Page 35 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
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I should have prepared myself for this.
I’ve heard of it happening at other parties. I’ve seen it play out in movies. I know it’s a popular way to pass the time, especially once the novelty of the chocolate fountain and confetti machine starts to wear off. But I still experience a horrible shock when someone suggests, two hours into the party, that we play a game of truth or dare.
“It’ll be fun,” Georgina says. She arrived about thirty minutes ago, with sparkly butterfly clips in her hair and blue mascara streaked down her cheeks. The word has since spread that she’d been dumped by a girl on her gymnastics team for one of the glamorous equestrians at another school. “I really just want to have fun tonight, ’kay?”
I accepted long ago that my definition offuntends to differ from the general teen demographic. Fun is baking a new batch of egg tarts, or beating my previous record for the two-hundred-meter dash, or adding my grades to my academic spreadsheet. It’s not roller coasters or getting wasted on a beach or participating in a game that requires you either embarrass yourself or expose yourself to a number of people.
But I’m clearly the only one with reservations.
“Sounds cool to me,” Ray chimes in, and the others are all nodding, sitting themselves down in a circle.
“Hey.” Abigail nudges me. She’s rarely sheepish, but there’s no other way to describe the way she’s smiling. “I’m so, so sorry to do this, but I have to leave early. My sister’s car just broke down on a freeway and Liam’s been ignoring her texts—yes, again, I know, don’t give me that look—but are you going to be okay on your own? Because I can, like, figure something else out if you need me to.”
I do need you here, I want to say.Don’t leave me at this party by myself. Please don’t go yet.But the words stick to my throat; I’ve never been good at asking people for things. “No, that’s completely fine,” I tell her. “Go.”
“Give me updates later,” she says, grabbing her purse.
“I’ll message you,” I promise.If I manage to make it through this alive, I add inside my head, dread dragging its ice-cold fingers over my stomach.
The first few rounds of the game are fairly tame. Somebody dares Rosie to text her ex; she whips out her phone without hesitating and sends them a selfie. Somebody dares Ray to do fifty push-ups, which he performs with such flair, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to expose his muscles, that I have to wonder if he’d arranged the dare beforehand just to show off. Someone else asks one of the theater kids what her biggest fear is, and she responds with “The realization that life is little more than the slow leak of time until we meet our inevitable demise,” which sends everyone into an uncomfortable silence for a while.
Then it’s Julius’s turn.
Frankly I’m surprised he’s still here. Even more surprised that he’d join the game.
“What do you pick?” Rosie’s friend asks him.
Julius manages to look indifferent when he replies, “Truth.”
Of course he’d pick that, I think scornfully. God forbid anyone force him to do something unseemly, like mess up his hairstyle.
Rosie’s friend giggles. Peers at him under her long lashes. “Okay, then . . . Do you like anyone?”
It has nothing to do with me, but my heart seizes as if I’ve just been electrocuted. I’m blinking too fast, sitting up too straight. I can’t control my body, can’t control the weird, nervous feeling fluttering through my veins. Can’t stop myself from looking at him as if I can find the answer written over his face.
For the briefest second, he looks back at me.
Then he frowns and shakes his head, once. “No.” His voice is firm.
The girl’s face swiftly crumples in obvious disappointment. Inexplicably I feel a pang of it echo through my own chest.
“How boring,” Georgina complains. “You really don’t likeanyone? There are so many pretty girls in our year level.”
Julius shrugs. “You asked for the truth.”
“Fine. Next person, then. Truth or dare, Sadie?” Georgina asks. Now all eyes are on me, and the air in the living room suddenly seems to have weight. I can feel it pressing down on me, crushing my ribs, sealing my next breath inside my lungs.
My throat dries. IfIchoose truth like Julius did, they’ll most definitely ask me about the emails, and I can’t afford to upset anyone further. All my work for tonight, this whole party—it’ll be for nothing. So I reply, “Dare.”
Ray grins. “Dare, huh?”
Too late, I’m hit with the terrible, sinking realization that I’ve chosen wrong. Walked headfirst into a trap. I can’t even imagine what they’ll think up.Thisis why I should have been better prepared; I could have thought through my options more carefully, made up for my lack of experience by doing more research.
Ray ducks his head and murmurs something to his friends, and they hoot with laughter.
“Is it too much?” the girl sitting cross-legged next to them asks.
