Truth Game (9 page)

Instead of spending my afternoon off hanging out with friends or doing homework like a normal person, I'm in an indoor climbing gym at the foot of a giant wall with about ten pounds of ropes strapped around my body. Meanwhile, my dad is in heaven. He's halfway up the beginner wall already, navigating the fake rocks so effortlessly that I start to wonder if he's part monkey or something while our overly perky instructor, Sheila, cheers him on with each step. “Keep it up, Ted!”

He keeps going and going until he gets to the top. He flashes me a thumbs-up, like being up there is the most natural thing in the world. Then he lets Sheila lower him down, even though it means trusting that his harness will hold him and that he won't fall to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

When he's on solid ground again, Dad starts unhooking his gear. “All right, your turn, Roo!”

“Are you sure you don't want to go again?” I ask, but Sheila is already clipping me in.

“You're all ready to go!” she says a minute later.

“What if I fall?” I say as Dad shoos me toward the foot of the wall.

“Don't worry,” Sheila assures me. “We'll catch you.”

“But what if I land weird and bang my head against one of the rocks? You weren't there when I almost got a concussion during dodgeball the other day!”

Sheila and my dad both laugh like they think I'm joking. It doesn't look like there's any way I'm getting out of this. And I didn't come all this way and spend all that time strapping myself into harnesses and letting some overly cheerful lady loop about a million ropes around me to turn back now. So I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and take a step forward.

“Way to go, Roo!” Dad says with a hoot.

After I wipe my sweaty hands on my pants, I dust some chalk on my fingers to keep them from slipping. Then I gingerly reach up and grab the first handhold and pull myself up until I can put my other hand a little above my head. Oddly, my foot seems to follow suit so I don't even have to think about where to put it. It simply finds a spot. Huh. Maybe this isn't so bad.

I focus on finding the next handhold, and miraculously there's one right next to me. I transfer my weight so that I can grab it and move my leg up at the same time. I work steadily like that for another couple minutes until I realize that I'm no longer near the ground. In fact, my feet are over my dad's head.

“Great job, Roo!” he says, clearly impressed. That makes two of us. I can't believe that instead of freaking out, I'm actually excited to keep going.

Encouraged, I start going faster. And before I know it, I'm at the top. I can't believe I did it! I almost wish someone had been filming the whole thing so I could show it to Mrs. Da Silva. There's no way she'll believe me without proof.

When I get back on solid ground again, I turn to Sheila and say, “Is there a harder one I can try?”

She looks surprised. “Usually we encourage newbies to stick with this wall for the first couple of climbs.”

“But this one was easy. I want to see if I can do a harder one.”

“I wouldn't mind trying out a tougher one myself,” Dad says.

Sheila finally agrees and leads us over to a wall that slants backward a little. I stare up at it, wondering if I'm really crazy enough to go up, but before I can change my mind, she's already sending me up.

At first, I have no trouble. My arms and legs seem to know exactly what to do again. But after a few minutes, I reach out to grab the next handhold—and miss. Oof! I just manage to avoid falling by grabbing the spot I'd been holding before. I look around, trying to find somewhere else to go, but there isn't anywhere. I'm stuck all the way on the far right of the wall with nowhere to go. There are no handholds that I can reach above my head, and the ones to the left of me seem about a mile away.

“What do I do now?” I call down.

“Try to find another place to put your left foot!” Sheila says.

I try to do what she says, but my limbs suddenly feel shaky, and I can't reach my foot out far enough to get over.

“I'm stuck!” I call.

I glance over at the foothold to my left again. It feels so far away that the only way I'll be able to make it is to jump. I look down at my harness. That's what it's for, isn't it? To catch me in case I don't make it?

I don't let myself look down at the ground. Instead, I take a deep breath and leap to the left. For a second, I feel the rock under my hands, and I think I've done it. Then it slips out of my grasp, and I plummet through the air. I jerk to a stop as the harness catches me and sends me flailing into the wall.

“Ouch!” I yelp as my elbow scrapes against the fake rock.

“You okay?” Sheila asks as she lowers me to the ground.

I nod, cradling my arm. It stings, but it's not broken or anything. My pride, however, has seen better days.

“Nice job, Roo!” Dad says. “You were so close to the top!”

“But I fell.”

Dad looks at me like I've lost my mind. “It was your first time. Did you expect to be perfect right away? Anyway, you were having fun, weren't you?”

I realize that I actually was. “It was like my arms and legs knew where to go!” I say. “I've never felt that coordinated before.”

Dad grins. “Maybe we could come back sometime.”

And to my surprise, I find myself answering, “Yeah, we definitely should.”

“And, voilà! You have trail mix!” Mrs. Da Silva says. Then she passes around the mix she just “cooked” while Pierre furiously finishes taking notes.

“Is it possible to freeze-dry the ingredients?” he asks.

“Good question!” she says. “How about you research that for next week and let me know.” Pierre looks eager to do just that, even though she didn't actually answer his question.

I sigh and take a handful of trail mix to try. It is tasty, but this is not what I signed up for.

“Now, let's get back to working on your goals for the year.” Mrs. Da Silva goes to check in with Pierre who's printed out a million pages of instructions on how to make some weird gelatinous fish recipe. Gross.

Then Whit explains the different kid-friendly recipes he's tried out on his nephews and how they still refuse to eat anything he makes.

“Keep at it,” Mrs. Da Silva says. “Their taste buds need a chance to adjust.” Then she turns to me. “Lee, have you decided what your goal is for the year? Something more specific?”

“I want to get on
Pastry Wars
,” I announce. That's nice and specific, isn't it?

“The TV show?”

I nod and tell her about how I auditioned and didn't get in, but how I think I've found a way to get a second chance.

“And what will you get out of being on the show?” she asks.

“Well, hopefully I'd win!” I say. “Then you get scholarship money, which I can use to go to culinary school when I'm older.”

“That is a nice perk, but how will it make you a better cook right now?”

“Well, I'd have to prove myself to other people,” I say. “And trying to get on the show has me trying all this fancy stuff I wouldn't have made otherwise.”

Mrs. Da Silva doesn't look convinced, but she leaves me alone to doodle in my baking journal. I start working on ideas for Angela's cake again, but they all seem silly. Every once in a while, I check my phone to see if there's any word from Chip Ackerson, but so far nothing.

Then my phone beeps, and my heart leaps. But it's not Chip. It's a message from the Truth Game. At first I think it's my daily stats, but then I realize that a list of dozens of names is included. One name catches my eye: Angela Bareli. I click on it, and my mouth drops open when I realize what I'm looking at: the answers to her Truth Game questions! She loves her new cross-country friends, she hates peanut butter, and she's afraid no one will come to her birthday party.

Oh my goldfish. What is this? Some kind of hoax? I scroll through the list of names and see Briana's toward the end. When I click on her answers, I see they're the same things she told me she wrote: getting out of a speeding ticket, cheating on an exam, and so on. This is for real. Somehow, the answers that were supposed to be anonymous are all right here! Hundreds of them. The game must have been hacked!

My stomach goes cold.
Wait. Does that mean…?

I quickly scroll through and, sure enough, find my name on the list. I click on it and see everything I wrote, about my parents, about Evan, and about Marisol. “Write down one thing no one knows about your best friend.”
No. No, no, no, no, no!
What I wrote about Marisol and Andrew is there for everyone to see! Marisol is going to hate me! I start to hyperventilate until I realize that maybe she won't actually see it. If she doesn't play the game, maybe she won't even know about it.

My mind races. Did I write anything about anyone else? Evan. I said that stuff about wishing our first kiss had been better. I hadn't meant it as anything bad, but now that I think about it again, I realize how awful that might sound. Not to mention the fact that I said I didn't know if we'd be together in six months. Gah!

With shaking hands, I look through the names again until I find what I was afraid of: Evan's name. I didn't realize he even played the game, but maybe Briana signed him up for it too.

I skim through his answers, and my chest lightens. Most of them are blank, and the answers he did include are pretty tame. But then I see it, in his questionnaire about relationships. “My girlfriend keeps kissing me and stuff in public. I wish she could take a hint.”

The phone slips out of my hand and lands on the counter. I can't believe it. I thought I was being paranoid about Evan not liking me as much as I like him, but I wasn't. In fact, I didn't realize how wrong I was.

• • •

School the next day is a war zone. It turns out Briana was right about lots of kids playing the Truth Game, which means that suddenly everyone knows tons of secrets about each other. I realize that mine aren't nearly as bad as some of the others I've heard about: kids confessing to cheating on tests or on boyfriends and girlfriends, to stealing, and all sorts of other awful stuff. But the worst are the secrets that people told about each other.

I'd stupidly hoped that Marisol wouldn't find out what I said about her, but since word is all around school about the game getting hacked, it didn't take long for Marisol to find out about it. And, not surprisingly, she's not answering any of my messages.

I haven't tried reaching out to Evan, and I haven't heard from him either. I can't believe I thought someone like him could really like someone like me. I'm crushed, but I have to admit that I'm also angry. Because he really made me think that he liked me. And I really like him. And is there really something so wrong with me that he'd hate the idea of kissing me? Am I really so terrible?

I'm not the only one who's walking around fuming. No matter where kids were on the popularity scale, they've been taking down a few notches. And some girl actually bursts into tears during math class and rushes out of the room. I know how she feels.

I don't know whether I should be relieved or even more upset that I don't have gym class today. That means I don't have to face Evan, but it also means I'll have more time to worry about what it will be like to see him tomorrow. Will he actually talk to me? Do I even want him to?

After I have to maneuver around the kissing couple at my locker yet again, I get to lunch to find that Marisol isn't at our usual table. Instead, Andrew is there, scribbling away in a ratty notebook that I know he fills with film notes. When he looks up at me, his thin lips get even thinner.

“Oh. Rachel,” he says, not sounding at all glad to see me.

“Is Marisol avoiding me?” I ask.

He sighs. “Yes. It might be best if you don't sit here today.”

Just then, I catch a glimpse of Marisol's dark curls in the cafeteria line, and I rush over to her. “Marisol, wait!”

“What do you want?” she asks, paying for her fruit salad.

“I'm sorry! All that stuff I said, I didn't mean it! And I had no idea anyone would find out!”

“Thanks to you, my mom knows about me lying to her about Andrew. She heard about it from one of her friends whose daughters played that stupid game. And now I'm not allowed to go anywhere after school, not even to meet with Ms. Emerald. I can kiss the Fashion Club good-bye.”

“I'm so sorry, Marisol. I never—”

“You know, I started thinking about all the stuff we've been through since we became friends,” she says, “and I realized that every big drama in my life has involved you. When you had me make up that stupid fake boyfriend, or when you and I got into that huge fight, or when you had me pull those pranks with you. And after all of that, you say that you're not even sure you want us to be friends?”

“I missed you, that's all. You've been so busy with the club and everything. I missed not having you around.”

“So you wished you weren't even friends with me?”

“No! I didn't mean it that way! I've just been—”

“Forget it,” she says. Then she turns and storms over to the table to sit with Andrew.

I stand there clinging to my lunch, my body feeling heavier and heavier. If I can't sit with Marisol, then I have nowhere else to go.

Finally, I spot Angela at a table near the door with her cross-country friends. I drag myself over to her. “Mind if I sit with you?” I whisper, ashamed to have to beg like a stray dog.

“Sure!” she says. Then she introduces me to all the other kids sitting at the table, but I'm barely paying attention. I can't help glancing over at Marisol and Andrew who are hunched over his film notes, chatting away as if nothing is wrong.

“What's going on with you and Marisol?” Angela finally asks. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, um…” I'm hesitant to say anything since I'm so used to Angela being a huge gossip. But she seems genuinely concerned, so I decide to confide in her a little bit. “She's mad about some of my answers about her in the Truth Game.”

“Ugh,” Angela says. “I'm so glad I didn't write anything really bad in there. Did you hear some senior broke into a house and stole some stuff and then admitted to it in the game? Now he might go to jail!”

“That's crazy,” I say. All of this is crazy. Why did any of us play that stupid game? I want to blame it all on Briana, but the truth is, I was actually kind of having fun playing. It was reassuring to know that my scores weren't so different from other people's. And if it weren't for the game, I probably would never have had my first kiss.

I glance at the clock and see it's almost time for Evan to sneak out of Spanish class and come visit me at lunch. Not that I'm expecting him to, but I can't help watching the door anyway. The minutes tick by, and he doesn't appear in the doorway. My stomach clenches into a tighter and tighter knot.

Just when I give up hope, I see a flash of Evan's Celtics jersey in the doorway. He lingers in the doorway, like he's not sure if he wants to stay. And even though I'm still hurt about what he said, I also can't let things go without at least apologizing to him.

“Evan!” I say, afraid he might keep walking.

But he stops and gives me a little wave. He doesn't say anything though.

“Um, how are you?” I ask, my cheeks suddenly hot.

“All right, I guess.” I can't help noticing that he doesn't look me in the eye. “Um, I should get going.”

“Wait…I…” I want to apologize, but what's the point? If he really doesn't like me, then what's left to say?

“Really, I should go,” he says. Then he turns and hurries back toward his Spanish class.

As I slink back to Angela's lunch table, I can't stop shaking. And I realize it's not only because I'm mad at whoever leaked those answers. I'm also mad at myself. I thought I'd left the old me behind, the one who did and said stupid things that would come back to bite her in the buttons. The idea that I could become a new version of myself was a joke. If anything, trying to be a new me has only caused more trouble than ever before.