Truth or Dare Read online

  Truth Or Dare

  By

  Peg Cochran

  Copyright © 2012

  Cover design and illustration by Julie R. Tyler

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Truth or Dare: The Rules

  1. You must choose either truth or dare when it is your turn.

  2. I decide whose turn it is.

  3. If you choose TRUTH, you must absolutely, positively tell the truth no matter what. No exceptions. If you don’t tell the truth, I will KNOW, and you will never play with us again.

  4. If you choose DARE, you must absolutely, positively do what I tell you. No exceptions. If you don’t, you will never play with us again.

  5. I rule the game. Always. No exceptions.

  Chapter 1

  "Truth or dare?" Pamela Miller stared straight at Rivka.

  Rivka tried to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible. She'd never been to Pamela Miller's house before. THE Pamela Miller of Miller High School, Miller Theater, Miller Stadium and Miller Library. And she was afraid that if she didn't do everything exactly right, she would never be invited again.

  She tucked her legs to one side and leaned against Pamela's extravagant four poster bed. She thought she would let someone else go first, but then Pamela pointed straight at her and said "truth or dare?" again.

  Pamela turned toward the full length mirror. "Get me out of this thing—it's hideous." She tugged at her dress.

  "Wait, let me help you. You're going to rip it." Mary pushed off from the wall where she'd been leaning.

  "I don't care. It's horrible. I don't know why that stupid saleswoman suggested it."

  Mary eased the dress over Pamela's head, placed it carefully on the hanger and replaced the protective plastic bag.

  "I think it's pretty." Deirdre lounged against a nest of lacy pillows on the bed, her dark hair spread out like a fan. She had dumped a handful of pretzel sticks onto her stomach, and was nibbling them one by one, taking tiny, bird-like bites.

  "You would. It's not. It's hideous." Pamela insisted. She looked around the room, first at Mary, then Deirdre, then Rivka. "Okay, truth or dare. Come on, someone."

  Pamela stood with her hands on her hips in a pink thong and nothing else. Rivka tried not to look. She flushed with embarrassment getting changed in gym class. Maybe if she looked like Pamela, with smooth, golden skin, she wouldn't mind. She plucked at a loose thread on her sweater and watched as Pamela pulled another dress over her head.

  "Not bad." Pamela circled in front of the mirror in a midnight blue strapless sheath that clung as if it were wet. "I rather like this one, what do you think?" She looked straight at Rivka.

  "It's…it's nice," Rivka stammered. Her own mother wouldn't let her wear something like that in a million years. "But, bubeleh," she would say, "you don't want to grow up too fast, do you?"

  Pamela pirouetted before the mirror again, then spun around to face Rivka. “Truth or dare.” She pointed a long finger, its nail bitten to the quick, in Rivka’s direction.

  “Me?” Rivka pressed back into the layers of blue silk bedding trying her hardest to disappear.

  “Come on. Pick one or the other,” Pamela snapped her fingers at Rivka. “It will be fun.”

  Rivka wound the thread from her sweater around and around her finger. She felt her heart thumping hard against her chest.

  “Oh, leave her alone, Pamela,” Mary said. “It’s obvious she doesn’t want to play.”

  “No!” Rivka protested. She didn’t want them to think she was some kind of loser. Pamela would never ask her to hang out again. “I do. I just don’t know how.”

  “It’s simple.” Pamela yanked down the zipper on the sheath and stepped out of it, leaving a puddle of navy blue silk in the middle of the carpet. She pulled a t-shirt over her head.

  “It’s like this,” Deirdre interrupted. “We ask you a question and you either answer the question or accept a dare. Stuff like who’s your favorite teacher.” Deirdre stared dreamily into space. “Mine’s Mr. Spitz. I’d do him in a heartbeat.”

  Pamela snorted. She took a pack of cigarettes from her dressing table and shook one out. She tapped it against the pack then struck a match and lit it. “So you’re game then?” She arched a carefully plucked eyebrow at Rivka.

  “Sure.”

  “Leave her alone. Ask me instead.” Mary picked up the navy dress and smoothed out the wrinkles before putting it on a hanger.

  “No,” Pamela tapped her cigarette against the side of the ash tray in a rat-a-tat beat. “I want Rivka to answer.”

  Mary shrugged and crossed to the window. She pushed aside three layers of curtains and threw it open. “Your mother will have a fit if she catches you smoking in here.”

  Pamela jabbed her cigarette out. “Ask me if I give a damn.” She paced back and forth in front of Rivka.

  They were all looking at her. Rivka devoutly wished she were at home in her own room doing her homework where her mother expected her to be.

  Even though the window yawned wide open, the breeze barely ruffled the silk curtains. Rivka felt a drop of sweat make its way down her spine.

  “It has to be the perfect question.” Pamela shook another cigarette from the pack and lit it, staring defiantly at Mary. The match flared up for a second before dying out, and the sharp smell of sulfur drifted on the air. Pamela inhaled deeply and let the first stream of smoke trickle out her nose.

  “You have to answer with the truth because we’ll know if you’re lying. And if you are, you’ll never, ever, play with us again.” Pamela stopped in front of Rivka.

  Rivka looked up slowly. Pamela towered over her, her long, bare legs inches from Rivka’s nose. Rivka could see a tiny, sickle-shaped scar on Pamela’s left knee, and she stared at it, trying to beat down her panic. Pamela moved closer, and Rivka backed further into the bed clothes.

  Finally, Pamela spun on her heel and began pacing again.

  “I’ve got it!” She stopped abruptly. “The perfect question.”

  Rivka continued to wind the loose thread from her sweater around and around her finger as she waited.

  “Tell us,” Pamela drawled slowly. She paused for a long moment, and Rivka felt the blood pounding in her head as she waited. “What do you hate absolutely most about yourself?

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” Pamela prodded Rivka with her foot. “What do you hate absolutely most about yourself?”

  Pamela stared at her, waiting. Everything depended on what she said next. Everything. For three years, ever since they’d moved out of New York City to the suburbs, she had been labeled as “the girl who didn’t fit in.” And now she was actually hanging out at Pamela Miller’s house. The Pamela Miller.

  She started to open her mouth, but then closed it. It didn't matter what she answered. She would never fit in. The absolute certainty of it hit her in the chest like a blow.

  She jerked on the thread, and it came loose. Rivka ran her finger along the scar of broken stitches. It wasn’t fair that her mother had an accent even if she was smart and well-respected at the lab where she did research. It wasn’t fair that she had to spend Friday evenings with her parents and her Bubbeh and Zayde celebrating the Shabat instead of being at the game like everyone else. Just because they were too

  old-fashioned to let go of the old ways.

  “Well? I’m waiting.” Pamela took a nail file from the top of her antique dressing table. White rings from soda cans scarred the top. “And it had better be the truth. We’ll know if it’s not, won’t we?” She pointed the nail file at Rivka. “So no good making up something stupid to put us off with.”


  “No, no.” Rivka shook her head. “What do I hate most about myself?”

  What could she say? She hated absolutely everything about herself.

  “Well? Are you going to answer?” Pamela threw herself across the end of the bed so that her head hung right near Rivka’s. “Otherwise, you realize it will be ‘dare’ instead.” She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms over head.

  Years later Rivka couldn’t have said where the answer came from. It burst out of her before she knew what she was going to say. It spewed forth like pus squeezed from an infected pimple.

  “My name. The thing I hate most about myself is my name.”

  Pamela clapped her hands and let out a laugh. “That’s the truth. I would hate being called something weird like Rivka.” She jumped to her feet. “What does it mean?”

  Rivka shrugged. “Rebecca, I think.”

  “Rebecca?” Pamela plopped down cross-legged next to Rivka. She sat for a minute with her chin in her hand.

  “We’ll call you Becky then.”

  And she smiled.

  Rivka Polsky floated down the Miller's long, winding drive feeling excited, nervous and a bit like she wanted to throw up. The afternoon had been exhilarating and scary. She tried whispering her new name out loud.

  "Becky."

  She looked around quickly. Mary was behind her, and Rivka blushed. Hopefully Mary hadn't heard. What a jerk she was. But Pamela was a genius.

  Becky.

  Why hadn't she thought of it before? How could she ever expect to fit in with a stupid name like Rivka. A small shadow crossed Rivka's face. What would her parents think? She shrugged. They would probably still insist on calling her Rivka. Certainly she couldn't imagine Bubbeh and Zayde calling her anything else. The thought that Pamela might accidentally hear them calling her bubele or shaineh maidel made her feel like puking all over again.

  Mary saw Rivka half a block ahead of her turning onto Miller Lane. She dawdled a bit, not wanting to catch up with her. She had the feeling that Rivka was going to be another one of Pamela’s victims, like Sue Moltisante last summer and Debbie Peterson the one before. It would be like getting friendly with a chicken you knew was about to be beheaded, cooked and served to you for dinner.

  She, Pamela and Deirdre had been a threesome for as long as Mary remembered. People called them “The Miller Lane Girls” because Mary lived at one end of Miller Lane and Deirdre the other, in matching split levels that had been built on the former grounds of Miller House. Pamela, of course, lived in the big house itself, down a private lane at the end of the street. Wherever she went people would whisper, “She’s one of those Millers”. As far as Mary could tell, being a Miller was the most important thing in Pamela's life.

  Mary had no illusions about their friendship. Pamela had chosen each of them for a reason—Mary, because her family was more dysfunctional than Pamela’s own and because she was bold and didn’t put up with any shit, and Deirdre because she could be so dumb it made them all laugh. But the only person Pamela really cared about was Pamela.

  A short gust of wind caught Mary’s skirt and swirled it around her thighs. She shifted her backpack to her right arm and held her skirt down with her left hand. She’d noticed Pamela looking at it and suspected that Pamela remembered she had worn the same thing yesterday. It wasn’t her fault her mother’s stays in the psycho ward had burned through all their money.

  That’s okay, she thought, as she pushed open the back door to her house. She’d show them. She'd go to college, get a great job and eventually have more money than anyone.

  And then she would shove it up Pamela’s perfect little ass.

  Chapter 2

  When Deirdre got home her mother had gone up to bed with a migraine. Deirdre stood outside the closed bedroom door and listened. She knew better than to knock. Her mother would be stretched out on top of the bedspread, a cloth on her forehead and an extra-large martini within easy reach on the nightstand. She claimed it was the only thing that helped her headaches.

  Deirdre's mother got a migraine every time her father called to say he had to work late and to not wait up for him—which was more often than not these days.

  Deirdre wandered back downstairs to the kitchen. There would be a twenty dollar bill on the counter for a pizza like always. She picked up the phone and dialed Pete’s Pizza Parlor. She knew the number by heart.

  The house was quiet. Deirdre wondered what it would be like to have a brother or sister. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so lonely all the time. Some days the feeling never went away—even when she was with other people. A pet might have been nice too, but her mother was afraid of what a dog or cat might do to the acres of off-white carpeting that covered all the floors.

  Deirdre stood in the hall, listening. A car came down the street, and for a moment the headlights shone through the tiny, diamond-shaped windows at the top of their front door. She pushed the curtain on the front window aside a few inches and peeked out. It was Mr. George on his way home from work. She watched as he pulled into the drive and then walked up the front path to his door. The door opened before he rang the bell, and he disappeared inside. Deirdre let the curtain fall back into place.

  She wandered over to the bar in the dining room. Her mother had left the top off the gin bottle. Deirdre held it up to her nose and sniffed. She made a face. It smelled gross. She screwed the cap on and put the bottle back in line with the others. There was an open bottle of red wine, and Deirdre picked that up. She tilted it over the pale carpeting. For a minute she was tempted to see red spreading like a blood stain across the white carpet. In the end, she changed her mind and put the bottle back down.

  The doorbell rang. The delivery boy was new—she’d never seen him before. He had shaggy blond hair and a chip in his front tooth that was kind of cute. He set the pizza box on the table in the foyer and then stood there.

  Deirdre turned around and walked into the living room, and he followed her as she knew he would. She unbuttoned her blouse as she walked so that when she turned around to face him, he could see her bare breasts.

  She hadn’t necessarily wanted to have sex with him. She just wanted someone to hold her and touch her and pay attention to her, and sex seemed like one way to make that happen.

  Afterwards he lit a cigarette and handed it to her. “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You look older.”

  “Really?”

  She carried the pizza box over to the sofa, and they sat cross-legged on the floor scarfing down the pieces.

  He threw the crust from his last piece into the box and got up. He held his boxers out in front of him and stepped into them with his right leg, and then, hopping slightly, with his left.

  Deirdre watched him silently.

  He pulled on his jeans, and yanked a t-shirt with "Pete's Pizza" written on it over his head. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Sure.” Deirdre stood up and gathered together the pizza box and dirty napkins.

  “Okay.” He stood uncertainly with one hand on the door knob. “Bye, I guess.”

  Deirdre stared out the front window and watched as his van backed down their driveway. The lights were on at the George's house across the street, and she saw the whole family gathered around the dining table like in an old sitcom rerun. She thought it was bizarre.

  On the other hand, there was something about it that seemed kind of nice.

  Pamela rolled over in bed and pulled her knees up to her chest. She'd had the dream again—the one where everyone finds out about her, and they're standing around laughing and pointing. She closed her eyes and waited. A couple of minutes later she rolled to the other side and stuck one foot out from under her down comforter. And waited.

  Her stomach growled, a long, drawn-out sound that rumbled beneath her ribs.

  This was ridiculous. She would never get back to sleep. At dinner she had pushed her half-full plate away for the maid to clear. She knew it annoyed her mother when
she did that.

  And now she was hungry.

  She tried to fall asleep one more time, but when that failed, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and got up.

  She grabbed an old terry cloth robe from her closet and wrapped it around her snugly. There would be a pint of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Chunk Fudge in the freezer—her father’s favorite. The staff made sure to always keep a container on hand. He wouldn’t mind if she helped herself.

  Pamela tiptoed down the darkened stairs to the kitchen. The security lights trained on the house illuminated the room with a ghostly glow. Pamela opened a cupboard, selected a bowl and walked over to the refrigerator. She yanked open the freezer door. There were boxes of phyllo dough and miniature tart shells, a jar of fish bouillon and one of demi-glace. She shoved them aside and finally found the container of Ben & Jerry’s. She filled her bowl with two scoops, and added a swirl of whipped cream from the container in the fridge. She looked at the bowl of ice cream, hesitated, then shrugged. She could always stick her finger down her throat and throw it up later.

  The cold, silky smoothness of the ice cream soothed her, and she felt herself getting sleepy already. She walked into the hall and was surprised to see a crack of light around the door to her father's study. She crept a little closer. Maybe she would bring him a bowl of ice cream, too.

  The sound of voices stopped her. Her mother was in there with him. That was odd. They almost never occupied the same space at the same time except for dinner and then they sat so far apart at either end of the long, mahogany table that they might have been in different zip codes.

  Their voices were raised, but it didn't sound as if they were arguing. Pamela crept a little closer. She heard the words "letter" and something about a meeting. She leaned her ear toward the door. This time she heard her own name and something else. Something that made her blood freeze colder than the ice cream in her bowl.

  Pamela ducked into the coat closet by the front door and wiggled into a spot amidst the umbrellas and winter boots. She wrapped her arms around her knees and leaned against the wall. Her father's rain coat draped over her face, and she inhaled the familiar scent of his after shave.