Truth or Dare (38 page)

Tenley sucked in a breath. “Rabies Boy? You think
he’s
doing this? But aren’t you guys—”

Sydney cut her off. “Remember that kiss you saw between me and Joey in the park? It wasn’t because I wanted to. It was a dare.” Tenley was the last person she wanted to talk to, but it felt good to finally say it out loud, to anyone. “A few years ago, Joey tried to kiss me and I wouldn’t let him. So when I got a dare to kiss him, to do what I wouldn’t on my own… it made me to start to wonder if
he
was the one doing this. I wasn’t positive—but now that I’ve seen those photos out there, I think I might be.” She pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “Who would want that photo to get out more than Joey himself?”

“So he could trade up,” Tenley breathed. “Rabies Boy for boy toy.”

“Maybe so,” Sydney said quietly.

Tenley was silent for a few seconds, eyeing Sydney up and down. Sydney was wearing her favorite jeans—the pair with just the right-sized tear in the knee—and a thin, snug-fitting green sweater. She’d been almost happy with her appearance when she left her apartment earlier, but now, under Tenley’s penetrating gaze, she felt glaringly deficient.
It’s Tenley
, she reminded herself. Who
cared
what she thought? But still, Sydney couldn’t help but tug at her sweater a little, adjusting it in the front.

“How do I know this isn’t just some scam to throw me off the scent of the real darer?” Tenley asked finally.

“Throw you off the scent?” Sydney threw up her arms in frustration. “Who are you, Nancy Drew?”

“Tiny?” A familiar voice drifted into the woods before Tenley could respond.

Instantly, Tenley brightened and Sydney tensed up.

It was Guinness.

“Back here,” Tenley called out, all traces of anger in her voice magically vanishing. She stuck out her chest, combing a hand through her hair. Anger surged inside Sydney again as she remembered why she’d come here in the first place.

“Rumor has it you disappeared back here,” Guinness said, slipping through a break in the trees. “What are you up to—
Syd
?” Guinness’s jaw dropped at the sight of Sydney standing with Tenley. “Syd,” Guinness said again. “What are you doing here?”

“Sydney and I were just having a little conversation,” Tenley supplied quickly.

Guinness kept his eyes on Sydney, ignoring Tenley. “We need to talk,” he told her.

“No,” Sydney said coolly. “We don’t.” The way Tenley was gazing at him made Sydney want to get out of there as fast as possible.

“Please, Blue.” Guinness took a step closer to her, lowering his voice. “You won’t answer my calls,” he said softly. “Just give me a chance to explain, okay?”

He was looking at her so earnestly, as if he was sure all it would take was a Band-Aid to patch things right up. Next to him, Tenley’s eyes were practically popping out of her head as she looked back and forth between Sydney and Guinness, but Guinness barely seemed to notice. Sydney twisted her ring. He wasn’t exactly
acting
like someone who’d been seeing Tenley behind her back… “All right,” she said. “But you’d better make it quick.”

Guinness glanced over at Tenley, who was now staring openly at
Sydney with a horrified expression. “Meet you at the pool in a minute, Tiny,” Guinness told her. “Sydney and I have some, uh, photo stuff to discuss.”

Photo stuff?
Sydney tensed back up. Why was he always veiling things?

Tenley let out an annoyed huff, but again Guinness didn’t even react. Grabbing Sydney’s hand, he pulled her deeper into the wooded backyard, their feet crunching on freshly fallen leaves.

“Photo stuff?” Sydney asked accusingly as soon as Tenley was out of sight.

“I just didn’t want to get into it with her, Syd.” There was a hammock a little way back, stretched taut between two trees, and Guinness led her over to it. He dropped down on it, beckoning for her to join him.

“I’m fine over here,” she snapped. But it was dark under the trees, the air filled with sounds of movement: leaves rustling and branches creaking and the faintest pattering of footsteps. When a twig cracked nearby, Sydney leaped onto the hammock—just in time to see a rabbit hopping by.

“Say what you need to,” she told Guinness sharply. “Because I’m ready to get out of here.”

“Syd, I’m sorry.” Guinness touched her cheek, and in spite of everything, she could feel her body reacting to his touch. It made her realize how easy it would be to just forget it all, to lean in and kiss him and let the night swallow them up. But even as he trailed his thumb down to her neck, she couldn’t shake that image of him and Tenley from her mind.

“What’s going on between you and Tenley?” she blurted out.

“What?” Guinness stared at her. Several strands of dark hair flopped across his forehead. “She’s my stepsister.”

Sydney took a deep breath. She hated sounding like this whiny, desperate version of herself. It reminded her too much of the old fights between her parents, her mom always begging for reassurance from her dad. But she couldn’t help herself. She had to be sure. “And there’s nothing else going on?” she pressed. “What about the other night when you were out on the
Justice
together?”

Guinness jerked backward. “How did you know about that? Were you
spying
on me?”

“No!” Sydney said hastily. “I just, uh… Tenley told me about it,” she lied. There was no way she was mentioning the dares to him again. The last time, he’d accused her of playing games. Just thinking about that fight made her tense up all over again. “And besides, that’s not the point,” she said angrily. “The point is, you were out on a yacht with your stepsister, with her hands on you in a
not
-so-sisterly manner. And then you got angry at me for kissing someone else, when you’ve never even asked me to be your girlfriend. When you’ve never even taken me on a date in public!” She could feel her voice rising several octaves, but she couldn’t help herself. “The point is, you were a complete asshole to me, and I didn’t deserve it!”

Guinness looked her right in the eyes. “You’re right,” he said evenly. “You didn’t. I shouldn’t have said any of that yesterday, Sydney. I’m so sorry.” He scooted closer to her, putting his hand on her knee. “Come on, Blue… I came to Echo Bay so we can finally have a real chance.”

He traced his thumb in circles on her knee. He looked so apologetic. Slowly, Sydney could feel herself melting under his gaze. His leg was pressed up against hers and they were all alone and suddenly all she wanted was to let him wrap his arms around her and pull her down on the hammock. “You know what a hotheaded idiot I can be,” he added. “Don’t mess up what we have over it.”

Sydney pulled back with a start. “What did you just say?”

“I said
please
don’t mess up what we have just because I was an idiot.” He laughed lightly, tapping her nose.

Sydney looked down. This whole thing was giving her the strangest sense of déjà vu. It was like her parents fighting all over again, except that it wasn’t. It was her and Guinness. She closed her eyes, catapulting back to second grade. She was hiding in her room, her ear pressed against the door as she listened to her dad begging for her mom’s forgiveness.

“Please don’t ruin everything because of
my
dumb mistake,” he kept saying. Sydney had been young then; so little of their fight had made sense to her. But when he said that, her tiny fists had clenched at her sides.
That’s not fair
, she remembered thinking. It took many years until she understood why—that her dad was being manipulative, that he was trying to keep the upper hand—but instinctually, somewhere deep down inside her, she’d known her mom should have fought back. That she shouldn’t have let it go so easily.

She looked back up. “That’s not fair,” she told Guinness. “I’m not messing anything up. You did that all by yourself.” She stood up abruptly, the hammock swinging forcefully in her wake. She didn’t want to be having this fight. She didn’t want to be this person. “We’re done,” she said suddenly, and as the words hung in the air between them, she realized that she truly meant it.

“Blue,” Guinness protested, but Sydney just shook her head sadly.

“There’s nothing you can say, Guinness.” She took one last look at him, at his dark, messy hair that was perfect for running her fingers through, at his hooded eyes, still unreadable after all these years, at his broad chest that she loved to bury her head in. For years she’d waited for him, accepting whatever he would offer her—fragments, bits,
pieces. But she didn’t want pieces anymore. She wanted the whole thing: good, bad, and in-between. “It’s over,” she said. Then she turned and walked away.

Her throat was raw as she made her way back to the pool deck. She needed to get out of here—as far as possible, somewhere where she could be alone.

“There you are!” Calum exclaimed when he saw her. “I was starting to worry you’d been abducted by the lions.”

“That’s not that far off,” Sydney said. She felt unbearably heavy all of a sudden, as if a whole mess of weights were sitting on her chest. She was light-headed as she heard those words again.
It’s over
. Against her best judgment, she couldn’t help but glance back toward the yard. She expected to see Guinness emerge through the trees at any second, but the only movement was another rabbit, hopping its way toward the deck. She could feel tears pooling in her eyes, and she looked down, blinking them away before Calum could see. “Want to get out of here?” she asked him.

“Let’s see… is a proton attracted to an electron?”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Sydney said.

As they made their way out, Sydney couldn’t stop herself from taking one last look at the wooded yard behind the deck. It sat dark and still, no Guinness in sight. But in her peripheral vision, a tiny flicker of movement suddenly caught her attention. Her heart seized up as she strained her eyes.

In the long shadow of a tree, Sydney could just make out the outline of a person. It wasn’t Guinness. This person was shorter, and narrower, too, with shaggy, chin-length hair. Sydney gasped. It was Joey. It had to be. Furious, she started back across the deck. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but she knew she had to do
something
.

“Whoops!” Marta Lazarus stumbled into her, her drink sloshing over Sydney’s arm. “Sorry, Cindy.” She giggled, her red hair whipping into Sydney as she lurched away.

Sydney ignored her, looking frantically back toward the yard. But there was no one there. The figure in the shadows was gone.

“I can’t believe she just called you Cindy,” Calum said in amazement, drawing Sydney’s attention away from the yard. “Honestly,” he said, grabbing one of the stray photos that were still scattered around the pool deck. “If you ask me, these girls
all
deserve to have embarrassing Kodak moments.”

Sydney whipped around to face him, her heart beating faster than ever. “Why would you say that?” she asked shakily.

Calum gave her a strange look. “I just meant that what goes around comes around, Miss
Cindy
.”

Sydney put a hand on the pool deck railing to steady herself. Slowly, her heartbeat returned to normal. “I guess.” She shook her head. “Let’s just get out of here.” She grabbed Calum’s hand, pulling him off the deck.

As they headed back to Calum’s car, Sydney couldn’t stop thinking about Joey. Had he been out there tonight, watching them? She knew now that she wasn’t the only one he was targeting. He was after Tenley and Caitlin, too—and maybe others. She swallowed hard as she climbed back into Calum’s car. The question was, what was she going to have to do to stop him?

Sunday, 10
AM

TENLEY PACED IN FRONT OF THE CAROUSEL, WAITING
for Caitlin. When Caitlin had first signed them up for a shift volunteering together, Tenley had been excited to man the ride that used to be her all-time favorite. But now, as she watched the kids line up—whale pops staining their hands and shrieks coming out of their mouths—with Caitlin nowhere to be found, Tenley was starting to regret the decision. The carousel was nothing like she remembered it, either. It was small and rickety, and its fish-shaped seats were made out of plastic, with cheesy smiles painted onto them.

“Our shift is over in about twenty-five seconds,” one of the guys working the carousel shift before hers called out. He ushered several grubby-looking kids onto the ride, while his friend collected their tickets. They were older, townies, Tenley figured, the kind of guys who never made it out of Echo Bay.

She gave them her most seductive smile. “Could you guys stick
around for just a couple more minutes? I’m sure my friend will be here any second, and then we’ll take over.”

The taller guy rolled his eyes, pulling out his phone to check the time. “Five minutes,” he informed Tenley, hardly even glancing in her direction. “Then we’ve got better places to be.”

Tenley paced faster. Where was Caitlin? She’d gotten a text from her two hours ago, saying she’d meet Tenley at the Festival, but she hadn’t heard from her since. And now Caitlin’s phone was off. She was worried Cait was so upset about the photos from last night that she’d decided to skip out on the Festival after all. But still, couldn’t she at least
call
to let her know? Tenley scanned the crowd yet again for her friend’s familiar blond head. But the Festival was too packed.

Tenley watched as a father and daughter stopped at the next booth over. It was Reel Time, a booth Tenley remembered from her own Festival-going days, where kids used magnetic fishing poles to reel in floating plastic fish. “Can we play, Dad?” the girl asked excitedly. She had light brown hair and a scattering of freckles, and couldn’t be more than eight or nine.

“Only if you can stand some competition,” her dad joked, ruffling her hair. “Because some might say I’m the plastic fishing champion of Massachusetts.”

“There’s no such thing,” the girl said, giggling.

“Okay then, it’s on,” her dad agreed.

“It’s on!” the girl echoed, and her dad laughed, bending down to kiss her on the head.