, her cheeks flushed, her palms feeling raw from where they rubbed against the concrete. “I didn't do it.” She looked toward Lauren. “I didn't make that. I would never make something like that.”

Lauren looked at her, her face a mask of white-hot rage.

“And you two? Why were you fighting?”

Brynna cleared her throat and took a tiny step forward, glancing back at Lauren, then back to Mr. Fallbrook. “It was a misunderstanding. Please don't punish Lauren, Mr. Fallbrook. It was my fault.”

Mr. Fallbrook sucked in a long breath as he looked from Brynna to Lauren. “Is this true?”

It looked like it took all of Lauren's strength but she nodded curtly. “Everything's fine,” she said, teeth gritted.

The bell rang and Mr. Fallbrook set them loose. Brynna spun on her heel and headed for Evan's locker. He was there, piling books in his bag. He froze when he saw her, the same hateful look that Lauren had washing over his features.

“What do you want?”

“Evan, please,” Brynna said. “I have no idea what happened. I just walked on campus and Lauren came after me. She attacked me.”

Evan's lips actually cocked up in a smirk, and Brynna could feel the lump growing in her throat. “Evan?”

He slammed his locker shut and stood in front of her, legs akimbo like he was getting ready to fight as well. “What did you expect, Brynna? That everyone was going to throw me a parade or something?”

“Evan, you can't believe that I would make these things.” She snatched them off the lockers around them, crumpling them into a ball.

“Yeah, Brynna, you go gather up all the print ones. I've still got this one for my scrapbook.” He whipped out his tablet and thrust it at her, the Hawthorne High webpage popping up, boasting a big, grinning picture of Evan. Written across the shot in a jabbing, angry red scrawl were the words “Guess who's gay?”

“That's awful. You think I did—?”

“Who else, Brynna? I told you. Just
you
.”

“It's not like it wasn't obvious,” Brynna spat back.

Evan stared at her, his whole face contorted in pain, surprise, and biting anger.

“It doesn't matter,” he said in a low, even voice. “I told you.”

“Evan, why would I do this to you? What would I have to gain? Seriously.” She reached out for him, but he shrugged her hand off violently.

“I don't know why you would do this, Brynna. I'm beginning to think I never even really knew you at all.” Evan spun, his back to her.

“I didn't tell anyone, Ev. And what's the problem anyway? Being gay is no big deal. It shouldn't even have been a secret in the first place.”

Now Evan spun back toward Brynna, his every feature alive with fire. Anger rolled off him in waves. “That's not your decision to make. Being gay might not be a big deal to you, but it is to me. It doesn't matter if people ‘figured it out' on their own. I needed to be the one, Brynna. I needed to be the one to tell people, not you!”

He turned and stomped down the hall, but Brynna couldn't move. She could hear the reverberating sound of his footsteps fading as he walked away from her and finally disappeared around a corner.

She knew she should move, but her feet were rooted to the glossy hallway tiles. Her body felt heavy, and her blood seemed to thrum, to pulse over the ache in the jagged skin of her torn palms, and she could taste it at the corners of her mouth. Faint. Metallic. It made her stomach ache and filled her nostrils with that fresh meat smell.

She swallowed down bile.

She felt the sting of Evan's words on her cheeks as if he'd slapped her, and for once, she didn't want to numb the pain. She let Evan's anger sink into her.

It didn't take long for the news of Brynna's betrayal to overtake the news that Evan was gay. Immediately, she was a pariah, and classmates who'd never noticed her before were glaring, staring, studying her, and whispering. They avoided her when she walked. They left the bathroom when she entered. Their malevolence traveled in a thick cloud wherever they went, but Brynna didn't mind it. It felt better for people to be angry with her than it did for them to avert their gazes only to glance back with pity in their eyes when they thought she wasn't looking.

There was no follow-up from Erica either.

Brynna waited, holding her breath each time her tablet chimed, each time she logged into her email. She hadn't told anyone about Evan, and no one else had taken responsibility. It had to be Erica.

But
Erica
is
dead
. The refrain kept ringing in her head.

•••

After the final bell, Brynna sped down the hall, head down, watching her sneakers against the scuffed hallway's linoleum. She spun when someone wound their arm in hers, and when she looked up, Teddy was there. Her heart stopped mid-beat, and she waited for him to say something, for his expression to crack and give her the tiniest clue as to what he was thinking, what he was feeling. Instead, he tugged her down the hall silently then ushered her into the empty choir room.

“Hey,” she said softly.

Teddy sat on a desk, his eyes locked on hers. “Hey.”

They were silent for a beat before Teddy went on. “What's going on, Bryn?”

“I didn't—I didn't out Evan, I swear.”

“You don't have to convince me. I know you wouldn't do something like that. Besides, it's not exactly like it was the secret of the century. So, since you didn't do it, do you have any idea who did?”

Brynna pinched the bridge of her nose. “Meatball?”

She knew it wasn't Meatball, but she threw it out there anyway, hoping to see what—if anything—Teddy knew.

He shook his head. “Doubtful. Meatball likes to torture Evan in person. And besides, have you seen the meat hooks on that guy? I don't think he types so much as just mashes a bunch of keys together.” Teddy mimed apelike hands mashing at a keyboard, and Brynna smiled in spite of herself.

The whole school was mere feet away, but Brynna felt comfortable in the room with Teddy. He was warm and concerned, and when he smiled, everything bad about Brynna's life melted away.

She wanted to smile as easily as he did. She slid up on the desk next to him. “You know how in movies the person always says, ‘now you have to promise me you won't think I'm crazy' before they tell the other person something crazy?”

Teddy nodded, but his eyebrows were raised. “Yes…”

“I'm not even going to say that because you're going to think I'm crazy regardless.”

He smiled and gestured for her to go on.

Brynna sucked air through her teeth, her stomach burning, heart thudding in her chest. “I think someone from my old school might be after me.”

Teddy's relaxed expression went to concern. His lips tightened, and his eyes widened. “What do you mean, ‘after' you?”

“I think someone is trying to hurt me. Or scare me at least.” She swallowed, kicking her legs underneath the table. “I think that person wrote the headline about Evan. I think that person was in the pool with me the night that you found me.”

“The night you wouldn't let me go to the police.”

She nodded slightly, watching her legs swaying under the table. “Yeah.”

“Brynna, you could be in real danger. You need to tell someone. We need to tell someone.”

Her lower lip started to tremble, and the classroom swirled in front of her. “I can't go to the police. I'm chasing a ghost, Teddy.”

Teddy pulled Brynna to him, and she cried into the crook of his neck. He stroked her hair softly, and she cried out the tension of the last few hours, weeks, months.

“It's going to be okay, Brynna,” he murmured softly. “It's going to be okay. We'll go to the police or your parents.”

Brynna breathed in the clean soap scent of Teddy's soft skin. “Can we just stay here, like this, for a while?”

Teddy nodded, resting his chin against her head.

Brynna prayed that they could stay that way forever.

•••

When Brynna got home that Friday, all she wanted to do was sleep, to spend the entire weekend underneath her covers, waiting for time to pass.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Brynna was flopped on her stomach in her room, reading, when she heard the echo of the doorbell. She paused, holding in a breath, when she heard the murmured conversation of both her parents and a guest. Interest piqued, she peeled out of bed and pinched the shade up an inch, her stomach falling into her shoes.