Dare You

PROLOGUE

THE FIRST THING she needed was a shower. A hot one. So hot the mirrors would become fogged and the towels would feel dewy and opening the bathroom door would be like stepping into a refrigerator. Her feet would be bare. And she would walk from the steaming water to the sink without wrapping a towel around herself like armor. She’d dreamed of that shower—literally dreamed of it—last night. Like her brain just couldn’t wait to wake up and make it a reality. The shower. Right away. First thing.

She’d been sitting on the edge of her bed for hours now. Motionless. Muscles frozen. She didn’t even twitch when a determined fly landed on the top of her ear and crawled around with its prickly little feet, only to pop up in a dizzy swoop and light on her again, this time on her cheek. Her knees and ankles were clamped together. Her spine was straight. Her hands rested flat, palms down, on the cover of a journal. Leather-bound, each page meticulously kept, in neat, all-caps handwriting.

8:10 A.M. AWAKE

8:22 A.M. SHOWER, DOOR CLOSED

9:10 A.M. BREAKFAST, CEREAL, DRY, COFFEE, CREAM, SUGAR, DIDN’T FINISH

9:30 A.M. STUDYING, OPEN TEXTBOOK, GEOGRAPHY

9:56 A.M. CIGARETTE BREAK 1, COMPLETE TO FILTER, NO BRAND CHANGE, DISCARDED BUTT SAVED, RETRIEVED, AND LOGGED

Pages upon pages of tedium. Six months of it. Boring as hell. Thank God she wasn’t the one in charge of writing it all down.

She allowed herself to blink, but was otherwise absolutely still on the edge of her bed. Still as a statue. Still as a corpse. Heartbeat slow, rhythmic. Ka-thud. Ka-thud. Ka-thud. She could feel her blood swooshing around inside of her like an out-of-control river, carrying her life force through her organs, souring and poisoning all the tissue, the gristle, the fat.

As if she had fat. Please.

She imagined the inside of herself as boneless, muscle-free, an inky-black and never-ending cavern, the bottom filled with tarlike sludge. To her, the popularized portrayal of a red devil was far from the truth. He wasn’t red. No. He was midnight. He was what you couldn’t see until he surprised you from the depths within yourself. He could only be found by those truly looking for him. By those who’d already died inside. Those who were walking rot.

She was walking rot.

Gorgeous, rich, popular walking rot.

The best kind, really. Life was so easy when you were gorgeous, rich, popular walking rot. Before, when she cared about making impressions, when she tried to do it all the right way, her life was anything but easy. She was left to subsist in ordinariness while those others—those imposters—were living her rightful life. She had to fight tooth and nail to get to the pot of gold at the end of that luscious rainbow.

Ha. Rainbow.

She’d stopped caring. She’d gone still and let the rot take hold and make everything easy.

Well. Mostly easy. Until that bitch came along and screwed it up for everybody. Screwed it up for her.

10:24 A.M. EMAIL CHECK, DELETE

10:37 A.M. GEOGRAPHY, BOOK OPEN, MOVED FROM DESK TO BED

10:37 A.M.–11:02 A.M. SOCIAL MEDIA. NO ENGAGEMENT, JUST SCROLLING

You ready?

She raised her head, slowly, evenly, as if on a tight hinge.

Dolores. Young. Half-afraid. Pretty. Liked to tell kindergarten knock-knock jokes, as if they were all there because they just didn’t know any better. Dolores didn’t mind when the TV stayed on too long. Didn’t even seem to notice the journal. Dolores was easy. Maybe Dolores was rotting, too. Maybe she knew all about that devil sliding around inside of herself.

Dolores leaned forward, her hands tucked into her guard uniform pockets. You ready? she repeated.

Finally, as if shocked into life, the heartbeat sped. Ready? So ready she could taste it. So ready she could feel that shower streaming down her back. So fucking ready she had to grip the journal tightly between her hands to keep from shoving her thumbs right through good old shy Dolores’s eyes. Knock-knock, Dolores, who’s there? Death, that’s who.

Her entire body clenched. Her shoulders pressed up so tightly against her ears, they ached. Her fingers were white around the leather journal cover. Her feet felt numb, like she was floating. Every open door was a birth as she passed through.

He was waiting in the vestibule, all dimples and teeth and yes, ma’am and no, sir. He understood the importance of what he was embarking on. He understood the gravity of the situation. Whatever it took, he was prepared. He would make sure neither of them messed this up.

Have a great life, Dolores, you dingbat, she thought as she walked through that final open door, squinting against the sunlight all the way across the parking lot.

Have you heard anything? he asked, opening the car door for her. She slid into the hot vinyl interior, grimacing. He paused, looking down at her, waiting for her to respond, and then shut the door. She waited until he came around the car and got in behind the steering wheel. Well? he said, fumbling the key into the ignition slot.

Of course not. Information comes when it comes. You think I’m just going to be having casual conversations about it over my tapioca? What, are you fucking stupid?

He laughed, rocking back against his seat. She couldn’t even look at him—his hair so white it practically glowed in that impossible sun.

Only stupid enough, he said. And that? He gestured at the journal.

Her fingers gripped it tighter. What about it? Jesus, turn the car on. It’s hot. I don’t want to die in this parking lot. They connected eyes, considering, with dirty grins, the irony of that statement. She chuckled. You didn’t bring a cane, did you?

He sobered. Still looking for it.

She rolled her eyes. That was a joke, moron.

He twisted the key in the ignition; the air blew into her face full blast. The car had been parked too long and the air, too, was hot, like standing too close to an open oven door. She squinted against it and started to tilt the vents away, but then imagined the heat curdling the internal rot and decided she liked it that way. Rot away, sludge.

Has it been helpful? he asked, gesturing toward the book in her lap.

I need a shower, she said.

I asked you a question.

She leveled her eyes at him, taking him in fully for the first time. He disgusted her. He was such a chameleon, it was almost impossible to tell who she was dealing with at any given moment. But he would do anything for the love of his life. He’d said so himself. He’d come clean when the shit hit the fan.

And besides, he was all she had right now, so she was just going to have to deal.

He was the only person who could stand between her and what she’d been waiting for, planning, for six months.

Only he could keep her from Nikki Kill.

Yeah, she said, hugging the journal to her chest, finally allowing herself to relax into the seat. Very helpful, actually.

1

MY HANDS SHOOK as I struggled with them behind my head.

I wasn’t exactly a jewelry kind of girl to begin with, and my chewed-to-the-quick thumbnails weren’t made for tiny metal necklace clasps. Then again, I was hardly a Flower Pink lipstick kind of girl, either, but damned if that wasn’t smeared all over my lips, too. Sweet makeup, hair brushed to a gloss, jewelry, heels. I felt like a parallel universe version of myself: Plastic Doll Nikki, for your special-occasion needs! Special occasions like high school graduations that nobody expected you to actually achieve. Graduate Nikki, now with stunned eyebrows!

I finally got the clasp and let the topaz teardrop dangle, touching it lightly with my fingertips as I stared into the mirror. Sunlight streamed in through my bedroom window—God, what I wouldn’t have given for a quick smoke before heading off to be Barely Achieving Student on Parade—and reflected off the facets of the gem and onto my face. Faint blue starbursts caressed the scar on my cheek, moving when I moved, swirling and blending with brown and peach, the colors that reminded me of heavy hearts and nostalgia. The same colors I always saw when I looked too closely at my scars. Colors that made me think of Dru.

Would Dru have come today to see me graduate? Doubtful. He wasn’t the type to sit in a crowded auditorium with a bouquet of roses in his lap. He was more of the type to meet you in the basket of a hot-air balloon with a bouquet of roses and tickets to a Vegas show. I guessed. The truth was I didn’t know exactly what type of boyfriend Dru was, because he and I had never exactly gotten to that stage.

And now it was too late. A putrid brown-and-peach swirl splatted against my forehead and dripped away into nothingness.

Hell, who was I kidding? Dru and I would have never gotten to that stage, no matter how long we’d had together. Because I didn’t do that stage. Ever. And he probably didn’t, either. Which would have been one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place. How screwed up was that?

You look just like her, I heard behind me. I whirled around, the remaining brown-and-pink swirl shooting up into surprised gold fireworks. My hand slapped over my heart.

I let out a heavy breath. You scared me, Dad.

Sorry. I forgot the rule.

The rule was no sneaking up on me, ever. Not unless you wanted to eat a few knuckles or perhaps get a really close look at the ball of my foot as it slammed into your face. Not to mention unless you wanted to give me a heart attack. Ever since that night at Hollis Mansion seven months ago, I’d been fighting a pervasive jumpiness, as if bad guys were waiting around every corner to attack me.

Last I heard, the bad guys were gone. Bill and Vanessa Hollis were hiding in Dubai, and Luna was locked up for killing Dru. But I’d spent so much time looking over my shoulder, it was pretty much habit now to assume that anyone coming up behind me was one of them, trying to kill me.

I picked up my mortarboard to distract myself from those memories and placed it on my head, reminding myself that they were in Dubai and juvie for good reason, and nobody had heard from them in months. Hell, nobody had heard from anyone in months. It was like nothing had ever happened. The entire world—minus yours truly—had forgotten all about it. I wished I could forget about it.

The mortarboard scrunched down over my hair, flattening it even further. I fumbled with a bobby pin, and Dad stepped up behind me.

Here, let me.

I handed him the pin. He slipped it up into the bottom of my cap, scraping it along my scalp, and held out his hand for another. I winced as I passed it to him. Dad doing my hair was nothing unusual—he’d been doing it since my mom died when I was eight. He’d had to be both Mom and Dad, which was too bad, because he wasn’t particularly great at being either one.

You do, you know, he said softly. Look like her. Especially wearing her necklace.

I tried not to react. Tried not to even hear his words. I’d spent a lifetime working on forgetting my mother—forgetting how it felt to lose her, forgetting the nightmares and the crimson, crimson, crimson of death that had followed me everywhere after she’d been murdered. It took ten years of effort, but I’d finally managed to be able to think about Mom without being overwhelmed by images of wet brown paper sacks and rushing muddy rivers of sadness. I’d even sometimes begun to be reminded of magenta and pink—the colors I associated with love and happiness—when I allowed myself to pull up memories of her.

But not anymore. Not after what happened with Peyton Hollis. Not after the letter she left for me—I’ve known you were my sister for a while now. . . . Your mother, Carrie, was my mother, too. I know this because I’ve followed a very long trail of deceit. Now every time I thought about my mother, my colors went crazy. They all pushed in on one another—anger, betrayal, danger, death, suspicion, fear. Sickly yellows and grays and browns and seething, pulsing midnight—a monster’s galaxy.

I think it’s good, I said, tugging on the mortarboard, choosing to ignore the big dead mother elephant in the room. Thanks.

He put his hands on my shoulders and gazed at our reflection in the mirror. She would have been so proud of you today.

I gave him a thin smile, concentrating on the blue of the mortarboard and hoping it wouldn’t be drowned out by the bad colors. Or by the ocean of turquoise that so closely resembled what I had come to think of as cheater blue—that ocean being an endless sea of guilt that I, no matter how hard I tried, could not find the shore of.

Basically, I was a synesthetic time bomb, held down by a very flimsy lid. And I’d spent the last seven months trying not to let too much steam escape.

She’s probably pretty surprised right about now, I said. I know everyone else is. The earrings? Or is that too much? It felt like too much, as I held one of the smaller teardrops up against my earlobes.

Too much, he said, echoing my thoughts. I dropped it back into my drawer, noticing that its match was missing anyway. I rooted through my jewelry with my finger, but it didn’t turn up. Weird. This was the second time something had gone missing on me this week. A few days ago, I had turned my room upside down looking for a half-empty pack of cigarettes and my favorite lighter—a vintage Zippo that I’d swiped out of the ISS teacher’s desk drawer in seventh grade and carved my initials into. I loved that lighter and couldn’t believe I’d misplaced it.

And, for the record, Dad continued, I’m not surprised. I knew you would graduate.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

Okay, I’m a little surprised. But I had faith in you. And when I think about all that you’ve been through . . . He shook his head, as though he felt sorry for me, and once again I had to concentrate on other things. My fingers itched to hold a cigarette. He took a breath. Anyway. Your grandparents are going to meet us there. I thought maybe we would have dinner afterward? Someplace nice. You’re dressed for it. Grandma and Grandpa would like that.

I sighed. My dad’s parents lived in Flagstaff and didn’t come around very often. I wasn’t sure how much they knew about what had happened with the Hollises, but I was guessing not much. Dad was a pretty private person, and I was even more private than he. I still had never told him everything about that night—had shared only enough to satisfy him and make him stop hammering me with questions. Sometimes I felt guilty about it, like if anyone should know that Mom wasn’t who she pretended to be, it should be him. The only explanation I had for keeping things from him was that I was afraid of hurting him, afraid of hurting us, our family, even if that family was only a memory. He’d never gotten over Mom’s death. To find out that he’d spent a decade mourning a woman who’d cheated on him—with Bill Hollis, no less—would be devastation.

Or worse. I would tell him, only to find out that he already knew. That they’d both kept it from me. That they’d kept my sister from me. And then what? I would feel betrayed and I wouldn’t be able to trust him again, and my dad was really the only person I had in this world. I was great at destruction—destroying people, destroying things, destroying hearts. The last thing I needed was to destroy my relationship with my dad.

So I’d told him only the basics. That I’d gotten in too deep with the Hollises. That I’d started dating Dru—even though that was hardly what we were really doing—and that his sister, Luna, had taken offense at me being so close to the family when they were grieving. I’d told him about how Luna had gone crazy, had drugged me, had held a gun on me, had shot Dru by accident instead. It was all a tragic mishap.

But that was where I’d stopped telling the truth. I didn’t want Dad getting all up in my business, asking questions and demanding answers and locking me down, a prisoner in my own bedroom. Not that he wasn’t already trying his hardest to do that. He’d felt so guilty about me getting wrapped up in a huge mess without him even knowing, he was constantly questioning me, and constantly searching for news on Luna’s trial. He’d even written a letter to the juvenile judge, railing about how Luna had attacked me for no reason, and asking to be kept in the loop if anything should happen with her case.

But there never was any news. There was no loop. At least not a loop that I was part of. Which is not to say my classmates weren’t talking about it; I just wasn’t part of the discussion. If I was a nobody before Peyton’s death, I was less than a nobody now. I finished out my senior year with home study, visiting campus only when I absolutely had to. I hardly ever went anywhere. And when I did, I avoided going any place where I might run into one of Peyton’s or Luna’s friends.

At least I no longer had police protection. When all the shit with Luna was going down, Detective Chris Martinez had followed me everywhere, and it drove me crazy. It was police protection that I didn’t ask for and definitely didn’t want.

So how come thinking about Detective Martinez caused violet bubbles to burst in my periphery? How come I could taste grapes and smell periwinkle just thinking of his name?

And how come someone who was stuck so tight to me I couldn’t shake him no matter how hard I tried hadn’t come around in seven months? Not even to see how I was doing.

Hello? Dad said, snapping his fingers in front of my face. Earth to Nikki. What do you think? About dinner?

I smiled. It felt thin. That’s fine, I said. But I think I might have a party to go to later, if that’s okay.

Dad rocked back a little. A party? You?

I rolled my eyes. I’m not a total loser, you know. I bent to pick up my gown, still warm from the iron.

Of course you’re not a loser. You just never go to parties.

First time for everything, I guess. If you don’t want me to go . . . I shrugged into the gown, watching myself in the mirror, pretending to be nonchalant, like this was a conversation we had every day.

No, no, that’s fine. It’s great, actually. I’ll tell your grandparents that dinner will have to be short.

I zipped myself into the gown. It felt billowy, like a tent. Definitely not the type of attire I was used to at all. But at least it covered the ridiculous dress I had on underneath. I was only wearing it because Dad insisted that jeans with frayed bottoms and scuffed-up Chucks was not appropriate graduation attire. I’d walked into the mall and pulled the first thing I found off the rack. I figured most of the girls in my class would be looking like supermodels in painted-on designer clothes, so what did it matter what I wore? Besides, I had this bright-blue tent to cover it anyway.

So who will be there? At the party? he asked, moving out of my way so I could sit on my bed and cram my feet into uncomfortable shoes. This whole pomp and circumstance nonsense was so stupid.

I shrugged. Everyone. I don’t know. But I did know. There would probably be a zillion people at the party tonight, and for a change it wouldn’t be at Hollis Mansion. And everyone would be aware of that.

And you’ll be safe?

I pushed my foot into a pump and smoothed the gown over my lap. Dad had stopped asking me if I was safe every ten seconds, but I could see the lines etched across his forehead that hadn’t been there before the Hollis incident. There were so many things hidden between the two of us. It seemed like a chasm that could never be crossed.

I stood, faced him, and used my thumbs to smooth away the lines on his forehead. I promise, I said. Luna is in juvie. Her parents are in Dubai. Dru . . . Doesn’t exist anymore. The words caught in my throat, a brown-and-blue lump that pulsed in my mind. And something else. Something that made me think of endless loneliness.

I’d seen colors with emotions my entire life. Also with numbers and letters. Three was always purple to me. Four, silver. Five, white. The letter M was zebra ice cream swirl. The letter O was wet black like a ripe olive. My name was mostly orange, and the word echo was mustard yellow. The feeling of love was magenta and the feeling of fear was bumpy gray and black, and sometimes—okay, most of the time—I saw the colors before I even realized I was feeling the emotion to go along with them.

When other people suspected someone was lying to them, they might get a strange feeling in their gut. But for me, that strange gut feeling rolled in on a cloud of mint-green mist.

It was almost impossible to explain, and it took a lot of doctors to figure out that I had synesthesia. Which basically meant that my senses combined, and I had a pretty good memory because of it. It also gave me—and I didn’t actually know this until Peyton Hollis was brutally attacked in the parking lot of an abandoned building—great instincts. Only about 4 percent of the population has synesthesia, so nobody I knew understood what it was.

Well, almost nobody. Peyton understood.

My colors had been the same since day one. They didn’t change. They didn’t morph. And they didn’t go away.

But when I thought about Dru, I discovered a new one. That endless lonely feeling. That midnight color. A lost-in-space color. A black-hole hue. After being rocked by it for so many nights in a row, I was finally able to identify it: regret. Not skipped-school-and-now-I’ll-get-yelled-at regret. Not ate-too-much-cake regret.

The kind of regret that will never go away.

The kind of regret that leaves your heart wondering what the hell happened.

The kind of regret that has you sitting alone on your windowsill, a cigarette burning, untouched, all the way to the filter between your fingers, and swearing that you will never have that feeling again. That feeling came close to attachment. Intimacy. Maybe even a little too close to love. Maybe the kind of love that got people killed. Every. Single. Time.

I brushed away the midnight and kissed Dad’s cheek. It’s just an after-grad party. It’ll be fun to say good-bye to everyone.

Translation: it will be fun to get completely wasted and make the aching midnight go away.

Just don’t drink and drive, Dad said, pointing at me sternly. Which almost made me laugh. We both knew he was anything but stern.

I promise. No drama, Dad. You know me.

He studied me, and for a second, I thought he was going to get all mushy-parent-of-the-grad on me. But instead, he jumped, checked his watch. We should go. You’re going to be late as it is. You wouldn’t want to miss the whole thing.

I laughed. It would be kind of perfect if I did, though. Since I missed most of my senior year.

Dad chuckled, but on the inside, I knew he didn’t find it funny. On the inside, I knew he didn’t believe that I would be safe.

On the inside, he would worry that I would end up just as dead as my mother.

2

SOMETIMES I WONDERED how different I would be if Mom hadn’t been murdered. Would I have been one of the giggling idiots sitting two rows behind me, using my cell phone camera to check my makeup every five seconds? Would I have been the dorky super-prep valedictorian, sitting on the stage, my palms sweating around a rolled-up speech? Would I have wanted to be at the podium, instead of swiping at the beads of sweat rolling out from under my tilted cap and wishing the guy at the podium would just stop talking?

Or would I still be the girl swimming in a sea of beige, beige, beige boredom? Bottom-of-the-ocean boredom. Suburban-cookie-cutter-house boredom. Dull-skin boredom. My legs itched.

I looked over to my left. Someone had propped a framed photo in the seat of the first chair of the very front row. I couldn’t see the photo very well from where I was, but I knew who was in it. Peyton Hollis. The girl in first place, always. The girl who was All Things High School. The girl who was Head of Everything. The girl who probably would have been voted Most Likely to Take Over the Whole Fucking World.

The girl who gave it all up in the end. And the only people who knew why were all dead, in jail, on the run . . . or me.

Before the ceremony began, my classmates had gathered around the photo, crying into one another’s shoulders, leaving flowers and teddy bears and little gifts. Someone had draped a poster for Viral Fanfare, Peyton’s underground band, over the back of the chair. There was a mountain of sadness around that chair, and all of it felt like lies to me. I could barely see the chair for the dirty gray fog that hovered over it.

Even Jones had been in the crying crowd. Jones, who had admitted that he only went to Hollis Mansion for the parties, and who seemed to think the family was as royally screwed up as I did. After all, he had repeatedly warned me off Dru. But maybe that was just his hearts-and-flowers magenta talking. Maybe he liked Peyton a hell of a lot more than he liked the thought of me hanging out with Peyton’s brother.

God, can you believe it? the girl next to me whispered, following my gaze toward the chair. I mean, I knew she was gone, but it just seems so much more real now that she’s not here. It’s so sad. She used a manicured finger to wipe the completely dry corner of her eye. Fake.

I didn’t really know her, I said. But of course everyone in the school was suspicious about what my connection with Peyton had really been. They’d all been very well aware of the vigil I’d kept by Peyton’s hospital bedside. They’d all been very well aware of the showdown at Hollis Mansion, even if nobody knew exactly what had happened there. Not knowing never stopped anyone from talking about it, like they’d had front-row seats.

She was amazing, the girl said. She should have been here. Her sister should be the one in the cemetery, after what she did.

I blinked. Not that I didn’t agree, and not that I hadn’t said those same words many times already, but it was harsh to hear it come out of someone else’s mouth. I caught Dad’s eye, up in the third row of bleachers. My grandparents waved at me. Proud. I waved back. At least she’s in jail, I said.

The girl excitedly clutched my wrist. You didn’t hear? Oh, hang on. The principal started giving instructions on how we would come up to get our diplomas, his voice booming compared to the tentative voice of the valedictorian.

No, what? I whispered, but she pretended she didn’t hear me. She wiped her eyes again and sat forward expectantly in her seat as the first row of students got up and made their way to the stage. What?

We’ve got to go, she whispered.

Eventually, our row stood up, and I took my diploma in a haze of spearmint curiosity so strong I felt I was chewing gum. I barely heard Dad’s and my grandparents’ cheers when I shook hands with the principal. I couldn’t smile or feel grateful. I could only move mechanically, wondering what the girl next to me had been talking about, what gossip I hadn’t heard. We somehow managed to get scrambled on the way back to our seats, and when we sat down, the girl was four people away. My chance was gone.

You did it! Dad exclaimed, weaving his way toward me through the crowd when the ceremony was over. He hugged me so hard he knocked my mortarboard off. Which was no big deal, since I was pretty much the only one who hadn’t thrown it into the air; the floor was carpeted with discarded hats. I’m so proud of you, Nikki. So proud. When he pulled away, I could see that his eyes were bloodshot and puffy. It had been a long road for both of us, and no matter what he said out loud, I knew neither of us ever thought we would get here.

Good job, honey, my grandmother said, shoving in for a hug.

Yes, yes, my grandfather added. What’s next for you, Graduate? Where are you going to college?

I smiled thinly at him. Obviously, my dad hadn’t clued them in about anything at all. They still thought college was something I might do. They probably thought I was a great student. Boy, wouldn’t they be surprised?

What’s next is cake, Dad said. And a big plate of pasta to go with it. What do you say, Nik? Ready to celebrate?

Sounds perfect, I said, my voice edging away some of the spearmint. Whatever the unheard gossip about Luna was, I needed to let it go. I needed to take my life back, stop letting the Hollises have it. I just want to say good-bye to someone. I pointed over my shoulder toward the giant mass of people who milled about with cameras and gifts.

Sure, sure, Dad said. We’ll go get the car and meet you out front.

They disappeared, but instead of diving into the crowd, I headed back for the now-empty rows of folding chairs on the other side of the stage, where we had only moments ago been sitting, still high school seniors. Peyton’s chair, which looked so full and loved before the ceremony, just looked abandoned and isolated now, a puddle of wrinkled programs dropped next to it. We had officially all left her behind.

The photo was of Peyton in her heyday. Before the ragged haircut and the neck tattoo. Before her break from her family. She was leaning against a wooden column in a sundress, smiling, her buttery hair snaking down her shoulders in purposeful messy waves. I recognized the beam as part of the gazebo in the backyard of Hollis Mansion. I hadn’t been in that backyard since Detective Martinez literally carried me out