Truth or Dare Read online

  Trey looks at Leslie down below. “The rent is too high. I think Leslie’s dad is trying to run my parents out of the space.”

  Dominic slaps at a fly on his neck. “I know how much you wanted to get out of Middleton.”

  “Next year,” Trey says as another fly buzzes around his head.

  “Ow!” Dominic shouts, slapping at his shoulder. “Something just bit me.”

  A fly darts past Dominic’s hand, and Trey sees blood where it bit through the fabric of his shirt.

  More flies swarm around them, and Dominic and Trey swat wildly at their heads, necks, and arms. Off in the distance, Trey sees a black mass of flies descend on Leslie and Willa too.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow!” the girls are shouting as they run from the lake, waving their hands and slapping at their faces and arms.

  “Vampire flies!” Leslie yells as they race up the shore.

  They flee back to the car. The flies follow and cling to the windows, trying to get in.

  “Ugh. We can’t camp here,” Dominic says. There is a huge welt on the back of his neck and another behind his ear. “Those things are vicious.” He starts up the car, and they drive down a narrow, bumpy road that circles the lake and then leads deeper into the woods.

  “I don’t think this is going to lead us back to the highway,” Trey says after a few minutes.

  “I don’t care where it leads us, as long as we get away from those evil flies,” Dominic says.

  Trey and Leslie brace their hands against the ceiling of the car as they bounce around in the backseat. Trey has a vision of the rust bucket suddenly falling apart, wheels rolling off in different directions.

  They cross a narrow wooden bridge, and on the other side is a small clearing and a ranger station. Dominic pulls up as close as he can to the building. Flies are swarming there too. Hundreds of them cling to the wooden siding. The air inside the car has become hot and stifling.

  “On the count of three,” Trey says, “we run to the building. One, two, three!” They jump out and run, but when they reach the building, the door is locked. They pull and pound on it as the flies descend, biting and buzzing.

  They are about to run back to the car when a green ranger truck pulls up behind them. A tall, bearded man slowly gets out of the truck and ambles toward them as they swat at the flies and jump around.

  “Move out of the way if you want in,” the ranger says. There are flies in his beard and covering his tan ranger hat.

  He unlocks the door, and the four of them pile into the shelter of the small, dark building. Trey smacks a black fly that is clinging to the back of his neck.

  “What’s the deal with the flies?” Leslie asks.

  “The unusually hot and humid spring created the largest hatch I’ve ever seen,” the ranger says with a smile. He shuts the door behind him and sits down at his desk. “Drove all the campers away.”

  A fly crawls around in the ranger’s beard.

  “How did they get past the tree?” Trey asks. “Is there another way out?”

  The ranger pulls the fly from his beard. It struggles between his finger and thumb, wings beating furiously, and then he just lets it go. It circles his head once and attaches itself to the ceiling above, out of reach. Trey can’t help but feel like it’s staring down at all of them.

  “That was a nearly two-hundred-year-old tree,” the ranger says, scratching his beard. “Storm blew it down.”

  “No,” Trey says, looking at him. Was the ranger intentionally ignoring his question? “It was cut down. I saw the marks.”

  “I had to do that,” the ranger says, nodding and staring out the window across the room. “It came down partially, leaning against some trunks across the road, and I didn’t want it to crush any cars that passed beneath. A crew won’t be able to get out here until Monday.”

  Willa looks at the ranger and puts her hands on his desk. “There’s no way we can camp here. We will go insane.”

  Dominic takes out his phone to call home.

  “No reception here,” the ranger says and then nods at the phone on his desk. “And the land lines are down because of the storm.”

  Leslie swats a fly on Willa’s head.

  “Ow,” Willa says.

  “What you kids can do is hike three miles up the trail and camp deeper in the woods. The flies like to stay near the lake. They won’t follow you that far.”

  “Are you sure?” Dominic asks.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” the ranger says as he takes a camping permit from a desk drawer.

  “Your names?”

  They give him their names, and he gives them the pink copy of the camping permit.

  “Where you from?”

  “Middleton,” Willa says. “We just graduated.”

  He doesn’t congratulate them. He doesn’t look up. He just hands a map to Trey.

  “You all have big plans for next year? Off to conquer the world?”

  Trey looks down at the map. This guy is strange, he thinks. His eyes are a weird shade of green with a circle of amber around the iris. He’s never seen eyes like that before.

  “What about you?” the ranger asks, catching Trey off guard. “Where are you heading to this fall? What big plans have you made?”

  It’s like he knows I’m not going anywhere, he thinks, but out loud he just says, “I’m taking a year off.”

  Leslie and Willa turn toward him, startled, but the ranger just shrugs.

  “Not a bad thing to do,” he says. “‘The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’”

  “Wordsworth?” Willa asks.

  “Very good,” the ranger says. “A smart girl. A very smart girl.”

  A fly circles around and around them.

  “You can go ahead and leave your car here. The trail starts at the end of this road,” the ranger says, pointing to the door.

  They make a run to the car, grab shirts out of their bags, and tie them around their heads to keep the flies off their faces. Then they shoulder their backpacks, divide up the food, and run for the woods.

  The flies buzz and bite and follow them.

  Chapter 5

  “Why did we think this would be a good idea?” Dominic asks Trey as they run down the muddy trail, swatting at the swarming flies.

  “We just need to keep going,” Trey says.

  The trail is wet and slippery, and it’s hard to run without tripping over exposed rocks and gnarled roots. Welts mark Trey’s arms and legs, and he can feel them on the back of his neck and scalp too. The other three look just as bad.

  “What if he was lying to us?” Leslie says. “What if we all get eaten alive on this trail? Maybe that’s what happened to those missing kids . . . the flies ate them. Not one piece of them left.”

  Ten minutes or so later, Trey slides to a stop. Willa nearly collides with him.

  “Do you hear that?” he says.

  “What?” Leslie and Willa both say.

  “The buzzing. It’s gone.”

  They slowly unwrap the shirts from their heads. The biting flies have disappeared, and it is so quiet they can hear the wind rustle through the leaves.

  “So. Much. Better,” Willa declares, looking up at the tall trees surrounding them. “Ahh, peace. Quiet.”

  But the silence is broken by a distant but steady chopping sound.

  “What is that?” Willa says.

  They all stop and listen.

  “Someone must be splitting logs or cutting down a tree,” Trey says.

  “Maybe it’s the ranger trying to clear the tree on the road,” Dominic says.

  Trey faces the sound and realizes that it is coming from the direction opposite the road—from deep within the woods. Then the sound stops, and the forest is quiet again.

  Too quiet, Trey thinks.

  Chapter 6

  A wooden sign bearing the words Great Red Pine appears, nailed to a post beside the trail. An arrow points up a path perpendicular to the main trail.
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  Trey pulls the permit—now damp with sweat as well as rain—from his pocket and checks it. “That’s our campsite,” he confirms.

  They follow the path up a small hill, pushing low-hanging branches out of their way. It ends in a small clearing with a metal fire pit in the middle and enough space for two tents off to one side. A mat of pine needles covers the ground, and the evergreen smell rises as they drop their backpacks to explore.

  “So hungry!” Leslie says. She digs in her bag and hands everyone a granola bar.

  Suddenly starving, Trey opens his and takes a bite—but stops chewing when he discovers it tastes like sand.

  “What is this?” he asks.

  “A soy crunch bar,” Leslie replies.

  “Yum,” Trey says, trying to wash it down with a swig of water. He thinks about big handfuls of fake-butter-flavored Jiffy Pop snagged from a tinfoil bubble and swigs of sugary orange soda as he chokes down the last bite.

  “We should set up the tents,” Willa says.

  “Where are they?” Trey looks at the pile of backpacks, and his stomach sinks.

  “I thought you grabbed them,” Dominic says.

  They all look at one another. Heavy, dark clouds are rolling across the tiny circle of sky visible from the camp.

  “Rock, paper, scissors?” Leslie suggests. Soon she and Trey are grinning at the losers.

  “Dominic, it looks like it’s you and me, bud.” Willa grabs a shirt to tie around her head.

  “Rematch?” Dominic asks.

  “You’ll be fine,” Trey says. “Just try and get back before dark.”

  “It isn’t really that far of a walk,” Willa says. “Come on. Trey’s right. We don’t want to have to hike back here in the dark.”

  “We’ll have a fire going by the time you get back,” Leslie volunteers as she digs in her pack for a book of matches.

  Trey doesn’t say anything. He just smiles as Dominic wraps a T-shirt around his neck and head. If it was just the two of them on this trip, Trey knows they would’ve forgotten about getting the tent and just slept under the stars.

  “I’m going to search for some dry tinder,” Leslie says. She heads for another trail, this one barely an opening in the trees, eyes already on the ground.

  “I thought you said something about not entering the woods alone,” Trey calls after her, but she just keeps going.

  “After midnight,” she says, her voice fading into the woods. “I’ll be fine. There’s still light.”

  Chapter 7

  Trey looks around at the empty clearing for a second and then follows her into the woods, stopping to gather bark off fallen birch branches. The thin, curly strips are as good as paper when trying to start a fire.

  Pockets stuffed, he looks around for Leslie, but she’s moved ahead and out of view. “Hey,” he yells. “Hey, Leslie! Did you find any dry stuff?” She doesn’t answer. “Leslie?”

  It’s getting darker by the moment in the thick woods, and from far away he can hear the sound of someone chopping wood again. It goes on for just a minute and then stops.

  “Leslie,” he says again as he follows the trail. No sign of her. He looks through the leaves and ferns and branches for the blue hoodie she was wearing, but he doesn’t see it. A gnawing sense of unease flares up in his gut.

  “Leslie!” he yells, even louder this time.

  Still no answer.

  The trail ends at a fallen pine tree. The needles have turned the color of rust—the tree has been dead for a long time. He tests a branch, and it snaps off easily in his hand. Perfect wood for a campfire.

  He pulls off a few thin branches from the treetop and then steps off the trail to reach some thicker limbs. His foot lands on a root that rolls under him; he slips and staggers, dropping his armload of wood. He looks down just as the “root” slithers away and disappears into a hole at the base of the fallen tree’s trunk.

  Snake! I stepped on a snake! He shudders and takes one slow step back, eyes on the hole, and then another, and then something tickles the back of his neck.

  “Ahhh!” he cries, jumping up and spinning around and slapping his neck at the same time.

  “We’re good. I found a bunch of stuff,” Leslie says. Her arms are full of branches, including the long, whippy one that brushed his head. He didn’t even hear her approach. She laughs. “Scared you?”

  He picks up the branches he’d dropped. “I think I just saw a snake,” he says, nodding toward the woods.

  “I saw one too, I think. I thought it was a tree root, but then it moved.”

  “Nasty,” Trey says. “Same thing happened to me, except I stepped on it, and it disappeared into that hole over there.”

  Leslie shivers in sympathy, and they start walking back to the campsite. It’s getting hard to see the thin path in the evening shade. “Let’s get our fire going,” she suggests. “Maybe it will keep the slithering creatures away.”

  “Where were you?” Trey asks a few minutes later. “I was calling your name, and you never answered me.”

  “I was right over there.” She points to another fallen tree.

  “I thought maybe you were lost,” he says, trying not to sound too relieved as the trail opens again into the campsite.

  She drops an armful of tinder next to the fire pit. “I was a Girl Scout for seven years,” she says, “and I didn’t just sell cookies. My troop and I used to go on two-week wilderness camping trips. You don’t have to worry about me and the woods. I can take care of myself.”

  “So your dad would let you go on wilderness trips, just not here?”

  “I know! Weird, right?” She kneels down near the fire pit and makes a small pile of dry leaves, bark, and sticks, then strikes a match and holds it to the leaf layer, gently blowing on the tiny embers. A flame flickers and catches the bark and starts to devour the twigs. Leslie feeds it more sticks and then finally a few large branches.

  Trey moves closer to the fire as the larger branches catch. His jeans are still damp, and he hasn’t shaken the chill. They watch the fire in silence for a few minutes. Then out of habit, he pulls out his phone.

  “Do you have any reception?” he asks.

  “I didn’t bring my phone,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “My father has this device on it that tracks my every move, and I didn’t want him to know I was here, so I pretended like I accidentally left my phone behind on the front porch.”

  She puts another log on the fire.

  “Where does your dad think you are?”

  “Camping up at Johnson National Park.”

  “That’s where I wanted to go,” Trey says.

  “Great fishing,” Leslie says, sitting down next to the fire.

  Then Trey hears Dominic and Willa. They are laughing as they step back into the campsite, and Trey is suddenly glad that Willa and Leslie came along.

  Chapter 8

  “What’s so funny?” Leslie asks as she stands up and steps away from the fire. Willa hands her a long nylon bag, and Leslie loosens the drawstring and shakes the tent and poles out.

  “Dominic nearly got run over by a deer,” Willa says, still laughing as they spread the tent out across the ground. “It just burst out of the woods and ran in front of him, and Dominic jumped ten feet into the air.”

  “I thought it was a bear,” Dominic says, handing the other tent to Trey. “It was huge.”

  “It was a fawn,” Willa teases.

  “Deer have been known to attack people,” Dominic says. Trey unrolls his tent, laughing at the image. Maybe this wasn’t such a mistake, he thinks. It feels good—the laughter, getting away, setting up a tent in the woods with friends and a campfire.

  “I’m starving,” Willa says when both tents are set up.

  “The fire is ready,” Leslie says. “I’ll get the tofu dogs out.”

  “Tofu dogs?” Trey says.

  “Actually,” she says, “they’re sun-dried tomato tofu dogs.”

  “Even better,” Tr
ey says, making a face, but he’s starving, and he’d eat anything. He gets his camping knife and cuts four skinny, green branches from a poplar tree, shaves off the leaves, and hands everyone a roasting stick.

  Leslie passes around the package of tofu dogs. Trey takes one and examines it suspiciously, thinking, That is a strange shade of pink. Like a hot dog made of bubble gum.

  “You know,” Leslie says, “your parents’ restaurant would do better if they offered more vegetarian and gluten-free options.”

  “I’ll make sure to tell them that,” he responds with an eye roll. His parents run an Italian restaurant; they make their own pasta and cure their own meat. The dining room is small, but it is usually full, with people waiting at the busiest times. They could do a lot better if they could afford to expand the place.

  “But I love that all their stuff is fresh and organic,” she continues. “Doesn’t your mom grow all the herbs herself?”

  “Yeah,” Trey says. “I’ve never seen you in the restaurant.”

  “Our housekeeper picks it up for my dinner,” she says.

  “It must be nice,” Trey says. “Having someone bring you all your meals.”

  “Actually, it isn’t all that nice. I usually end up eating alone in front of my laptop now that my mom is living in California. My parents got divorced a year ago.”

  “I’m sorry.” He looks across the fire at her. “I didn’t know.”

  Trey tries to put the tofu dog on his stick, but it breaks in half and falls in the dirt.

  “Here,” Leslie says, handing him a new one.

  Trey roasts it over the fire, but it doesn’t really roast. It just kind of turns a darker shade of pink.

  “It’s all about the condiments anyhow,” Leslie says. She passes around some bean-sprout buns and a bag filled with small bottles of ketchup, mustard, relish, chopped onions, and hot sauce.

  Trey puts everything on top of the tofu dog, and when he takes a bite, he’s surprised. It’s actually pretty good, and he ends up eating four.

  Chapter 9

  The night creeps in around them as they sit by the fire, and a waxing moon slowly rises above the treetops. Leslie throws another log on the fire, and Willa breaks out a bag of marshmallows and passes them around.