Truth or Dare (37 page)

But Caitlin just stood there, unmoving. She’d tried to fool herself into thinking she could will the darer away, have
one
night just for her. But she’d been wrong.
And now I’m taking care of you.
What did that even mean?

Up ahead, Caitlin heard several people gasp as they reached the pool. “What the hell?” someone said. “Is this a joke?”

“No,” she whispered. She took off running, her heart beating wildly. Tenley and Emerson both called out behind her, but she didn’t stop until she got to the pool. There—scattered around the deck and floating in the water and wedged between the decorative rocks—were photos. Hundreds of them.

She stopped breathing as she bent down to pick one up. It was the image from Vegas. Someone must have printed it off the computer because Tenley was cropped out now, so all you could see was a wasted Caitlin with Joey Bakersfield practically on top of her, and a table coated with white powder. “No,” she said again, looking frantically around. The same image seemed to stare back at her from every surface.

“Joey Bakersfield?” Sean Hale crowed as all around him people laughed and whistled and whispered. “Wow, our Angel’s moving up in the world!”

“Caitlin,” Tenley gasped as she caught up with her. Emerson was only a step behind. She grabbed Caitlin’s arm but Caitlin shook her off. She felt as if the world were spinning, turning topsy-turvy and inside out all over again.

“I can’t…” she whispered. The darer had been there. Could
still
be there. Her skin prickled as she looked from person to person, face to face. They could be watching her right now. “I—I have to go.”

She broke into a run again, taking off for her house. She could hear people following her, shouting her name. But she just kept running.

She made it back to her house in record time, throwing herself through the door and double locking it behind her. Outside, she heard Emerson and Tenley calling out as they banged on her front door. But she ignored them, turning off her phone. She could feel a sharp pinching in her head, a precursor to a killer headache, and the idea of talking to anyone—even her best friends—just made it hurt even more.

“We’re going to wait out here until you open up, Cait!” Tenley yelled, her voice muffled by the door.

“You should go back,” she heard Emerson tell Tenley. “You can’t leave everyone alone at your house. Besides, someone has to clean up those photos, right? I’ll stay here and wait for her.” Caitlin went into the living room. She sagged onto the living room couch, grateful her parents were out at some adult Festival party. She felt exhausted all of a sudden, the kind of tired that ached in her muscles, and it hit her how long she’d been up today, since before dawn. Sailor yipped at her feet and she picked him up, pulling him into her lap.

Caitlin closed her eyes. All she wanted was to think about Tim—about
being out on the water with him, closing her eyes and letting go. But her mind kept jumping all over the place. She wondered if Tim would show up at Tenley’s party only to find her gone—and that awful picture in her place. It made her feel like the darer was everywhere, in every part of her life, as impossible to ward off as a shadow.

How far was the darer going to go? When was this ever going to end? She felt as if someone were strangling her, as if hands were tightening around her neck. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Jumping up from the couch, she went to her room and dug the Xexer bottle out of her dresser drawer. Through her window, she could hear Emerson calling out from the front stoop, but once again, Caitlin ignored her. She couldn’t bear the thought of talking to anyone right now. Eventually Emerson would give up and go back to the party.

Quickly, Caitlin swallowed down a pill, wishing she could fast-forward time until it kicked in. But she couldn’t, so she went back to the couch and switched on the TV, turning to an old movie she used to love.

She lay down on the couch slowly, letting the pill work its magic. The TV turned cloudy. The pill made everything feel distant, as if all her thoughts and emotions were just out of her reach. She took a deep breath, counting to ten. If only she could feel like this all the time. Like nothing was real, nothing was close. Sailor curled up next to her, his stomach rising and falling against her chest. She would stay on this couch forever, she decided. She let out a long, tired sigh, melting closer to Sailor. On the couch, there would be no more photos, no more dares, no more threats. No more anything…

It was somewhere in the middle of that thought that she drifted off to sleep.

She was back in the red basement, staring at the toy train on the
bookshelf. It was made of red painted steel, every tiny detail stunningly accurate. Each car had curved iron bars on it, different circus animals peeking out from behind them. Caitlin reached out, running a finger along the train’s dark wheels and curved golden roof and sleek red engine car. Her fingers had just closed around the train’s tiny gold steam whistle when she heard the first few notes of that haunting tune. It drifted in from a distance, but this time it wasn’t being played on a flute. Someone was singing it.

The lyrics grew louder, closer. They caressed her arms and sank into her skin, rich and beautiful and so incredibly different from this basement, with its bloodred walls and pasty oatmeal that made the ground swim up to meet her.

The singing grew closer still, the lyrics pulsing inside Caitlin, matching the beating of her heart. She recognized that song. She
knew
it. And then it was right behind her, a crescendo of notes, rising all the way to the ceiling. Caitlin’s hand slipped off the train. Slowly, she turned around. The hooded figure was singing behind her, but this time, there was no hood. Caitlin was staring right into the face of a beautiful woman.

Caitlin woke with a start, shooting straight up on the couch. Sailor yipped as he went skittering to the side, but she barely noticed. She had room for only one thought in her mind. Who was that woman?

Saturday, 10:30
PM

I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU TALKED ME INTO THIS,” CALUM
groaned as he pulled his car into the Reeds’ long, winding driveway, which was already packed with other cars. “All I have to say is I am not playing truth or dare again. I believe I have fulfilled my quota of humiliating naked encounters this year.”

“I’m with you on that,” Sydney said quickly. “No truth or dare.” She eyed the Reeds’ house as she climbed out of the car.
House
was really the wrong word for it. It was a true mansion, the kind that had wings and turrets and balconies, so many rooms and twists and turns you could lose yourself in it. She’d been there only once before, the time last year when Guinness had brought her up to his bedroom. Usually Guinness liked to meet on neutral ground, but that night he’d said he just wanted to be home with her. For hours they lay in his bed, talking and talking. Sydney blinked, pushing the memory away. Tonight, she wasn’t here for Guinness.

She forced herself to focus on the mansion. Music pounded from
inside, a new rap song that Sydney hated, and lights were on in every room, tossing fractured patterns onto the grass. But most of the voices were drifting over from behind the pool house, and Sydney could make out the faintest sound of splashing coming from that direction.

“Looks like we want to go that way.” Sydney looked over at Calum, who had his face screwed up as if he’d just eaten something rotten. “You ready?”

“About as ready as a nuclear detonator without uranium,” Calum sighed. “But don’t worry,” he added when Sydney shot him a flabbergasted look. “That’s never stopped me before.”

Sydney pushed her bangs out of her eyes. She was about as happy to be here as Calum was, but ever since the darer sent her that photo of Guinness and Tenley, she hadn’t been able to get the image out of her mind. The darer had said she’d find answers here. And right now, there was nothing she needed more. “Thanks for coming with me,” she said.

“I couldn’t very well send you into the lion’s den alone.” Calum said it lightly, but it hit her suddenly that maybe he didn’t mind having something to take his mind off all the recent buzz about the Lost Girl legend.

She smiled at him. “If only I’d thought to bring my tranquilizer gun.”

“It looks like we’re going to have to go in unarmed. Just promise me that if you notice even the slightest hint of clothing removal, you will extricate me from the situation immediately.”

The voices grew louder as they approached the backyard, laughter and shrieks ringing through the air, punctuated by the sudden sound of splashes. Sydney could hear Tenley’s voice rising above the others, ordering everyone to pick or stick or lick something—Sydney couldn’t tell. She looked over at Calum. “Sounds like drama.”

“Someone probably wore the wrong shade of eye shadow,” Calum said solemnly. “God forbid.”

But as they rounded the pool house, Sydney saw what all the commotion was about, and it wasn’t eye shadow. Scattered all around the pool deck were photos. Tenley was trying frantically to collect them all as she shouted out for everyone else to help. But no one seemed to be paying much attention. A bunch of photos were floating in the pool, and Sydney watched as Hunter Bailey flung himself in, slicing straight through them.

“It looks like a Kinko’s exploded back here,” Calum joked.

But Sydney couldn’t respond. Because suddenly she knew—deep down, the way you know when the weather’s about to change. The darer had done this.

Every muscle in her body clenched up as she thought frantically back to the photos the darer had sent her this past week. Herself and the match. Guinness and Tenley. What if this was something else, something worse? Her heart pounding in her ears, she broke into a run, racing onto the deck. But as she bent down to examine the photos flapping on the ground, it wasn’t herself she saw staring up from them. It was Caitlin.

Sydney gaped. All of the photos were exactly the same.

“Is this some kind of theme party?” Calum asked, coming up behind her. He bent to pick up one of the pictures. “Wow. What kind of theme is this?”

“I have no idea,” Sydney whispered. This whole thing reminded her of the Club last weekend, when she’d found the photos of Tenley’s implants strewn across the beach. Could this all be the work of the same person? How many people was the darer targeting?

Calum put a hand on her shoulder. “Syd. What’s wrong? You look like you just saw the ghost of high school past.”

Sydney managed a weak laugh. Sometimes she felt as if that was exactly what the darer was: some kind of apparition, following in her shadow, winking out of sight every time she turned around.

“Seriously.” Calum was watching her with concern now. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Sydney cleared her throat. “Sorry. Just, uh, surprised by these photos.”

“They are unexpected,” Calum agreed. He made some kind of joke, but Sydney wasn’t listening. She took a quick scan of the deck, looking for Guinness. When she didn’t see him, her shoulders relaxed just the tiniest bit. At least that was one disaster she didn’t have to face right now. She didn’t see Emerson, either. So much the better. Even thinking of Emerson made a dark anger rear up inside her, ferocious as a beast. Sydney wasn’t sure she could refrain from clocking her in her Neutrogena-fresh face the next time they crossed paths.

“Earth to Sydney.” Calum snapped his fingers in front of her face. “You know, if it’s a guy that’s the problem, you can tell me, Syd.” Calum flexed one of his pale arms, showing off his biceps. “If anyone hurt you, I’ll pulverize him. No one messes with Supergirl on my watch.”

This time, Sydney didn’t have to force her laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she told him. She looked over at the other side of the deck, where Tenley was still gathering up photos. She clearly hadn’t noticed her arrival. Sydney swayed nervously from side to side. What was she supposed to do now? Just wait around until the darer deigned to reveal some truth to her?
No
, she decided. She was done playing games. This was one truth she was going to find out for herself. “I just need to take care of a little business quickly,” she told Calum. “Will you be okay by yourself for a minute?”

“Oh, sure,” Calum said. “You know me. A social butterfly who thrives in the most awkward of situations.” He waved her on. “Go ahead.”

Sydney smiled gratefully at him. “Be back in a minute.” Mustering up her courage, she stalked over to Tenley.
Just tell me the truth
, she rehearsed silently as she crossed the wooden pool deck.
Is there something going on between you and Guinness?
Simple and to the point. She could do this.

But she didn’t get a chance to, because the instant Tenley saw her, she let out a gasp. “You,” she sputtered. “We need to talk.” Tenley grabbed her arm, yanking her to the wooded area behind the pool deck. It was darker back there, the thicket of trees dulling the lights from the deck, and Sydney looked uneasily around, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

“I saw that note fall out of your purse the other night.” Tenley glared at her. Even though she was at least four inches shorter than Sydney, she seemed to swell in size. “Caitlin convinced me that you can’t be the one playing this twisted little game with us, but I saw the font on that note. I
know
it was from the darer. So I want you to tell me everything you know.”

Sydney blinked. “You and Caitlin have been getting dares.” She twisted at her ring, her heart hammering loudly. She wasn’t the only one. Which meant this thing—whatever it was—was bigger than she’d realized.

“Don’t play dumb, Sydney,” Tenley said impatiently. “I want to know right now why you had one of our dares in your purse!”

“I didn’t,” Sydney shot back. “The dare was to me.”

Tenley snapped her mouth shut, looking confused.
“What?”

“I’ve been getting the dares, too, Tenley,” Sydney told her angrily.
“And I’m starting to think I know who’s sending them.” She thought of the photos on the pool deck. Everything was suddenly clicking into place, like a puzzle coming together: the picture whole at last. “Joey Bakersfield.”