Truth or Dare (2 page)

“About Makayla. She got her you-know-what.”

“Her period?”

“Last night. Finally.”

“It was really, really baaaad,” Abi said, doing an exaggerated wince. I looked at Makayla, who was standing a few feet away with her mom. Of all of us, Makayla was the best student, the best athlete, and (in my opinion) the best-looking. She was tall and strong, half African-American (her dad) and half Korean (her mom); her skin was warm brown, and her long black hair made a thick, wavy ponytail. She was captain of the district swim team, played flute in the countywide band, and wasn't afraid to stand up to anybody, even Abi. I was in awe of Makayla, to be honest, but right then she looked droopy and weepy.

She must have noticed that I was staring, because she said something to her mom and walked over.

“Hey, Lia.” She gave a crooked smile. “So you heard the big news?”

I nodded. “You okay?”

“Sure. If it's okay to feel like your body's been taken over by aliens.”

Jules smiled sympathetically. “Is that how it feels to
you? Because whenever I get killer cramps, I think of them like mice playing on gym equipment.”

“That's horrible,” Abi said, laughing.

“To me the cramps feel bigger and slower,” Makayla said thoughtfully. “Like maybe a giant sea monster walking through peanut butter.”

“That's pretty good,” Jules said. “My sister says it feels like they're taking down a building. With one of those wrecking-ball things.”

I started to chew on my cuticles.

“Plus I have a headache,” Makayla added.

Jules nodded. “A throbbing one?”

“No. More like my head is a gum-ball machine.”

“Well, that's better than a pinball machine!” Jules said. “That's what
my
headaches always feel like!”

“And I just feel so
bleh,
” Makayla said. “And slow. Like a slimy slug.”

“Well, at least you don't
look
too bad,” Abi said.

“Are you serious, Abi?” Makayla groaned. “My stomach is completely bloated. My hair's a mess. My skin is supergross—”

I took a couple of steps backward.

“Lia, where are you going?” Abi asked.

“Bags,” I said as I turned and started jogging. “Back in a sec.”

I stopped in front of Dad, who was telling Val something about his Check Engine light. “Excuse me? Dad?” I said, out of breath. “Can I please talk to you a minute? Inside the car?”

“Everything okay, Lia?” Val asked, her made-up eyes concerned and piercing.

I nodded. “Great.”

Dad and I got in the car. “What's up, Doc?” he asked, patting my knee.

I took a deep breath. “I'm not going.”

“You mean to camp?”

“Yeah. Sorry. It was a huge mistake.”

He smiled patiently. “Oh, come on, Lee-lee. It's normal to feel a little nervous—”

“I'm not nervous. I just don't want to
do
it.”

He stopped smiling. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what's changed? Lia, you've been to sleepaway camp before. You loved it. A week ago you were so excited to go back.”

“I don't want to talk about it, okay?”

His eyebrows rose. “You're not even going to give me a reason?”

“I can't. It's too personal.”

“Well, you need to tell me
something.
”

“Okay.” I stared out the window at my friends. Abi, Makayla, and Jules had their arms around one another's shoulders, and they were singing, but I couldn't tell what. Val was chatting with Makayla's mother, and Jules's mom was smearing sunscreen on her elbows.

“I didn't iron on the labels,” I said.

“What?”

“The labels you ordered. They were all wrong. The font was horrific, and it wasn't even my right
name
, so I can't possibly go to camp, or all my stuff will get lost.”

“Oh.” He blinked. In this light, I could see his eyes behind his sunglasses. They looked tired. “Well, Lee-lee, I'm sure someone at camp can help you label your clothing—”

“But that's not everything,” I blurted. “Please don't make me talk about it, okay? I just don't want to go. I've changed my mind. Please, Daddy?”

He sighed. I never called him Daddy anymore, and it probably startled him a little to hear it. Also, I never asked him for anything. Ever since Mom's accident, I made myself be as easy as possible. Sometimes Nate was moody and gave Dad backtalk, but not me. I just wanted there to be no more problems.

So maybe that was why he seemed to be thinking it over. “Well, aside from the fact that I already paid for the summer and don't even know how much I can get back,
there's the issue of
you
. I've got to go to work, obviously. And Nate has travel baseball—”

“I know. I wouldn't hang out with him, anyway.”

“And all your friends will be gone. So how will you entertain yourself all summer?”

“I'll stay with Aunt Shelby.” As soon as I said this, I knew it was a brilliant plan. Aunt Shelby had a beach house up in Maine, and she'd been begging me to visit for “girl time.” Dad always said Aunt Shelby was “a nut,” and Nate always said she was just plain crazy. It wasn't that I disagreed with them, to be honest. But Aunt Shelby was also Mom's younger sister, the only grown-up female relative I had.

Dad scratched his chin for a few seconds. Then he said, “Has she invited you?”

“Only like a million times.”

“I'll have to think—” he said slowly.

I kissed his cheek fast, so he couldn't.

And right at that moment I could see the camp bus pulling into the parking lot. It was shiny and silver, bigger than a school bus, and it probably had a bathroom. Probably played videos too.

“Dad? Can we please just leave now?” I begged.

He grunted. “I don't know about this, Lia. You don't even want to tell your friends you're not coming with them?”

“Truthfully? No.”

“Well.” We sat there and watched the bus come up to the curb. Abi was looking at our car, waving her arm like,
Hurry up, Lia! What's taking you so long?
And Val began jogging toward us with a concerned-mom look on her face. I couldn't watch.

“Your mom would never agree to this, you know,” Dad murmured.

“I know.”

“As long as you do,” he said, and we zoomed off.

I GUESS IT'S TIME TO tell you what happened with Mom. I've put it off as long as I could, but nothing will make sense if I don't explain it. So here goes. Two and a half years ago Mom was driving home from work. She taught first grade at Maplebrook Elementary and had to stay late that day for some faculty meeting. It was dark and raining when the meeting ended, so she took the long way home, because the streetlights were better. But some stupid guy in a stupid SUV was talking on his stupid cell phone, and instead of paying attention
to a stop sign, he slammed his car into Mom's. And he killed her.

At first I was just kind of in shock. All I kept thinking was, I wonder what that guy was talking about on his stupid cell phone. Like, what could possibly have been so important that it was
more
important than being careful about my mom?
Hey, did you see the game last night?
or
Honey, I'm sorry I'm running late, but there was traffic
. Or,
Did you see that skating cat on YouTube? Dude, it was hilarious.

After the funeral the guy actually came to our house to apologize. He was bald and pudgy, crying into a handkerchief, and he came with his wife, who brought us cookies. The fancy bakery kind that look all fake, pink and green with rainbow sprinkles that taste like wax. Dad let them sit on our sofa and apologize for a few minutes, while Nate and I watched from upstairs. Dad didn't say very much, and then he stood, which meant it was time for them to leave. But the guy started blubbering, so finally Dad left them alone in the living room.

“That poor man,” was all he said to us afterward.

But Nate and I didn't think he was a poor man. We thought he was a monster. Not the fairy-tale kind, but the real kind, who were actually scarier, because they acted “sorry.”

So we tossed the cookies in the trash. And while we
were at it, I also tossed my cell phone. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, I knew—I mean,
I
wasn't the person who'd been blabbing instead of paying attention to driving a car. But just the thought of using it again made me sick. And even though Nate told me I was being crazy, that it was like I was punishing myself when it wasn't my fault, I didn't care. No more cell phone for me again. Ever.

My friends didn't question my decision, even though it made it hard for them to communicate with me. So they visited my house a lot after the funeral, hanging out in my bedroom or watching dumb movies with me on the downstairs TV.

The only one who didn't come over all the time was Marley. But for the whole rest of that year, she made me a drawing every day. The drawings weren't about my mom or what happened to her—they were pretty random, actually: a tiger hiding in tall grass, a flying dragon, baby penguins. Marley never said anything about these drawings; she just slipped them into my mailbox or put them on my desk at school. But I knew what they meant, that she was thinking of me, and for a long time they were what I looked forward to.

In the days after the Accident (that's what we called it, “the Accident,” even though the guy wasn't on his cell “by accident”), people kept coming over to our house
with food—casseroles, lasagnas, layer cakes, salads, roast chickens, meat loaves, stews, pies. They must have thought losing Mom made us hungry. The truth was, none of us had any appetite, so Dad ended up donating a lot of the meals to a local food pantry. And even though that made us feel a bit better, we still felt guilty about finding so much food on our doorstep every day. Guilty, and also (weirdly) ashamed, like people thought we couldn't take care of ourselves anymore.

Finally, after a couple of weeks, Val showed up in our kitchen with her mom-ponytail and a lime green yoga jacket, even though she didn't do yoga. She was carrying a huge blue mug of coffee and a pink spiral notebook. “All right, Rollins family, here's the thing,” she said in her take-charge voice. “People want to help. I know you don't want all this food right now, but you'll need meals down the road. Oh.” She cleared her throat, as if she'd realized she shouldn't use the expression “down the road.”

“Val, that's very thoughtful of you, but—” Dad began.

“Kevin, I know what you're going to say: You can cook for yourselves. Please.” She held up a hand, her nails polished a dark pink. “You'll probably just order pizza every night. That's not going to cut it; you guys need to stay strong. And you need to let people feel better by doing something.”

She flipped open her notebook. I could see that she'd drawn a calendar in different colors of ink.

“We're delivering meals to you on Tuesdays and Fridays,” she announced. “For the foreseeable future. We have loads of people who want to cook, so if we rotate volunteers, it won't be a burden to anyone. But what else can we do? Shopping? Driving? You name it.”

“Val,” Dad said, shaking his head.

“Not a choice, Kevin. We're helping, and you can't stop us.” She laughed the way Abi did—loud and a little hoarse, like a punctuation mark at the end of her sentence.

And that's how the Mom Squad started. After a few months the neighbors and Mom's friends gradually stopped delivering meals, but not Val. She kept bringing over huge feasts every Tuesday: baked ziti, stuffed peppers, minestrone, garlic bread, tossed salads with slivered almonds, chocolate chip cookies so fresh out of the oven that the chocolate was still melty.

“She cooks like this every night?” Nate said one time. “No wonder Abi's fat.”

“Shut up,” I told him. “Abi isn't
fat.
And don't talk like that. You should be grateful—”

“Dude, I totally
am
grateful,” he replied. I could tell by the way he blushed that he meant it, too.

My other friends' moms couldn't cook like Val, so she
organized them in different ways. Makayla's mom worked long hours, so she had a cleaning service once a week; after the Accident, she sent the cleaners over to our house sometimes. Jules's mom helped out with our shopping. Marley's mom planted daffodil bulbs in our front yard and brought us vegetables from her garden. The Mom Squad ran other errands, too, while Dad was at work all day, and constantly invited us over for meals. But everything was still organized through Val, who kept up her calendar in different-colored markers.

And during this time Aunt Shelby drove down from Maine every few weeks or so for visits. She was Mom's only sibling, her younger sister—but she and Dad were such opposites that it didn't make sense for her to stay longer than a weekend. For one thing, she always talked about how she'd hated growing up in Maplebrook, how “boring” and “stifling” it was here, how all the people in town (for example, Val) “gave her seizures.” She'd even ask Dad how he could “stand” being an optometrist.