Dare (5 page)

Evan gaped. “What?”

“Oh, yeah, your Queen B here has been holding out on us.”

Brynna took a miniscule step back, heat washing over her as she crashed into the bank of lockers. “Where did you hear that?”

“Darcy works in the office third period, and your old school sent something over to you. I heard it was your varsity letter for the Lincoln swim team.”

Brynna clamped her jaws shut certain, if she didn't, her thundering heart would burst out of her mouth.

“Okay, that has to be a mistake. Bryn hates the water. Don't you, Bryn?”

Lauren mashed her palm against her brother's chest. “They don't give
varsity
letters to freshmen who hate the water.” She turned her eyes on Brynna. “So?”

“I, uh, I did swim—for a little bit, over at Lincoln.”

Lauren's eyebrows went up. “Varsity?”

Brynna's blood thundered in her ears, and a snapshot of Erica, darting through the water in her Lincoln-purple swimsuit, shot across her mind. “It was a really bad team. Everyone made varsity.”

“You must have spent an awful lot of time on the bottom of the pool ignoring, like, everything. Because (a) Lincoln High is beachside and word is that your coach actually makes his team practice in the ocean, and (b) Lincoln was division champions, like, forever.”

“Unlike our own Hawthorne Hornets,” Evan said, slinging an arm around Lauren. She glared at him. He wrinkled his nose and tossed a glance toward Brynna. “Hornets aren't exactly water insects.”

“That's why we totally need you! You have to try out. Hell, you probably don't even have to try out. You own a bathing suit, you're on the team.”

“No, no,” Brynna started, feeling a bead of sweat itch its way down her stomach. “I—I don't swim anymore.”

Evan shrugged. “You're going to have to swim either way.”

Brynna felt like she
was
underwater—drowning—the air being forced out of her lungs. “What are you talking about?”

“Swim test.”

Brynna looked from Evan to Lauren. “What swim test?”

“The one you need to graduate. Everyone has to take one. It's so lame. Jump in, float, go to the bottom, swim across the pool, and no bikinis.”

Heat snaked up the back of Brynna's neck. Just the thought of getting into the pool made her seize up, made her heartbeat start to race.

The pool that was once so freeing to her was like a cellblock now. And water, that moving, churning being with icy, clawing fingers, had taken Erica away, and Brynna knew that it wanted her too.

Brynna forced herself to breathe and prayed that her knees wouldn't buckle. “Why do we need a swim test to graduate?”

This time Evan and Lauren both shrugged. “I don't know. Probably some holdover from the olden days. Or like, ‘Send your kids to school! They might die here, but they'll know how to swim.'”

Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Well, they've got something there. Bullets are crap in the water.” She swung her attention back to Brynna. “So? You'll do it, right? If you're on the swim team, you automatically pass the swim test. Unless you drown.” Lauren laughed at her own joke, a loud kind of guffaw that made Brynna want to hate her.

“Sorry, Lauren. Like I said, I don't swim anymore.”

Lauren abruptly stopped laughing and put her fists on her hips. “Why the hell not?”

Brynna wished that Evan would say something, would drag her out of this horrible inquiry, but he did nothing, looking at her with an open face.

She snapped her locker shut and spun the dial. “I just don't.” She slipped away from Lauren and Evan without looking back over her shoulder. She didn't need to look to know they were staring at her.

Brynna was out past the double doors and had cleared campus in less than fifteen minutes. Hawthorne High was situated on a huge expanse of rolling green hill bisected with paved paths the students were supposed to walk on but never did. There were bald patches of grass, mostly under the craggy cypress trees from years of kids hanging out, and the usual detritus that came from high school: crushed soda cans that never quite made it into recycling, wadded up McDonald's wrappers under a poster of a fat owl saying “Give a hoot, don't pollute” that was tacked to a metal trash can. Everything whirled by Brynna. She was walking fast but aimlessly, just needing to move her body—to feel her legs, to propel herself
somehow
. If she could walk, maybe she could leave everything behind. She crossed campus then turned and started again, walking until her legs ached. Sweat was rimming her hairline and breaking out on her upper lip when her phone rang. She glanced at the number on the screen and caught her breath. Butterflies turned into bat wings and stabbed at her stomach. It wasn't the phone number that unnerved her—she didn't recognize that—it was the area code. Six-two-one. Point Lobos.

With a shaking hand, Brynna slid a finger across the screen and pressed the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

There was nothing but static at first, then the high-pitched screech of a girl and a round of far-off laughter.

“Brynna?”

The breathy voice that answered her made Brynna's stomach drop into her shoes.

“Erica?” Brynna's voice was pleading. “Erica?”

“Drink this!”

There was a garbled response, and Brynna realized that the people on the phone weren't talking to her. She heard their indistinct voices and the jostling of the phone as if it was in someone's pocket. She was about to hang up, to chalk the thing up to a random butt dial, when she heard a voice—distinct, sharp.

“No, no, no, my turn!”

She knew the voice from somewhere—didn't she?

Laughter. Something popping. Another voice.

“Okay then, go!”

It wasn't Lauren or Darcy, but she knew that voice too. The first girl laughed then started up again.

“Okay.” A muffled, drunken snicker. “I dare you to take off all your clothes and jump, right now.”

Ice water shot through Brynna's veins. She wanted to drop the phone, to run. But she was paralyzed, phone pressed to her ear.

“Where? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You. Take off your clothes. Walk your fine little butt to the edge and jump. Come on, Erica…”

The voice belonged to Brynna.

She strained to hear over the thundering sound of her blood as it pulsed in her ears. Every cell in her body was electric, moving so fast that Brynna felt like her skin would explode. Sweat broke out over her upper lip, dampening her palms, and her chest ached, begging her to breathe.

She remembered every second.

In her mind's eye, she could see pictures of that night, of all of them—Erica, Brynna, Ella, Michael, and Jay, bare feet pressed in the sand as the fire crackled in front of them. Behind them, screams, laughter, and the soft music as the end-of-summer party went on. Erica was winding a stray piece of Lincoln-purple crepe paper around and around her hand. Michael kept hiccupping. Brynna leaned against him, breathing out the saturated sweetness of breath soaked with some kind of punch that made her eyes cross.

“So you want me to get buck naked and jump off the pier? First of all, the water is, like, eight degrees.”

Ella started to crow like a chicken.

“It's August. The ocean is, like, sixty-eight degrees.”

There was a muffled, masculine voice, and Brynna remembered Michael nuzzling into her neck, saying something disgusting about sixty-nine. Holding the phone against her ear, she shivered and pulled back, thinking of his beer-soaked lips kissing the spot behind her ear. Then, the feeling was warm and sensual; now, just the thought sent ice water down her spine.

“Okay.” Brynna listened to her own voice sounding foreign on the phone. “No nakedness. In your clothes.”

Erica said something muffled, and Brynna's heart started to speed up as memory filled in the gap.

“Just because you dare people to do stuff doesn't mean they have to, Bryn. You don't rule the world.”

She remembered the way she felt then, her body made lithe by the liquor, her skin hot from the fire, from Michael's body heat.

“Prove it!” Brynna sang back to her friend.

Brynna took a few steps back on the lawn as if the scene was still in front of her. The chill that ran through her was gone, replaced by a searing heat that oozed into every pore of her body. She felt the fist knotting in her chest. She knew what came next.

“Come on.” Brynna could hear sand shifting, bodies moving. She knew that was when she rolled onto her knees and eyed Erica hard. “You said dare, you have to do it, you big baby. It's not my rule. It's the world's rule.”

The soft cackle of her friends' agreement.

Erica's silence.

“Okay, okay, fine. I'll totally do it with you since you're such a massive wimp.”

“Bryn, for a best friend, you're a super huge ass. But if I have to do it, your big assiness is coming in with me.”

“'Kay, but you both should really take your clothes off. They could be a water hazard.” Jay's warning was equal parts drunken and lascivious.

“Okay, so, there's no way I could, like, do something else?” Erica again.

“Come on, wimp. You're doing it.”

She knew she didn't want to hear anymore, but she couldn't get her arm to move. She was paralyzed in the makeshift park, the phone pressed against her ear.

Erica's groan. “Fine. But I'm shaving off your eyebrows when you fall asleep.”

There was a silent pause, and Brynna remembered her and Erica running down the beach. Her toes itched as if the sand were still there. Her palm twitched, remembering the way she pulled Erica along.

We
were
laughing,
Brynna reminded herself.
We
were
both
laughing.

There was more static on the phone as if someone was fumbling or moving with it. The sound of the ocean was more clear now, the rhythmic whoosh of waves pounding shore.

“Time to step out of your comfort zone, E!”

“May you get eaten by a great white, Brynnie.”

Brynna was there again, standing on the dock, the sliver of yellow moonlight washing over her and Erica as though it were dawn. She felt Erica grab her hand this time.

“If I go down, you're going down with me.”

Brynna dropped the phone and slammed a hand over her mouth as the crash of the water flooded the earpiece.

They jumped.

Tears filled her eyes and the line went dead.

“Ms. Chase?”

Brynna whirled and threw her arms up instinctively. She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering, and although her mind was registering someone standing in front of her, that was where recognition stopped.

“Brynna?”

She felt a soft touch on her forearm and stepped back.

“Just breathe.”

“Mr. Fallbrook.”

Brynna's English teacher was standing in front of her, his head cocked, his normally shining blue eyes clouded. “I'm sorry if I scared you—are you okay?”

Mr. Fallbrook looked barely old enough to be a teacher and had the high school girls following him around Hawthorne High in a panting, giggling line. His hand was still on Brynna's arm, soft, barely touching her, but her heart was still thudding so hard it hurt, and she wanted to tell him everything. He was an adult; he could make everything all right.

“Um…” Immediately she heard the echo of Erica's voice on the phone, the definitive tone of her own as she ordered her friend to jump. “It was just—I just…” She stared down at the phone dumbly then used the back of her hand to swipe at her tears. “Nothing. Thanks.”

His hand dropped from her arm, but his concerned expression didn't break. “Shouldn't you be in class?”

“Shouldn't you?”

A small smile touched Mr. Fallbrook's lips. “I'm a teacher and I have a free period. You're a student and you have…?” He raised his eyebrows.

“P.E.”

“Look, if there's something wrong, you can talk to me, but you're going to have to go back to class eventually. If you're not feeling well, I can write you a pass to the nurse's office.”

Brynna grabbed her phone from the grass. She shoved it into her back pocket and sniffed, trying her best to settle herself into some semblance of a non-hysterical mess. “That's okay. I'm fine, really.” She shouldered her bag and started to walk, making a straight line for the school building. “Thanks,” she called over her shoulder. Mr. Fallbrook stood, watching her go.

She was met at the double glass doors by Evan. He was framed perfectly on the other side of the glass, arms crossed in front of his chest, a sharp, scrutinizing look marring his features.

“What was that all about?” he asked as he stepped through the door. His brown eyes grazed over Brynna and immediately brightened. “Oh my god. You've been having an affair. You're pregnant with his love child.”

Brynna was taken aback and found herself laughing. “No.”

Evan frowned, running a hand through his rumpled brown hair. “Nothing good ever happens around here.”

“What are you doing out of class?”

He shrugged. “Same thing you are. Ditching.”

“I wasn't—”

“Come on.”

Brynna wanted to stop him. She wanted to find a dark corner, dig the phone out of her pocket, and listen to the call message again and again, as if every second, every staccato note of the conversation, wasn't already etched in her head. But Evan linked her arm and dragged her toward the student lot.

“Wait,” Brynna said as they approached the edge of the grass. “Fallbrook is out here. He knows I have P.E.”

Evan put a hand over his eyes, shielding the sun. He did a quick scan. “I don't see him. Besides, Fallbrook remembers what it's like to be young. He's not going to report us. He's not been at Hawthorne long enough to get bitter and start hating his students.” He waggled his eyebrows. “He's still fresh. So come on!”