Truth or Dare (39 page)

Tenley looked away. Memories overwhelmed her—her dad winning her a stuffed fish, her dad playing her in Fish-ket-ball, and then kissing her on the head when she won—but she batted them away, one after another, refusing to let them hurt her.

“I’m so sorry, Ten.” Caitlin pushed her way through a group of middle-schoolers. She had no makeup on, and there was a small stain on the sleeve of her white shirt. She looked as if she’d gotten ready in the dark. “I couldn’t sleep for most of last night,” she explained. “But I must have passed out after I texted you. And my phone died, so I didn’t get your messages until I woke up and… anyway, I’m sorry,” she said again. “I got here as quickly as I could.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tenley assured her. “You made it just in time.” She turned to the townies, waving them away. “We can take it from here, boys.”

“Finally,” the shorter one grumbled. He tossed Tenley the ticket-collection box and they both jetted out of there.

As Tenley and Caitlin took over the ride, Caitlin ushering in kids and Tenley collecting their tickets, Tenley watched Caitlin carefully. Her skin was pale and a little splotchy and there were bags under her red-rimmed eyes.

“If you’re worried about those photos, don’t be,” Tenley said in a low voice. She pulled the carousel’s lever, sending the kids spinning around on their plastic dolphins and whales and sharks. “Honestly, I think people forgot all about them in, like, two minutes. I cleaned them all up last night. And then Emerson came back and helped me shred every last one of them in Lanson’s office shredder. They’re nothing but confetti now.”

“You and Emerson did that together?” Caitlin asked, looking surprised.

“We both care about you, Cait,” Tenley told her. “And besides, if anyone knows what it feels like to have an unflattering photo get out, it would be me….” She winced, shoving the memory of the disastrous pageant out of her mind for the thousandth time. She knew that when her mom got back from China Tuesday morning, she would be forced
to face it head-on. But until then, Tenley had roped the memory off in her brain, marking it with warning flags: a no-entry zone.

Caitlin shook her head angrily. “These dares are getting out of control.”

“Which is why we have to do something to put a stop to them,” Tenley said.

“But how? We still have no idea who’s sending them!”

“Actually… I think I might.” Tenley leaned in closer to Caitlin, lowering her voice. “I think it’s Joey Bakersfield, Cait. Rabies Boy himself.”

Caitlin snapped her head up, looking startled. “What? Why?”

As they reloaded the carousel for another ride, Tenley told her everything: how Sydney had been getting dares, too, and how her last one had been to kiss Joey. “She’s pretty positive it’s him,” Tenley told her.

“Do you really think Joey is capable of that?” Caitlin asked.

Tenley shot her an exasperated look. “I know you like to see the best in everyone, Cait, but come on. You don’t earn a nickname like Rabies Boy without being pretty freaking weird. Besides, think about it. Who would want that photo of you to get out more than Joey? He probably thought it would be an instant popularity boost!”

Caitlin guided a small redheaded boy onto the ride. “I have noticed him around a lot lately,” she admitted. “Just kind of… I don’t know, watching me.”

“Also known as
stalking
. Which is exactly what this darer has been doing to us all week.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Caitlin said slowly. “Maybe it has been him all along. I mean, who else would have had that picture of us from Vegas? I’ve never even
seen
that picture before.”

Tenley swallowed hard. Yesterday, she’d told Caitlin that the darer had been threatening her with that photo, too—but she’d left out the tiny fact that the photo had been hers in the first place. Now, for a second, she thought about telling her the full truth. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The possibility of Cait being mad at her again made something dark and cavernous yawn open inside her. She needed her best friend right now. She couldn’t face all this alone. “Exactly,” she lied, keeping her eyes trained on the carousel. “See, it had to be him.”

Caitlin nodded. “Okay. So what do we do about it?”

Tenley was quiet for a moment, wondering the same thing. But as they herded a new group of kids onto the carousel, something caught her eye over by Winslow’s Fish-a-Fortune booth. A cop, talking into his walkie-talkie as he patrolled the Festival. She took a quick glance around the street. Now that she was looking for them, she saw them everywhere: uniformed cops, patrolling the booths and guarding the lobster aquarium and drinking fishshakes outside the Crooked Cat Diner.

She’d thought about going to the cops before. It was always late at night, when she was lying in her bed, darkness hanging heavy around her. But by morning, she would come to her senses. Cops would ask questions, want to see the notes, the threats, the
pictures
. The idea of having to share her implant photos with the entire Echo Bay police force was almost as bad as getting another dare. Plus, ever since the kidnapping, Cait had been uncomfortable around cops. Tenley couldn’t put her through that again—not unless there was no other option.

But for the first time since this all began, she was starting to think there wasn’t. “I have an idea,” she said slowly. “But we’ll need someone to babysit the carousel for a couple of minutes. Think Emerson’s around?”

“Around, yes. Willing, not so sure.” Caitlin gave the lever a yank,
slowing the ride to a stop. A little girl in pigtails teetered off, her face looking dangerously green. “Emerson isn’t exactly what you’d call a fan of children.”

“I’m sure she’ll do it,” Tenley said. “She was really worried about you last night, Cait.”

“Well, what’s it for?” Caitlin asked.

Tenley took a deep breath. Here went nothing. “It’s so we can go talk to one of the cops.” Caitlin’s green eyes widened. “I know that’s got to be hard for you,” Tenley rushed on. “But I’ll do all the talking, okay? I don’t think we really have a choice anymore, Cait. It’s time we stop letting Joey run the show.”

Caitlin nodded. “You’re right,” she said softly. “I just want this all to be over.”

One pleading phone call later, Emerson was at the carousel. As usual, she was dressed flawlessly, as though she’d stepped right off the page of a magazine. Tenley pressed her lips together, trying to hide her annoyance. Didn’t Emerson ever just wear
jeans
?

“You’re the best, Em,” Caitlin said.

Emerson eyed the sticky, sneezing, shrieking mass of kids gathered around the carousel. “All I have to say is, you owe me, Cait.” But she was smiling as she said it, and she gave Caitlin a tight hug before turning to face the kids. “All right, you little snot monsters. Who’s next?”

Tenley grabbed Caitlin’s hand, dragging her toward the first youngish police officer she saw. He was over by the Gadget Shack’s movie booth, where
Finding Nemo
was blasting on a large screen, much to the delight of a throng of whale pop–sucking kids.

The cop’s name tag said
OFFICER HAMILTON
, and he looked to be in his late twenties. He was kind of cute in his uniform, if you liked that
thick, brawny type. Tenley threw back her shoulders, getting ready to give him her best pageant-judge treatment. But Caitlin surprised her by speaking first.

“Excuse me, Officer?” she said sweetly. Her green eyes were wide and her hair tumbled over her shoulders, her natural gold highlights catching the sun. Tenley was so used to Caitlin’s beauty that usually she didn’t even register it. But every once in a while, it snuck up on her. Caitlin didn’t have a trace of makeup on and she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, but standing there under the glow of the sun, somehow she still looked stunning—and innocent, too, as if there really should be a halo floating over her head.

Officer Hamilton looked over, his eyes softening when they landed on Caitlin. “Yes, sweetie?” he asked, as if Caitlin were ten instead of seventeen. “Is there a problem over at the Winslow booth?”

“Oh, no,” Caitlin said quickly. “I mean, at least, not that I know of.” For a second she sounded strangely guilty, but then she coughed, her voice returning to normal. “We just… had a question. Let’s say, hypothetically, that someone was sending… uh, threatening notes to other people. Would that be considered a crime?”

“I would really have to know more about the notes to determine that, sweetie,” Officer Hamilton said. He looked over their heads, his eyes focused on something in the distance. “Is that little girl dumping her shake on the
ground
?”

Tenley narrowed her eyes. He clearly wasn’t taking them seriously. “What if that person was also taking photos of people without their permission?” she pressed. “Wouldn’t that be a crime?”

“It depends,” he began, but before he could say anything else, his walkie-talkie suddenly blared to life. “We’ve got a code two over by the
kiddie pool,” a staticky voice announced. Officer Hamilton tore the walkie-talkie off his belt, pressing it to his ear. “Another water fight has broken out. Calling reinforcements!”

“Copy,” Officer Hamilton replied eagerly. “Hamilton en route!” He beckoned for Caitlin and Tenley to follow him as he took off down the street, toward the large kiddie pool that had been brought in for the day. “If you think a crime has been committed, girls, you can go down to the station to file a report. But unless someone is in danger of being hurt
today
, no one will be assigned to your case until tomorrow. As you can see, we’ve got every cop on the force out here right now. With Fall Festival’s track record, Echo Bay is on high alert. But tomorrow’s Festival crowds are expected to be smaller, so—”

He fell silent abruptly as his walkie-talkie blasted out once again. “Hurry, Hamilton!” the staticky voice yelled. “The situation over here is getting out of hand.
Hey!
I said no splashing the cops!”

“Duty calls,” Officer Hamilton told them. With a quick nod goodbye, he broke into a sprint.

“The glamorous life of an Echo Bay cop,” Tenley said dryly, watching him weave furiously through the crowd to get to the kiddie pool. She shook her head. “So I guess we’re waiting until tomorrow to go to the station?”

Caitlin paused, looking worried. “I don’t know, Ten. Maybe we should go today. Just get it over with.”

“You heard Officer Hamilton. There won’t be anyone there to talk to us.” Tenley shook her head. She wanted this to be over as much as Caitlin did, but she also didn’t want to spend her whole Sunday at the police station for no reason. “Besides,” she told Caitlin, “what if Joey finds out we went to the cops? There won’t be anyone on the force to help us until tomorrow… and it might make him angry
tonight
.”

Caitlin sighed. “I’m just so sick and tired of never knowing what’s going to happen next.”

“Believe me, I understand.” The image of an angry Susan K. Miller popped into Tenley’s head, and once again she pushed it away. She was not going to let herself obsess. Forcing a smile onto her face, she looked up at Caitlin, who even in her flats was taller than Tenley in her platforms. “But we just have to get through one more day, right? Tomorrow after school, we’ll go straight to the station.”

Caitlin nodded reluctantly. “Maybe Sydney could come with us, too. Then we can tell the cops the whole story at once.”

Tenley knew it was probably a smart idea, but after last night, she wanted as little to do with Sydney as possible. The expression on Guinness’s face when he saw Sydney had given Tenley the strangest sense that there was much more than a photography class between them. When they’d gone off to the woods, leaving her behind, she’d been shocked. Could Guinness actually
like
Sydney? She was the scrawny scholarship girl who worked at the Club his dad practically owned and dressed straight out of thrift shops. It wasn’t possible… was it? But the longer they were gone, the more uneasy Tenley became. And when Guinness finally came back—without Sydney—he was in a pissy mood, ignoring every one of Tenley’s advances. Finally he’d left for the night without even saying good-bye.

But Tenley wasn’t in the mood to rehash any of it with Cait right now, so she just nodded vaguely. “Yeah, maybe.”

“And then this whole nightmare of a week can be over,” Caitlin said.

“And senior-year
fun
can begin. Speaking of which…” She grabbed Caitlin’s hand, pulling her back toward the carousel. “There’s one more thing we have to do before resuming our posts.”

“There you guys are!” Emerson said when they made it back. “I was
starting to worry that if I saw one more little kid who looked like they were about to barf, my own breakfast would come up.” She held out the ticket box to Tenley, but Tenley didn’t take it.

“Just once more?” she asked in her sweetest voice. “So we can ride?” She stepped closer to Emerson, adding in a whisper, “For Cait.”

Emerson sighed. “Fine. But if anyone barfs, just know I’m not cleaning it up.”

“Deal,” Tenley agreed. “Then again, neither am I. I’m sure they have people for that,” she added, and for a second she could swear Emerson was trying not to laugh.

A popular song suddenly rang out from Emerson’s purse. “Hold on a sec,” Emerson said, rooting around in it. She pulled out her phone, which was sheathed in a studded yellow case. Apparently even Emerson’s accessories had accessories. “Let me just check this,” she said, clicking open a text. As she read the message, her face paled several shades. “What the hell?” she murmured.

Instantly, Tenley tensed up. She knew the expression on Emerson’s face. She’d worn it herself every time she read one of the darer’s notes. Was it possible that
Emerson
was getting dares, too?

“Everything okay, Em?” Caitlin asked.

Emerson nodded, but she kept her eyes on her phone. Tenley leaned in, trying to get a better look. If the darer—
Joey
, she corrected herself—was targeting anyone else, she needed to know! But it wasn’t a blocked number at the top of Emerson’s phone screen. It was a name Tenley didn’t recognize. Josh Wright.