Truth or Dare

by Barbara Dee

  Agate

  IN THE KITCHEN, AUNT SHELBY was calmly drinking a glass of orange juice. As soon as she saw me, she did a little jig that sloshed some juice on the floor.

  “Wasn’t that brilliant?” she demanded, laughing. “Didn’t you love it—‘Aztec truth powder’?”

  “It was kind of clever,” I admitted. “But it didn’t solve anything.”

  She put down the glass. “What do you mean?”

  I sighed. “I thought this was going to be a party. And at the end of it, we would all magically be friends again. But now everyone’s upset. At me.”

  “Why at you?”

  “Because you’re my aunt. And you basically just had us ambush Abi.”

  “Who was bullying all your friends, Lia. Not just you.”

  “How can you say that? You don’t even know them!”

  “No, but Val does.”

  “What?”

  “Val’s told me stuff. She’s been paying close attention.”

  “But—I don’t understand,” I sputtered. “She told you her own daughter was a bully?”

  My aunt nodded. “Val’s been worried about it for a while. She tried talking to Abi, but Abi wouldn’t listen. And when you reminded her of her own behavior in middle school toward me—”

  “Aunt Shelby, that was a totally different situation!”

  “—it made her wonder if bullying was genetic. Or if somehow she was enabling Abi’s behavior. So she talked to me about it.”

  “Why to you?”

  “Lia, I know you don’t think I know anything about herbs—”

  “I never said you didn’t know anything.”

  “—but I do know a middle school bully when I see one. And I do know a victim. All you girls were kissing a bully’s bahooties, and now you won’t have to.”

  “Bahooties?” I repeated. “What’s that?”

  She grinned. “Nothing. I just made it up. But you get the point, right?”

  It all seemed so simple to my aunt, like prescribing someone a “treatment.” Or handing someone a crystal. Put it under your pillow. And poof: no more insomnia. Or, Here’s a leaf. Poof: Now you’re pregnant.

  “What’s wrong?” She frowned at me.

  “Aunt Shelby,” I said, “I know you had a hard time in middle school and you never got over it. And I know you thought you were helping me with that cake. But now we’ve all said terrble stuff to each other that we can’t take back!”

  “Yes, but why would you want to?”

  “To be friends again,” I wailed.

  Aunt Shelby shook her braids. “All right, Lia, you’ve lost me. Didn’t you tell me you weren’t sure you wanted to be friends with these girls?”

  “Yeah. But maybe I changed my mind. Anyway, it was before this.”

  As I said these words, I felt like a party piñata that had been smashed open. I was deflated, empty. Without my friends, who could I talk to? I had no one now—no mom, a dad I loved but who couldn’t really understand, a brother who teased, a crazy aunt. Bad friends were better than no friends, right?

  Aunt Shelby rushed over to give me a hug that basically kept me upright. “Lia,” she said in my ear. “I know these girls were there for you in the past, especially when your mom died. But you’re all growing and changing, and if these friendships aren’t working out for you anymore, you shouldn’t be afraid to let them go. Believe me, sweetheart, I know your mom wanted you to have true friends, girls who support each other, who have each other’s back. Someone like Marley—”

  I pulled away. “You told me you fought with Mom all the time! How can you say you know what she wanted?”

  “Because she was my sister,” Aunt Shelby said quietly. “And you know what, buttercup? She still is.”

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  That night I slept a million hours. It was as if I’d never slept before and couldn’t figure out how to stop.

  When I finally woke, I spent a long time staring at the ceiling. Yesterday had been truly horrific, the way Aunt Shelby had organized a party so that we could all attack Abi. And even if Abi had deserved it, even if she was the cause of all the fighting, my mom—the Jessie who’d figured out how to stop Shelby’s bullies—would never have humiliated one of my friends. So if Aunt Shelby “knew” what my mom would’ve wanted, why had she allowed a thing like that to happen?

  Then I thought about Mak finally speaking her mind and how even Jules had stood up to Abi for the first time in history. So maybe the party hadn’t been such a disaster after all, I told myself. Aunt Shelby had tricked us with that cake—but really, my ex-friends hadn’t needed much of an excuse to tell off Abi.

  And I was glad I’d told the truth about my period. Finally. I still owed the truth about kissing Tanner, even though everyone had probably figured it out by now anyway. Although it was strange that Aunt Shelby had covered up for me. Considering how she was all for truth and sunshine, blah, blah, blah, lying about Tanner didn’t make much sense.

  Then I had this crazy thought: Maybe she lied about Tanner because she cares about me. And maybe she thought it was what I wanted.

  That was when I noticed an envelope on the floor, which must have been slipped under my door while I was sleeping. I got out of bed to open it.

  Inside was a small blue stone and a note from my aunt.

  Dear Lia,

  Sorry I messed up. Your mom was so much better at mom stuff—and I know I’m not much of a substitute. But I was only trying to protect you. That’s something I’ll never stop doing. Anyway, I doubt there will be any more trouble.

  xoxox,

  Aunt S

  PS. Here’s an agate. Keep it by your bedside. The ancient Aztecs used it to ward off bullies and meanies.

  PPS. Late bloomers unite!

  PPPS. Marley seems like a good friend. Just my intuition.

  PPPPS. Tanner is a nice boy, but he’s not very bright. For a first kiss, pick someone better, okay?

  PPPPPS. Talk to you soon!

  Apologies

  AFTER I GOT DRESSED, I ran over to Abi’s house. When I rang the doorbell, Val answered.

  “Can I please speak to Abi?” I asked.

  “Sorry, Lia,” Val said quietly. “She’s not here right now.”

  I thought it was a lie, that Abi was simply too hurt and angry to see me. But then Val added: “She and Jules went to the movies. But I’m meeting her for dinner at the diner. You’re welcome to join us.”

  Really? This was an invitation. So it meant Val had forgiven me for calling her a bully?

  “That would be great,” I said eagerly. “What time?”

  “Six,” she said.

  I went home, did some homework, washed my hair. At five thirty I told Dad I was having dinner with Val and Abi. He looked startled, which made me wonder if Aunt Shelby had told him about the party. But he didn’t ask questions or say I couldn’t go; in fact, he drove me to the diner.

  Val and Abi were at the same table I’d shared with Graydon. When was that? Only a few days ago, but it felt like weeks.

  I could tell Val hadn’t told Abi she’d invited me, because as soon as I walked over, Abi’s face paled. She put down her fork.

  “Lia, what are you doing here?” she asked in a flat voice.

  “I came to talk to you. It’ll be fast.”

  “You know what? While you girls are chatting, I think I’ll take a potty break,” Val announced. Under other circumstances, Abi and I would have giggled at “potty break,” but Abi just glared as I slid into Val’s seat.

  “So what is it?” she said, almost spitting out the words.

  “I want to apologize,” I said.

  “Yeah? For what?”

  “The party. I thought it was going to be the opposite of how it was. I had no idea that my aunt would make everyone hurt you.”

  Abi raised one eyebrow. “That’s exactly what she did, you know. I felt attacked.”

  “I know. We talked about it afterward, and I told her so. The thing is, my aun
t has this thing about bullying, because she was bullied in middle school. And she just wants to make sure I’m okay.”

  I could see Abi was interested. I could also see that she hadn’t heard anything about Aunt Shelby’s bullying before. So if I wanted to, I could have told Abi right then that her own mom was the bully—sweet, generous, cupcake-baking Val.

  But I couldn’t.

  If she was going to find out that Val stuffed undershirts in my aunt’s gym locker and called her names, it would be Val who told her, not me. I wasn’t going to take Abi’s perfect mom from her. After everything that had happened, I felt like I owed that much to Abi. Even more, I owed that to Val. And in a strange way I couldn’t explain, I also felt that I owed it to my mom.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I came to tell you I’m sorry about what happened at my house. Although I do agree with my aunt about one thing. The way we played that Truth or Dare game was really nasty. But I forgive you, Abi.”

  “You forgive me? Oh, that’s hilarious, Lia.”

  “I also forgive you for lying about your period.”

  I can’t say exactly when Val had returned from her potty break, but it was right then that I realized she was standing behind me.

  “What?” She looked horrified. “Abi, you lied to your friends about—?”

  Oh no, I thought. It was like I couldn’t stop getting Abi in trouble. Maybe I should just get out of here.

  “Sorry for interrupting your dinner,” I murmured as I slipped out of the seat.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Of course I realized that Abi and I would never be best friends again. And of course I realized the same would go for Jules. Because that’s just the way it was with those two.

  Mak was different. On Monday I showed up at school with the pack of Twizzlers I’d bought for the party. I put it on her desk in homeroom.

  “They’re apology Twizzlers,” I explained.

  “You mean for that crazy party?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “But it wasn’t your fault, Lia. And anyway, the whole thing was for the best.”

  “It was?”

  “Abi needed to hear all that. We should have said that stuff a long time ago. And I’m sorry I went along with any of it.”

  “You did? I don’t even remember, Mak.”

  “Makayla,” she corrected me, smiling a little bashfully. “And thanks, Lia. But yeah, I totally did.”

  She ripped open the pack of Twizzlers with her teeth. We weren’t supposed to eat in homeroom, it was just after breakfast, and the truth was, I didn’t especially like Twizzlers. But when she handed me the pack, I took one to be polite.

  Makayla looked blissed out as she chomped on the fake-red candy stick. “My long-lost love,” she said in a swoony voice, sighing like a heroine in a bad romance movie.

  Superpowers

  THE THING ABOUT LOSING YOUR friends: you gain superpowers. Two in particular—Invisibility, which means you can go anywhere without people noticing, and Super Vision, which means you see things in sharper focus than you ever have before.

  So even though, for example, you have nowhere to sit at lunch, you can plop yourself at any table and no one will mind. (Because basically, they don’t see you.) And from your perch, wherever you seat yourself, you get to observe things. The sort of things that were always there but that you just never noticed.

  For example: the fact that Abi and Jules were in their own little friend bubble. At lunch they barely talked to anybody else in the entire grade, male or female. How was it possible that I’d never even picked up on this before? I watched them sit huddled together in the lunchroom for a whole week before I saw Jules chat with another human being (Cooper Chang, who had dimples and ridiculously long eyelashes). Afterward, Abi looked upset, like she was scolding Jules for ignoring her. And Jules said some things back, like she was sticking up for herself, finally. The next day, and the day after that, I saw Jules laughing with Cooper at the salad bar. Go, Jules, I chanted in my brain. Maybe the friend bubble had popped a little. I hoped so.

  I also noticed Makayla dividing her lunchtime between her swim friends and her band friends. Often she started with one group and ended with another; sometimes the groups overlapped and she switched seats anyway. I think she was relieved to not have to hide her social life from Abi anymore. And honestly, I was glad for her.

  But I didn’t sit with her. It may seem funny to say this after all the time we spent together, but I realized that Makayla and I were never actually friends. It was more like we were both in the same family—a family headed by Abi. And when the family fell apart, Makayla drifted away. We still chatted together in homeroom, and I was grateful for the nice things she’d said after the party, but we’d never hang out again outside school. This made me sad to think—but with my new Super Vision, I could see how relaxed her shoulders looked now, how loudly she laughed, how she belonged with her other friends. And here’s another funny thing I realized: We didn’t have a whole lot in common, anyway.

  As for Marley: In homeroom she sketched all the time, making it seem that she didn’t want to talk to anybody, including (or maybe especially) me. I never saw her in the lunchroom, which made me assume she was with Graydon in the computer lab. She didn’t invite me to join them, but I wondered if I should barge in anyway. Although I’d be sitting there eating my yogurt while they played a game I knew nothing about and would probably stink at if I tried to play.

  Plus, there was the whole Graydon thing. Makayla had said that he still liked me, but it was hard to believe, and after the diner fiasco, I didn’t want to take any chances. What if I asked if I could join him for lunch and he said no? I cringed just imagining that whole scene. Plus, the thing about Invisibility: It stops working when you’re in a small group. Squeezing my way into the Marley-Graydon-Ben-Jake circle would mean surrendering my superpowers.

  Which was possibly the right thing to do. But for what felt like a long time after the party, I ate lunch with nobody, or else with Ruby Lewis (who was now wearing a bra every day, thanks to Mrs. Garcia). And my superpowers stayed intact.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  By then a couple of weeks had gone by with no dinners from Val. If Dad was surprised about this, he didn’t mention it. The truth was, it was kind of a nice feeling that we Rollinses could manage dinner on our own.

  But on the last Tuesday in September, Val showed up with two shopping bags full of food. I knew she’d forgiven me, and since she was friends now with Aunt Shelby, she must have decided she should start feeding us again.

  Dad asked her into the kitchen, where he was roasting a chicken. He opened the oven to show it to her.

  “That’s beautiful!” she exclaimed. “And it smells delicious! Kevin, you’ve learned to cook?”

  “From YouTube.” He grinned. “Would you like to join us for dinner?”

  “Oh, no, I have dinner waiting at home. But thanks!”

  He took her hand then—not to shake it, but to hold it. “Val, you’ve been . . . I can’t even begin to tell you how much we all appreciate everything you’ve done. But I think we can take it from here.”

  Val smiled, burst into tears, nodded, blew us all kisses, and ran out with the shopping bags—although fortunately, she left behind a tray of brownies.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  A few days after that my aunt showed up in her truck.

  “Look what Benchley Rescues rescued!” she shouted as she honked her horn in our driveway.

  Nate and I peered in the window of the cab. In the passenger seat was a pet carrier—and inside were two calico cats, a big one and a tiny one, obviously a mom and her kitten.

  “Did you drive them all the way here just to visit?” Nate wrinkled his nose as if they smelled bad. I could tell he’d inherited my mom’s cat-hating gene.

  “Nope,” Aunt Shelby said. She grinned at me. “These are anti-birthday presents for Lia.”

  “Seriously?” I squeaked. “For me?”

  “Don’t worry. I asked your dad first and he compl
etely agreed.”

  “I agreed to one cat,” Dad said, coming out to the driveway.

  “Yes, Kevin, technically you did,” Aunt Shelby said. “But these cuties were too sweet to separate. And you know, we should honor the mother-daughter bond.”

  I had to laugh. Aunt Shelby had no shame—she’d say anything to anybody. I thought Dad might be offended with her sneaky “mother-daughter” mention and the way he was being guilted into letting me keep both cats, but I could see that he was trying not to smile.

  “Okay, Shel, you win. If Lia even wants them.” He winked at me.

  “Are you crazy?” I squealed. “Let me hold them!”

  We took the carrier inside. Aunt Shelby said I should keep the cats in my room for now, so that they wouldn’t get overwhelmed by a whole house. I didn’t argue—if Aunt Shelby was an expert on any topic, it was cats.

  When we were upstairs in my bedroom, with the door shut tight, she opened the carrier. First the mother cat poked out her head, sniffing the air suspiciously. Then out came the kitten, a miniature version of the mom, except for a black freckle on her pink nose, a peanut-shaped orange spot on her side, and a black mark on one ear that looked sort of like a tiny comma.

  “Thank you, Aunt Shelby,” I whispered.

  As soon as I’d spoken those words, I realized I hadn’t said them in a long time. Maybe ever.

  My aunt hugged me. “They’re actually a thank-you present. It’s because of you that I patched things up with Val. And guess what—she’s agreed to invest in my new store. Isn’t that incredible?”

  “It really is,” I said. Although the thought of Aunt Shelby and Val working together was a bit King Kong Meets Godzilla for Brunch. Or no: King Kong ’n’ Godzilla: BFFs at Last.

  Aunt Shelby pulled out of the hug. “We’re okay again, then, Lia? You and me?”

  I nodded.

  “So how are you, buttercup? Your friends still angry?”

  I shook my head.

  “And everything’s good again?”

  I shook my head.

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  “Haha.” I sighed. “We’re not enemies, but we’re not really friends anymore. I guess the whole thing just got too weird.”