Truth or Dare . . (2 page)

“Woo-hoo!” Abby exclaimed as she hurried out of the kitchen. She flung open the front door to find her friend Nora Lewis waiting there, holding a purple duffel bag, a pink sleeping bag, and a stack of DVDs.

“Am I too early?” Nora asked as she walked inside. “My brother had to drop me off before he went to work.”

“No, you're fine,” said Abby. “Leah and I were just getting some snacks ready.”

“Hey, Nora,” Leah said, pouring the tortilla chips into a bowl. “Which movies did you bring?”

Nora's brown eyes lit up. “I raided my brother's DVD stash!” she said excitedly as she spread three DVD cases across the counter. “What do you think?”

Abby grabbed one of the cases and read the title. “
Attack of the Bee People
?” she asked.

“Oh, it's
sooo
funny,” Nora said. “It's this movie from forever ago, and it was supposed to be really scary, but the special effects are horrible! It's hilarious!”

“What's this one?” asked Leah curiously. “
A Love Beyond
? Seriously?”

Nora sighed. “
Very
romantic. This guy dies, but he
never stops loving this girl, even though she tries to go on with her life. My brother would kill me if it got out that he owned this.”

Abby picked up the last DVD case, which had a black cover with a pair of spooky green eyes on it. “
The Hole
,” she said as she read the title aloud. “This one looks scary.”

“It is,” Nora said, nodding. “It's about a cursed grave that can never be closed, and whenever anybody visits the person who was buried there, they get sucked into it too.”

“Cool!” Leah exclaimed. “I love scary movies! Let's save that one for right before we go to sleep.”

Abby shook her head as she dropped the DVD back on the counter. “No way,” she said firmly. “If we watch that one last, I'll be way too scared to sleep.”

Leah laughed. “Exactly! Then we'll stay up all night for sure!”

There was another knock at the door.

“Got it,” Abby said as she darted into the hallway. When she opened the front door, she found her friend Chloe Chang waiting on the front porch. Chester barked in greeting.

“Hi, Abby!” said Chloe as she stepped inside. “Hi, Chester.”

“I'm so glad you're here!” Abby exclaimed. “Leah and Nora are in the kitchen.”

“Excellent,” Chloe said as she gave Chester a pat on the head and followed Abby into the house. “I've been looking forward to this sleepover all day!”

“Hey!” Leah said as she waved to Chloe. “Abby, did you unpack the cookies and brownies? I can't find them.”

Abby shook her head. “Maybe we left a bag in the car,” she replied. “I'll go check.” She grabbed her mom's car keys and hurried outside.

Abby's brown hair fluttered in the cool, damp breeze; in the distance, dark clouds threatened to bring a rainstorm before morning. She unlocked the car and found one last grocery bag that had fallen under the backseat.

Then Abby felt it again: that spooky sense that someone was watching her, just as she'd felt in the grocery store.

In the silence, she heard a crackling sound, like the crunch of fallen leaves. Almost like footsteps.

But that's not possible,
she thought. Abby's house was located at the end of a suburban street, next to a woodland nature preserve where people were forbidden to trespass. In all the years she'd lived there, Abby had never seen anyone in the woods.

She'd never stepped foot in them either, not with all the large
NO TRESPASSING
signs, bright orange warnings that were impossible to miss.

But as she stood in the driveway, Abby couldn't shake the feeling that someone was standing just beyond the trees, watching her.

Then she heard another sound coming from the woods. This one was familiar, but she couldn't place it. It was sort of like the rusty squeak of an old swing set on a stormy day, when the wind pushes the swings like invisible hands.

But there weren't any swing sets here.

Abby took a deep breath and spun around. “Hello?” she called loudly. “Who's there?”

The noise suddenly stopped. The silence was overwhelming.

Someone heard me
, she thought.

“Hello?” she called again. A few moments passed. As she glanced at the nature preserve, Abby started to feel silly.
Are you some kind of baby?
she scolded herself.
Why are you getting all freaked out for absolutely no reason?

Suddenly a creature burst out of the trees. The black blur took to the sky, cawing noisily, beating its wings
with tremendous power as it flew away from the forest as fast as it could.

A crow
, Abby thought with relief; she almost laughed out loud.
It was just a crow.
She grabbed the grocery bag and slammed the car door shut. She turned toward the house. She was eager to get inside and forget about the fear that had spread through her whole body as she stood, all alone, by the car.

The first thing Abby saw when she opened her door was Chester standing by the front window, growling quietly. She wanted to believe he was growling at the squirrels in the yard, but she couldn't help but think that the same thing that had spooked her had also spooked her dog. No matter how hard she tried, Abby couldn't stop thinking about the strange squeaking sound coming from somewhere in the woods, just beyond the trees.

And she couldn't shake the feeling that someone—or something—had been watching her.

The kitchen was bright and cheery when Abby returned with the missing grocery bag. She grinned at her friends as she joined them at the table, where they'd already started digging into the snacks. Abby had decided not to tell anybody about what had happened out by the car. But she kept glancing out the window at the woods.

“How many pizzas should I get?” Leah called as she held the cell phone up to her ear. “Two? Three? The phone is ringing and—Hello? I'd like to place an order for delivery.”

“Two pizzas,” Abby said. “One plain and one pepperoni?”

“Sounds good to me,” Chloe said as Nora nodded.

“Hey, check this out,” Chloe continued as she dug
around in her backpack. “Guess what I brought?”

“Your teddy bear?” teased Abby.

“Ha, ha,” Chloe said sarcastically. “A makeover kit! It has every color lipstick you can imagine and a hundred shades of eye shadow.”

Nora smiled. “Score!”

“Okay, the pizzas will be here in thirty minutes or less,” Leah said as she ended her call. “What should we do until then?”

“Let's go down to the basement,” Abby suggested. “We can move the furniture and set up the sleeping bags and stuff, and by the time we're done the pizzas should be here.”

She grabbed the DVDs off the counter and followed her friends down the stairs. The awesome sleepover she'd been planning all week was about to begin.

And Abby couldn't wait!

After they were completely stuffed with pizza, the girls returned to the basement. It was one of Abby's favorite rooms in the house. It was set into a gentle hillside so that only part of it was underground; the other half
of the basement had large windows that opened onto the backyard and the nature preserve on the side of the house. There was an overstuffed L-shaped couch covered with lots of squishy throw pillows. It was the favorite spot of her mom's black cat, Eddie, who spent most of his time in the basement avoiding Chester. Across from the couch, a large flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall. The rest of the walls were covered in cool vintage movie posters that Abby's parents had collected over the years. When all the colorful sleeping bags were spread out on the floor and the side table was covered with platters of yummy snacks, the basement turned into the perfect place for a sleepover party.

“Makeover time!” Chloe announced as she placed a pink case on the table in the middle of the room. The other girls crowded around as Chloe flipped open the lid to reveal three levels of trays, each one cluttered with a rainbow of cosmetics. The bottom of the case had a large drawer jammed with dozens of hair accessories.

“Is that
blue
mascara?” Leah asked, grabbing a tube. “I have to try that.”

“Anyone want to give me a manicure?” asked Chloe. “My nails are a mess.”

“Sure,” Nora replied as she reached for a nail file. “What color do you want?”

Chloe frowned. “Purple?” she asked as she considered her choices. “Or pink? Or maybe silver?”

“Nora, can I do your hair?” Abby asked. “It's so gorgeous.”

Nora shrugged. “Sure. But good luck. These curls do their own thing.”

Leah stared into the mirror. “What do you guys think? Too much?”

Abby tried not to laugh as she glanced at Leah's crazy-heavy eye makeup; in addition to the blue mascara, she'd added purple eyeliner and two shades of glitter eye shadow. “Well, it depends what look you're going for,” she began. “Cute girl on a Saturday night? Yeah, a little much. Going back in time to a disco in the seventies? Then you look perfect!”

Leah reached for the bottle of makeup remover. “I always go overboard with the eye shadow.” She sighed.

“Just remember, less is more,” Nora advised.

“Except when it comes to your hair, Nora,” Abby said as she struggled with a round brush.

Nora laughed. “Hey, don't say I didn't warn you!”

An hour later the girls were just about done with their makeovers. Abby had never seen so many wild eye-shadow pairings and outrageous hairstyles. At least, not since her last sleepover.

“You know what? I think it's time for a little Truth or Dare,” Leah suggested slyly, twirling one of her high pigtails around her finger.

“Ooh, yes!” squealed Chloe. “I
love
Truth or Dare!”

“I'm game,” said Abby. “How about the person with the craziest hairdo has to go first?”

Chloe started laughing uncontrollably. “Then no doubt you're up, Nora.”

“This mess on my head is all Abby's fault,” replied Nora, “but sure, I'll go.”

“All right, then, Nora,” Chloe began, her eyes twinkling. “Truth or dare?”

Nora bit her lip as she thought about her options. “Dare,” she said. “What have I got to lose now?”

“Great. I have a good one.” Chloe grinned at her. “I dare you to go into the front yard and pretend you're a chicken. And I mean squawking and bawking and everything. For one whole minute.”

Abby frowned slightly, remembering the spooky
feeling she'd had when she grabbed the grocery bag from the car earlier in the evening. “We don't have to go outside,” she said quickly. “Nora can just do the dare down here.”

“But it's way more embarrassing if she does it outside,” Chloe pointed out. “I mean, somebody could
see
her!”

“No kidding,” Abby said. “Did you forget that Jake Chilson lives right across the street?”

“But Jake's at the movies with Max and Toby,” Leah reminded her. “And it's Chloe's dare. She gets to set the rules—no matter how heartless they are.”

As everyone laughed, Nora rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It's dark. No one will see me.” She held her head confidently as she climbed up the basement stairs, with everyone following behind her. When the girls walked outside, Abby saw that Nora was right about how dark it was. The moon was hidden behind some storm clouds; it was so pitch-black that she could barely see her own yard.

Or the trees looming at the edge of the nature preserve.

“Don't start yet,” Chloe said. She turned to Abby.
“Do you guys have any lights in the front yard?”

“Yeah, I'll go turn them on.” Abby ran over to the side of the house and flipped the big utility switch. Suddenly the front yard was flooded with light that spilled into the street, all the way over to Jake's yard. Abby snuck a glance at the sprawling red house; even though the curtains were drawn, she could tell that the lights were on in the living room. She had lived across the street from Jake for her entire life; in fact, one of her earliest memories was of the two of them digging around in the sandbox in his backyard. They had played together a lot when they were younger, but Abby hadn't been over to his house since the fifth grade. She wondered briefly if Jake still had the same spaceship wallpaper in his room, and smiled to herself as she rejoined her friends in the front yard.