Dare (8 page)

“Bryn, seriously, are you sick or something?” Darcy's voice was soothing at her ear, and Brynna shook her head, then glanced at the concerned faces of her friends.

“No,” she finally muttered. “I just didn't sleep well.”

“For, like, the last thirty days?” Darcy said, poking her fork into something that vaguely resembled mashed potatoes.

“Leave her alone, Darce. So, who's ready for homecoming shopping?”

That snapped Brynna to attention. “What? Homecoming shopping?”

Now it was Lauren staring at Brynna. “Don't tell me you forgot. We talked about it yesterday. I left a message on your phone.”

Brynna's mouth went dry. “On my phone?”

Lauren screwed up her face. “Uh, yeah. How else do you send a message? Carrier pigeon?”

Evan reached over the table and fished Brynna's phone out of her purse. “Duh. See? Three missed messages.”

The hairs on Brynna's neck pricked as blazing heat raced down her spine. She watched, every action in molasses-slow motion, as Evan hit the “call voice mail” button and pressed her phone to his ear. Before she could consider what she was doing, Brynna launched herself across the table, slamming her phone from Evan's hand. It landed with a shattering thud on the ground, and Brynna, balancing on her belly on the tabletop, was half-covered in Evan's mashed potatoes and the dregs of Lauren's mocha.

“Holy overreaction, Batman!”

“Bryn, what the hell?” Evan kicked his chair back and stood, picking bits of mashed potato from his T-shirt.

Darcy and Lauren had hands pressed to their mouths, but Brynna could hear their stifled giggles, because the rest of the lunchroom had gone astoundingly quiet.

“I'm…sorry?” It was more question than apology, and Brynna wriggled herself off the table, ignoring the mashed potato scales that arced off her sweatshirt. She crumpled to her knees and started gathering the remains of her phone. Evan jumped down to join her, putting a hand on her forearm. His eyes were wide and smoldering brown when she looked up at him.

“What was that about? Did something else happen?”

Brynna eyed him for a short beat before shaking her head curtly. She knew he would tell her again to brush the call off. She wished she could.

The students in the lunchroom picked that perfect moment to get over Brynna's James Bond maneuver and went back to talking, screaming, laughing—making enough merciful noise so Brynna couldn't explain even if she wanted to.

Darcy laced her arm through Brynna's the instant Brynna stood up. “I'm pretty sure wearing mashed potatoes is against the Hawthorne dress code. Come on, I'll get you a pass and you can get into the locker room.”

Brynna let Darcy lead her from the lunchroom. She didn't bother to look back.

“Um, so I guess you're a pretty private person, then?” Darcy asked once they stepped into the deserted hall.

Brynna's lips were still Sahara dry. Her throat felt constricted, but she forced herself to talk, offering a giggle that was supposed to sound carefree but came out tinny and staid.

“I think it was just some weird, Pavlovian reaction,” she lied. “My brother used to steal my cell phone and broadcast all my messages.”

Darcy was silent for a beat, her arm still wrapped around Brynna's. She didn't look at Brynna when she said, “You don't need to lie to me.”

Brynna stopped, certain the thud-thud-thud of her heart would give her away. “I'm not lying. Why would you think that?”

Darcy dropped Brynna's arm and kept walking, the hall long and empty in front of them. “Because you don't have a brother.”

Brynna had to jog to catch up to her. “He's my stepbrother.”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever.”

“Darcy!” Brynna put her hand on Darcy's shoulder and forced the girl to face her.

Darcy blinked. “I work in the office, Bryn. I've seen your records. I know you're an only child.”

Brynna's thudding heart jumped into her throat, and her lungs felt like they were going to collapse. The lockers all around her seemed to close in, and the smell of industrial cleaner from the shiny hallway floor was sharp in her nose, almost suffocating.
Darcy
had
seen
all
her
records?

Thoughts spun in Brynna's brain. Did Darcy know why Brynna came to Hawthorne? Did she know about Erica? Could she have been the one—?

Darcy's eyes were a clear, pale blue. With her white-blond hair and little ski-jump nose, she looked like a pixie. With her wire-framed glasses and her cardigan sweater, she looked like a little, perfect-student pixie. Brynna swallowed. “What else do you know about me?”

“I know that you transferred from Lincoln High where you were on the swim team, that you're horrible in math and earth science, and that you have to see a psychologist.”

“Do they always give that kind of information to student aides?”

Darcy flushed barely pink for a brief second before slipping right back into her normal confident vibe. She shrugged. “It's no big deal.”

Darcy said the last while ushering Brynna through the glass double doors of the administration office. Brynna looked around, suddenly anxious, suddenly extremely aware of her surroundings. She took in the burnt-orange, industrial-style carpet that seemed to only exist in high school offices and breathed in the slight smell of pencil shavings and office supplies. Muted music came from one of the desks, something with a cheery, Spanish beat that seemed remarkably out of place among the cubicle walls and office furniture that was all done up in shades of gray. There was a series of trophies and fading pictures of Hawthorne Hornets, going all the way back to the class of 1980. Brynna briefly wondered what happened last year, where those kids were, but immediately forgot about them as she looked away. There were the usual antismoking and antidrug posters that featured sad-looking kids from 1979 posted on either wall, plus a newer-looking antibullying one with cartoon kids ganging up on a single loner.

Brynna snapped back to reality as the double doors snapped shut and Darcy made her way behind the big desk where she pulled out a pink pad of hall passes.

“Hey,” Brynna whispered, so low she wasn't sure if Darcy could hear her.

Darcy looked up, blond eyebrows rising and disappearing into her bangs. “Hm?”

Brynna looked around again, taking in the two boys sitting outside the principal's office, one ripping at the bottom of his shorts, one eyeing her with a look she didn't like. Brynna stepped closer to Darcy.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

Darcy shrugged, giving her the universal sign for “spill it.”

Brynna paused, and Darcy took a step closer.

“Could you, like, not say anything about my record?” She felt dumb saying it, feeling the heat singe her cheeks. Really, she didn't care if the group knew about her bad grades, but if they knew she was in therapy—that she
had
to see a therapist according to the Crescent County District Attorney's office—she knew the questions would start.

“Why were you doing drugs?”

“What did you talk about in rehab?”

“Why did the police send you there?”

Though she could answer all their questions without mentioning Erica out loud, Erica always came up, always seemed to whisper in her ear. “Tell them, Bryn. Tell them what you did to me. If you weren't guilty, you wouldn't have needed to numb yourself…you wouldn't have needed to get rid of me…again.”

Brynna could almost see the flash of anger in Erica's eyes then, and it always shot a jolt of ice water through her veins.

She shrank back from mentioning anything about her past at all.

Darcy was silent for a beat, her blue eyes seeming to consider Brynna's wish, seeming to weigh whether she wanted to side with her.

Finally, “Why? It's not that big of a deal.”

Brynna felt a momentary flash of relief. “I just…” She fumbled with her hands. “Just want to start fresh and all.”

“Whatever. As an office aide, I'm sworn to secrecy anyway.”

“You are?”

Darcy's smile was easy. “No. Anyone can be an office aide. I'm pretty sure the only requirements are that you have to be a student here and you have to know all the letters from A to Z. In order. Don't worry though”—she patted Brynna's shoulder—“your secret is safe with me.”

Brynna offered her a small smile.

Darcy wrote out the pass, and Mrs. Nunez, the head secretary, initialed it and handed it back. Darcy held it out to Brynna.

“You know where the locker room is, right?”

Brynna took the pass and tucked it in her back pocket. She nodded, her eyes never leaving Darcy's. Darcy smiled as Brynna left the office, but Brynna wasn't so sure the smile was kind.

There was no one in the locker room when Brynna stepped in. Its cinder-block walls were long and colorless, lending an air of inescapability to the place. There were windows every few feet, long, narrow rectangles placed high enough up the wall that any light they brought in dissipated far above the girls' heads. The fluorescent overhead lights constantly buzzed, and the yellow light they offered seemed only to accentuate the overall gray.

When the girls were lined up at their lockers, their chatter and laughter bounced off the walls and the flashes of color—someone's brand-new fluorescent pink bra, the green of a Hawthorne High cheerleading uniform—cut through the overall grimness and made the room bearable. The scent of their perfumes, scented body soaps, and flowery deodorants almost masked the smell of mildew and wet cement. Now, the odor was almost overwhelming, and every step she took seemed to amplify into a grating smack of rubber flip-flop.

Brynna wrinkled her nose and picked her way around the long wooden bench that bisected the rows between lockers. It was the middle of the school day, and though it was an unintelligible din, she could hear students bustling about outside. She had snatched her cell phone before Evan had a chance to scroll through it, and Darcy had mostly agreed to keep her secret. There was no reason for Brynna to feel uneasy, but walking through the shadowed rows of the lockers, her heart fluttered and her hackles went up.

Brynna steeled herself and went directly to locker 127 where her gym clothes—a pair of yoga capris and the required Hawthorne Hornets green T-shirt—were wadded on top of a pair of last year's sneakers. She yanked the T-shirt out of her locker, sputtering and coughing when something flew out with it.

Brynna looked down at her sweatshirt. It was covered in fine grains of sand. They were all over her jeans too and blanketing her toes, crunching underneath the soles of her shoes as she moved.

She looked back into her locker and took an involuntary step back. The blood started rushing through her veins as streams of sand flowed from her locker.

Brynna pulled everything out—yoga pants, sneakers, socks—and the rivulets came faster, pooling at her feet.

There was a mound of sand on the bottom of her locker; it was easily three feet tall.

Brynna could feel the prick of tears, the tight lump forming in her throat. What was happening? Who was doing this to her?

“Someone from Lincoln,” she whispered, trying to moisten her sandpaper lips. “It has to be.” She shook her head, dusting the sand from her sweatshirt and jeans. “Someone's stupid idea of a stupid prank.”

But even as she thought it, her brain was working fast: someone from Lincoln would have to drive at least forty-five minutes to fill her Hawthorne locker with sand. That was a long way to go for a prank.

But
it's possible,
Brynna pushed back. It's possible.

The revelation did nothing to stop the tears that rushed down her cheeks; it did nothing to calm the thunderous pound of her heart.

Remember me?

The image of Erica's words burned their way into Brynna's eyes.

Remember me?

Was it a plea or a warning?

Suddenly, the sand, the locker room—everything—fish-eyed then blurred in Brynna's vision. Her skin seemed to tighten, her bones threatening to break. She sat down hard on the metal bench, eye level with the base of her locker. Half the sand was gone now, exposing a tiny strand of purple. Brynna leaned forward, gingerly pinching the ribbon between thumb and forefinger. She gave it a subtle tug, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. But it wasn't fabric.

It was a short length of deep purple crepe paper.

“Erica?” she whispered.

Feeling a shiver that cut all the way to her bones, Brynna tried to grip her locker door to smack it shut, but her fingers shook and her palms were slick with sweat. She tried to drop the crepe paper but it stuck to her palm. When she was finally able to move her hands, she yanked the paper from her skin and gaped, losing her breath. The bright, brilliant, Lincoln High purple of the streamer bled into her palm. A smear about the size of a quarter looked like it was burned into her flesh, like a spot of blood that could never be washed off.

“No!”

The word came back to her, echoing off the cinder-block walls and sounding more and more desperate each time it came back.

She thought she heard someone giggling.

“Hello?” What was meant to be a yell came out a tortured, choked sound. “Is someone in here?”

No response except the pitiful echo. Brynna stood statue still for what seemed like a millennium but must have been less than a minute. She pinched her eyes shut, trying to breathe deeply, trying to remember whatever the hell it was that Dr. Rother told her she was supposed to do. Her chest ached and her lungs popped with fire. She couldn't pull in a breath, couldn't force air between her lips. She felt like she was running a marathon while breathing through a straw. Sweat beaded at her hairline, shot like pinpricks all over her skin.

“Hello?” This time it was a barely a whisper, and Brynna immediately prayed that no one would answer her, that the bell would ring, that students would come flooding in. Anything to get her out of this moment, to get her out of this locker room where her feet felt cemented to the ground.

Footsteps sounded behind her—a shuffling, unsure sound—and Brynna whirled, the crunch of her sneakers grating against the spilled sand sounding a thousand times louder than it should have.

She pressed her hands to her chest, trying to force in a breath, when no one was behind her. But still her lungs failed her. Her eyes started to water and pain started at her temples, shooting fire bolts behind her eyes. She knew she had to sit down. She knew she should press her head between her knees. She knew that she couldn't force her body to do either of those things.

Brynna let out a choked sob as an unassailable fear washed over her. There was someone with her in that locker room, someone watching her struggle to breathe, someone watching her shiver and cry. Someone who had no intention of helping her.

Brynna saw her knuckles go white as she gripped the open door of her locker, her wet palm sliding down as her knees gave out. She landed with a hard thud on her butt and pulled her knees into her chest.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Blood, like ocean waves, crashed through her ears.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Her thundering heart pounded against her thigh.

There's no one else in here. There's no one else in here. Breathe.

Brynna had almost convinced herself, was almost breathing normally, was feeling the slowing, normalizing pace of her beating heart.

“There's no one else in here,” she whispered to herself.

Finally, using the lockers behind her for leverage, she stood, walking on shaky legs toward the bank of sinks at the front of the locker room. She rounded the corner when she heard one of the automatic sinks start flowing, the water rushing so hard into the basin that it splashed a fine mist onto the concrete floor. There was no one in front of the sink.

It snapped off as Brynna approached it.

Swallowing hard, she peeked into the basin where a single tube of lipstick lay, cap off, the bright red color leaving streaks on the white porcelain. Brynna didn't need to check the label to know what color it was or what brand. It was Erica's color, Erica's brand.

Across the mirror, written in the candy-apple red that Erica adored so much, were the words,
I
haven't forgotten you, Brynna.

A starburst of heat exploded in front of her eyes. Her whole body went rigid. She doubled over and dry-heaved, the image of her sneakers below her swirling and blurring with her tears.

“I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here!”

Brynna crossed the locker room like a shot, at some point having enough presence of thought to snatch up her bag and continue to breathe. She burst through the double doors and peeled through the now-crowded halls. All around her, kids were talking and laughing and yelling, but it all faded to a cacophonous din in her ears. She walked with purpose but aimlessly, as the halls of Hawthorne High bowed in different directions. Everywhere she looked were faces she couldn't recognize, faces that clearly didn't recognize her. The crowd, the walls, all started to close in on her until she burst through the double doors that led to the back quad, doubling over and desperately sucking in huge gasps of air. Pinpricks broke out along her fingertips and palms, and Brynna closed her eyes, feeling a single bead of sweat drip down the center of her back. Her chest was tight. Her heart slammed against her rib cage so hard that she was sure it would crack.

“Panic attack,” she whispered to herself. “I'm having a panic attack.”

She heard Dr. Rother's voice echoing in her head: “Concentrate on your breathing, Brynna. Focus.”

Focus,
Brynna commanded herself.
Focus
on
your
breathing
and
your
shoes
and
the
cement
in
front
of
you
and
not
the
sand, not the churn of the surf that seemed to always crash. Concentrate on the here and now. You're here, at Hawthorne High, and Erica is dead.

That last word—
dead—
echoed in Brynna's mind, and she couldn't concentrate. She fisted her hands and stepped forward, trying to focus on something, some stupid rote action that would free her mind from the panic cycle. She took another forward step then started a slow jog toward the football field and the back forty, concentrating only on her footsteps, only on covering ground.

She climbed up the bleacher stairs and pinned herself into a corner, the high walls of the structure guarding her against the wind. She crumbled, letting the tears fall rapidly now, not caring when her soft cry went to spastic hiccupping.

Why
would
Erica
do
this
to
me?

The sound of muffled laughter and someone coughing snapped her back to reality. Heat washed over her cheeks, and she used the heel of her hand to wipe away the tears that were already drying. Muffled voices went around again, and bile climbed the back of Brynna's throat—was she really going crazy?

When a snake of cigarette smoke wafted up from the open slots between the bleachers, she glanced down, her heart speeding up as she noticed a group of kids sprawled out on the hard-packed earth, smoking. One was holding a water bottle that Brynna knew wasn't water. The girl took a large swig and passed it to the guy next to her who mumbled something and took a swig of his own.

Brynna glanced down at the broken face on her phone while her mind shattered into millions of images—all of them Erica, all of them her and then
not
her—one minute laughing, splashing, the next minute, gone.

Numb
the
pain…

Brynna's mouth watered. Her head pounded. She could dull the pain again, just this one time. She swung her legs down, but everything froze when she heard the laughter. It was high-pitched and funny, the kind of laugh that made you giggle too. It was too loud, too distinct.

It
can't be Erica.

She was on her feet then, vaulting over the metal guardrail of the bleachers. Her feet hit the hard-packed ground with a thud, and all the kids huddled under the bleachers—there were three of them—stopped what they were doing and glared at her.

There were two scrawny boys that Brynna vaguely recognized from school and a tall girl with fake platinum blond hair. She was holding a cigarette a half-inch from her pale, chapped lips, and Brynna watched, mesmerized, as smoke curled up in a lazy trail.

The taller boy shoved the blond behind him and gestured to Brynna. “Want something?” His voice was sharp but not unkind as his dark brown eyes went up and down Brynna's body.

Her muscles tightened, and the back of her neck pricked with sweat.

The blond peered around the boy. “Travis, who's she?”

Brynna could smell the sharp tang of vodka mixing with ash on the girl's breath. She immediately recognized the glossy sheen in her eyes, the unfocused stare of someone who just got high.

Hours seemed to pass as Brynna stood there, thinking, until Travis hitched his chin. “Hey.” His eyes went over Brynna's shoulder and she turned, seeing Evan cutting through the grass, coming right for her. When she turned back to Travis and the two others, they had shrunk back into the shadows of the bleachers, their backs turned on Brynna as they walked away.

“What are you doing out here? Seriously, we sent out a search party.” Evan stayed just outside the shadowed border of the bleachers, arms crossed over his chest. “You know the only people who hang out here are the freaks and stoners.”

Brynna's stomach shifted. “Yeah, well…”

He held out a hand. “Come on.”

It was like the first day of school all over again, and Brynna wondered whether Evan thought that too. She took his hand and let him pull her onto the grass. He immediately squeezed her palm and they began to walk.

The almost-tardy bell rang and students buzzed around, rushing toward classes, and Brynna, strangely, felt herself looking forward to walking into a room crowded with students. She was ready for some normalcy in her day, and the din of student chatter calmed the constant questions that pinballed through her mind.

“Hey! I was hoping to run into you,” Teddy said, his face lighting up when he saw her.

Brynna could feel herself blush and hoped she no longer looked as ghoulish as she did in the locker room.

“We were taking a breather,” Evan answered.

Teddy tossed him a noncommittal glance then went back to Brynna. “Walk to Fallbrook's with you?”

“Yeah.” She turned to Evan. “See you after?”

“Yep.”

“So, Bryn—”

“I've been looking all over for you!” Darcy cut right between them, her slick pageboy nearly slapping Teddy in the face. “Sorry, T.” She turned back to Brynna. “I went looking for you in the locker room and you, like, poof, were gone. What happened to you?”

“Oh, I—”

“Look, Darcy, I need to talk to Brynna,” Teddy cut in.

The final bell cut them all off.

“Into class,” Principal Chappie yelled as he zigged through the hall. “That means you three,” he said, pinning Teddy, Darcy, and Brynna with an authoritarian glare.

Brynna tugged on the back of Darcy's sleeve as they pushed into Mr. Fallbrook's class.

“Hey, when you were in the locker room,” Brynna started.

“You're in my classroom, guys, zip it.” Mr. Fallbrook looked slightly annoyed, but Brynna knew it was more for effect than anything else. Darcy was already ignoring her, sliding primly into her seat and batting her eyelashes at Mr. Fallbrook.

Brynna slid into her desk and tried to catch Darcy's eye. Her pulse throbbed with curiosity: did Darcy see the lipstick on the mirror in the locker room too?

Teddy leaned toward Brynna. “Hey, I just wanted to ask you—”

Mr. Fallbrook tapped on the blackboard. “Ms. Chase, apparently Mr. Higgins has something so important to tell you that it trumps whatever I was planning on teaching.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned against the edge of his desk, hitching his chin toward Teddy. “So, go ahead, Mr. Higgins. We'll all wait.”

Brynna's skin burned white-hot as every eye turned toward her and Teddy, eyebrows raised expectantly. Teddy glanced at Brynna, his cheek pushed up in that half smile, then leaned toward her.

“Oh no.” Fallbrook stood. “If it's that important, we should probably all know.”

Brynna closed her eyes, the embarrassment total. Teddy stood up. “Thanks, Mr. Fallbrook, it is important. I need to know if Brynna will go to the homecoming dance with me.”

A ripple of laughter and “awws” went through the room, and Brynna glanced around, nervous. She caught Darcy's eye, and Darcy immediately looked away, her mouth held in a hard, thin line.

“Well?” Fallbrook asked.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, Teddy, I'll go with you.” Giddiness washed over Brynna, and she could feel little pops of warmth thrumming underneath her skin.

“All right, fantastic. Now everybody get to work.”

•••

The rest of the school day passed uneventfully, and Brynna was glad. By sixth period biology, her stomach had de-knotted itself and her heartbeat was back to its normal, non-rib-slamming pace. When the final bell rang, she made a beeline for her locker and grinned when she saw that Teddy was already there.

“Hey, what are you doing here?”

He held up a sad-looking daisy. “Flower delivery guy.” He offered Brynna the flower, which flopped when she took it.

She smiled anyway. “Uh, don't take this the wrong way, but you're not very good at your job. Aren't you supposed to keep these in water or something?”

Teddy clutched at his chest. “You're breaking my heart, lady!” He straightened. “Would you like a ride home?”

“In your refrigerated flower truck?” Brynna mimed thinking hard. “It would be a treat. But no thanks. My mom is picking me up.”

“Ah, the mother. Much like the fake phone number.”