Truth or Dare . ., page 2
Abby tried not to laugh as she glanced at Leah’s crazy-heavy eye makeup; in addition to the blue mascara, she’d added purple eyeliner and two shades of glitter eye shadow. “Well, it depends what look you’re going for,” she began. “Cute girl on a Saturday night? Yeah, a little much. Going back in time to a disco in the seventies? Then you look perfect!”
Leah reached for the bottle of makeup remover. “I always go overboard with the eye shadow.” She sighed.
“Just remember, less is more,” Nora advised.
“Except when it comes to your hair, Nora,” Abby said as she struggled with a round brush.
Nora laughed. “Hey, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
An hour later the girls were just about done with their makeovers. Abby had never seen so many wild eye-shadow pairings and outrageous hairstyles. At least, not since her last sleepover.
“You know what? I think it’s time for a little Truth or Dare,” Leah suggested slyly, twirling one of her high pigtails around her finger.
“Ooh, yes!” squealed Chloe. “I love Truth or Dare!”
“I’m game,” said Abby. “How about the person with the craziest hairdo has to go first?”
Chloe started laughing uncontrollably. “Then no doubt you’re up, Nora.”
“This mess on my head is all Abby’s fault,” replied Nora, “but sure, I’ll go.”
“All right, then, Nora,” Chloe began, her eyes twinkling. “Truth or dare?”
Nora bit her lip as she thought about her options. “Dare,” she said. “What have I got to lose now?”
“Great. I have a good one.” Chloe grinned at her. “I dare you to go into the front yard and pretend you’re a chicken. And I mean squawking and bawking and everything. For one whole minute.”
Abby frowned slightly, remembering the spooky feeling she’d had when she grabbed the grocery bag from the car earlier in the evening. “We don’t have to go outside,” she said quickly. “Nora can just do the dare down here.”
“But it’s way more embarrassing if she does it outside,” Chloe pointed out. “I mean, somebody could see her!”
“No kidding,” Abby said. “Did you forget that Jake Chilson lives right across the street?”
“But Jake’s at the movies with Max and Toby,” Leah reminded her. “And it’s Chloe’s dare. She gets to set the rules—no matter how heartless they are.”
As everyone laughed, Nora rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It’s dark. No one will see me.” She held her head confidently as she climbed up the basement stairs, with everyone following behind her. When the girls walked outside, Abby saw that Nora was right about how dark it was. The moon was hidden behind some storm clouds; it was so pitch-black that she could barely see her own yard.
Or the trees looming at the edge of the nature preserve.
“Don’t start yet,” Chloe said. She turned to Abby. “Do you guys have any lights in the front yard?”
“Yeah, I’ll go turn them on.” Abby ran over to the side of the house and flipped the big utility switch. Suddenly the front yard was flooded with light that spilled into the street, all the way over to Jake’s yard. Abby snuck a glance at the sprawling red house; even though the curtains were drawn, she could tell that the lights were on in the living room. She had lived across the street from Jake for her entire life; in fact, one of her earliest memories was of the two of them digging around in the sandbox in his backyard. They had played together a lot when they were younger, but Abby hadn’t been over to his house since the fifth grade. She wondered briefly if Jake still had the same spaceship wallpaper in his room, and smiled to herself as she rejoined her friends in the front yard.
“Oh, man,” groaned Nora. “Abby! I didn’t know your house had, like, floodlights!”
“That’s not all!” Chloe announced as she whipped out her cell phone. “Smile for the camera, Nora!”
“What!” Nora cried. “You’re going to film me?”
“Absolutely,” Chloe said wickedly, holding the cell phone up so the camera would catch all of Nora’s chicken impression. “Don’t worry, you look fabulous!”
Nora frowned. “No fair!”
“I never said that I wasn’t going to film you,” Chloe protested. “But I guess I can skip it, Nora. If you’re feeling chicken, I mean.”
Nora gave her friend a look. “Ha, ha. Very funny, Chloe. Let me just start so I can get this over with.” She walked onto the grass and began to strut around like a chicken, flapping her arms like wings and clucking, “Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk!”
Abby and the rest of the girls didn’t stop laughing until Chloe stopped filming and said, “Okay, that’s one minute. Way to go, Nora. You do an awesome chicken impression.”
Even Nora started to laugh as she took a bow. “That was seriously the longest minute of my life!” she complained as the girls traipsed back through the kitchen.
“Here you go, Nora,” Abby said as she handed her friend a brownie. “You earned it!”
“Thanks,” Nora said with a grin. “Better bring the whole tray downstairs. Truth or Dare isn’t over yet!”
As soon as the girls were settled back in the basement, Leah announced, “Okay, since Nora was so brave to make a total fool out of herself—”
“Bawk, bawk!” clucked Chloe.
“It’s her turn to ask someone,” Leah finished. “Go on, Nora.”
“All right, I choose our hostess. Truth or dare, Ab?”
Uh-oh, Abby thought as everyone turned to her. I am definitely not in the mood to act like a chicken! “Truth,” she said firmly.
After all, Abby figured, Truth could never be nearly as embarrassing as the dares her friends could dream up.
Or so she thought.
“All right, Abby,” Nora began. “Who do you like?”
Abby’s face fell. She noticed Leah sitting across from her, beginning to smile and clearly looking forward to the answer.
“Do I have to answer that?” Abby pleaded, already knowing what Nora would say.
“Yes,” Nora said matter-of-factly. “You picked Truth, and now you have to answer any question I ask. Those are the rules.”
As much as she hated to admit it, Abby knew that Nora was right. “If I tell you . . .,” she said slowly. “If I tell you who I like, you have to promise not to tell anyone. Ever.”
“Oh, we promise,” Nora said as she made an X over her heart. “Cross my heart and everything!”
Leah nodded, and Chloe added, “Of course we won’t tell anybody, Abby. You can trust us!”
“Okay.” Abby sighed as her face turned redder. “I . . . like . . .”
No one made a sound as they waited for Abby to confess her crush.
“Jake!” she said at last, covering her face with a pillow.
“I knew it!” Leah crowed. “I knew you were acting weird in the supermarket earlier!”
“Jake Chilson?” asked Chloe. “Oh, he’s supercute!”
“Please don’t tell anybody, you guys,” Abby begged. “I would die if he found out. Seriously.”
“We won’t say a word,” promised Nora.
“Definitely not,” Leah agreed.
There was an awkward pause, and Abby wondered if everyone else was thinking about what had happened last year too.
Suddenly Leah pulled her cell phone out of her pocket.
“What are you doing?” Abby asked suspiciously.
Leah looked up innocently. “I thought I could text Jake and say hi,” she said, her eyes wide.
“No!” cried Abby. She lunged for Leah’s phone, but Leah was too quick; she jumped out of the way and ran to the other side of the room.
“Please don’t text him, Leah,” Abby begged.
“Why not?” asked Leah. “I only want to help you like you helped me at the market. Like you said, how will you ever have the chance to go out with Jake if you don’t talk to him? I can get the conversation started.”
“No!” Abby pleaded. “I really don’t want you to text Jake!”
“Well, you could always text him instead,” Nora suggested.
“Oh, no. Absolutely not,” replied Abby immediately. “What would I say?”
“Well, you’ll never know if you don’t try,” said Chloe. “Maybe Jake would love it if you texted him.”
Abby sighed. She knew her friends were right in a way. It would be great to text Jake if he wanted to text her, too. But what if he didn’t want to? Abby decided it was a risk she was willing to take. “Fine! Fine, I’ll do it!” she said as she pulled her own phone out of her back pocket. Jake and I are friends, Abby thought. We’ve known each other forever. It won’t be totally weird for me to text him. Probably.
Abby plunked down on the couch as her friends crowded around her.
“What are you going to write?” Chloe asked excitedly.
Abby shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “What do you guys think?”
“How about this?” suggested Nora. “Dear Jake, I l-o-o-o-o-ove you. . . .”
Abby frowned playfully and grabbed a pillow and tossed it at Nora.
“Just write, ‘Hey,’” Chloe suggested. “Maybe he won’t even get the text right now. Maybe his phone will be off.”
“Maybe,” Abby said. But she didn’t sound very hopeful. She sighed again as she typed HEY into her phone. Then she took a deep breath and hit send.
For a few moments, everyone was quiet with anticipation. Then, suddenly, Abby’s phone pinged. All the girls shrieked.
“He wrote back! He wrote back!” Abby cried, forgetting her embarrassment as she read Jake’s message aloud. “‘Hey, Abby! What’s up?’ Aaaah! What should I write back?” she asked her friends.
“Just say, ‘Nothing. What’s up with you?’” Chloe advised her.
“That works,” Abby replied as she started typing.
Everyone waited anxiously for Jake to reply.
Ping!
When Abby’s phone beeped, all the girls screamed in excitement again. This time the cat dashed up the stairs, frightened by the commotion. “Sorry, Eddie,” Abby apologized to the cat.
Suddenly the door at the top of the stairs creaked open—and everyone screamed for a third time!
“Girls?” Abby’s mother asked. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Abby said quickly as her friends dissolved into giggles. “Sorry if we’re being too loud.”
“It’s okay, honey,” Mrs. Miller replied. “Just try to keep it down after eleven o’clock, okay?”
“Sure,” Abby said. “Good night, Mom.”
As soon as Mrs. Miller closed the door, Leah reached for Abby’s cell. “What did he say?” she asked excitedly.
“Hang on,” Abby said, holding the phone away from Leah. She peered at the screen. “He’s hanging out with Max and Toby at his house!”
“What?” squealed Nora. “Leah said they were all at the movies!”
“I guess they—”
Ping!
Abby read the text to herself, then started laughing so hard she couldn’t speak.
“What did he say?” Leah asked, bouncing up and down a little.
Abby glanced up from her phone. “He says they were wondering if Nora is feeling okay!” she cried. “I guess they saw your little chicken dance.”
“Nooooooo!” groaned Nora. “Chloe, you are so dead! I can’t believe you made me do that stupid dare where everybody could see it. And with all those lights on!”
“Sorry,” Chloe said with a shrug, but she had such a big smile on her face that the other girls knew she didn’t mean it.
Abby didn’t say anything as her fingers flew over the keypad.
“What did you write back?” asked Nora.
“I just told him that you felt like dancing.” Abby giggled. “You know you’ve got all the coolest moves!”
“You guys, this is so awful!” Nora moaned. “If they tell everybody at school on Monday, I will die.”
Ping!
This time, Abby started laughing before she even finished reading the text. “Jake says they thought Nora was trying to defeat the evil Octopus Girl!” she shrieked. “I think he means you, Leah!”
Leah’s hands flew up to her crazy hairdo as everyone turned to look at her. “Eight pigtails!” she groaned. “Oh man, they really do look like octopus tentacles!”
Ping!
Ping!
Ping!
Ping!
“What did he say?” Leah asked. “Anything more about any of us?”
Abby held out her phone so everyone could see Jake’s latest texts for themselves.
BATTLE OF THE CENTURY
SUPER CHICKEN VS OCTO-GIRL
FOWL MEETS FISH
WHO WILL WIN?
Abby was howling with laughter along with the other girls when a terrible thought struck her. Had Jake and his pals noticed her own wild hairstyle? The double French braids Nora had attempted to give her were so lumpy that they practically looked like stegosaurus spines.
Abby didn’t want to know whatever awful nickname the boys had dreamed up for her. She turned back to her cell phone and sent one more quick text to Jake.
G2G, C U MONDAY! B4N!
Then Abby turned off her phone.
“Abby!” cried Leah. “Why’d you do that? Things were just getting interesting.”
“I figured we should quit while we were ahead. You know, before the guys had a chance to nickname the rest of us. Let’s watch a movie now,” Abby said, trying to change the subject. “Attack of the Bee People, anyone?”
“Awesome,” Nora said. “I promise you won’t be disappointed!”
While Leah set up the DVD, Abby turned off the lights. Then she joined the rest of the girls on the couch. As the movie started, she checked her cell phone to make sure she had turned it off.
Several hours later the basement was dark and quiet. There wasn’t a single sound except for the deep, calm breathing of the sleeping girls.
Suddenly the basement was filled with an eerie green glow.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
Abby rubbed her eyes as she started to wake up. What was that noise? It sounded familiar.
“What’s that?” mumbled Leah.
“The bee people!” Chloe gasped, sitting straight up in her sleeping bag.
“No, no, that was just a movie,” Abby said sleepily. “I think it’s my phone.”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
Abby fumbled around on the floor near her sleeping bag, but she couldn’t find her phone anywhere. “Guys, where is my phone?” she asked. “I left it right here when we went to bed.”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
“Abby, is that it?” Nora asked, pointing across the room. Sure enough, Abby’s phone was sitting on the table by the stairs, glowing in the darkness. It rattled across the table every time it vibrated.
“Sorry, everybody,” Abby apologized as she crawled out of her sleeping bag. “I swear, I thought I turned it off.”
“Who would text you in the middle of the night?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t know,” Abby said as she picked up her phone. She squinted her eyes as she peered at the message, trying to read what it said.
Her eyes swept across the screen, and before she could stop herself, she gasped in horror.
“Abby! What’s wrong?” Leah asked as she stood up. “What does it say?” She grabbed the phone out of Abby’s hand as the other girls gathered around, and held it up so that everyone could read the mysterious text message that Abby had received. It said:
LEAVE HIM ALONE. HE’S MINE!!! DON’T MAKE ME TELL YOU TWICE!
CHAPTER 3
“What?” Chloe cried as she grabbed the phone from Leah.
“Somebody get the lights,” Nora said nervously.
In the darkness, Leah stumbled over to the stairs and flipped the light switch—but the soft glow from the lamps didn’t make the text any less scary. One look at her friends’ faces told Abby that they were as terrified as she was.
“Who sent that text?” Abby asked as she reached for her phone, her hands shaking so much that she almost dropped it on the floor. “I don’t know this number. Do you guys recognize it?”
One by one, her friends stared at the screen, then shook their heads.
“Did you—did you do anything to upset anybody?” Nora asked, her voice unsure. “Whoever sent this text sounds mad—really mad.”
“No—I mean, not that I know of,” Abby replied, her eyes glued to her phone, reading the creepy text again. “And if I did, I would want somebody to, you know, tell me—not send some freaky message in the middle of the night.”
“Why would someone text you at four o’clock in the morning, anyway?” asked Leah.
“And why would they say that?” Chloe chimed in. “I mean, who is ‘him’?”
No one answered her—but Abby could tell that they were all thinking of Jake. Could it be a coincidence that she’d received this strange message just hours after she had confessed her crush? I wish I’d kept my mouth shut, she thought with regret.
Abby wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “This doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “What was my phone doing over there on the table? I always sleep next to it. And how did it get turned on? I know I turned it off before we watched the movie. I don’t understand—did one of you—”
“I’m sure nobody messed with your phone,” Nora tried to reassure her. “Maybe you just forgot about checking it before bed, and you accidentally left it on the table or something.”
Abby shook her head. “No, I don’t—”
“You know what?” Leah said suddenly. “Maybe it was a wrong number.”
“Maybe,” Abby said slowly. “But that still doesn’t explain why . . .”
She trailed off, and Leah spoke up. “Listen, here’s how I know it’s a wrong number. Because you’re, like, the nicest girl in the world, and nobody who knows you would ever send you a message like that.” Leah smiled at her friend.
Abby tried to smile back.
“I mean, it’s actually really funny, when you think about it,” Leah continued. “Since this is obviously a wrong number, whoever sent it thinks she told somebody off—when she really didn’t!”
