Truth or Dare . . (11 page)

Abby held her breath as Jake's eyes flicked over the screen of her phone. One look at his face told her she was right. But then he shrugged as he handed the phone back to her.

“There's no proof that this message is from Sara,” Jake said. “I don't even recognize the number it came from.”

“But who—,” Abby began.

“Don't get me wrong,” Jake continued. “It's terrible that you're getting messages like this. I just don't believe that they're from Sara.”

Abby looked down at the screen so Jake wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. At last, she read the message for herself.

DO YOU DARE GO TO THE DANCE WITH JAKE? HERE'S THE TRUTH: IF YOU GO TO THE DANCE WITH HIM, YOU WILL BE SO SORRY.

“I mean, whoever is sending these messages is just a bully,” Jake said. “Don't give in. Come back to the dance with me, Abby. Or we could get out of here altogether—go get some pizza or something—just you and me, and forget all about what we saw in there.”

As if he could sense Abby's hesitation, Jake pressed on. “Listen. I can tell you're convinced that Sara's ghost is behind those messages,” he said in a rush. “So make her prove it. Write back and ask for
proof
—something that only Sara could tell you.”

“Fine.” Abby sighed. Her fingers fluttered across the
keypad as she typed,
IS THIS REALLY SARA? PROVE IT!
Then, before she could lose her nerve, she hit send.

Abby and Jake were quiet for a moment as they waited for a response. Seconds stretched into minutes until Jake suddenly laughed so loudly that Abby jumped.

“See?” he said joyfully. “It was just a prank. Whoever was sending those messages has nothing to say now! So how about it, Abby? Want to go—”

BZZZZZ!

The buzzing of Abby's phone silenced Jake and wiped the grin from his face. “Well?” he asked, with just the hint of a tremor in his voice. “What does it say?”

Abby glanced at the screen as her face filled with confusion. “I don't understand what this means,” she said, shaking her head. She handed the phone to Jake so he could see for himself. “It's just numbers—a seven, a four, and a two.”

The phone slipped from Jake's hands, clattering loudly on the linoleum floor. His face was like a mask, empty of all emotion except for terror.

“What is it?” Abby asked in a panic. “What's wrong?”

“It's
Sara!
” he gasped.

“Jake?” Abby asked urgently. “Jake! What does that mean?”

But Jake just stared at her with wide, scared eyes.

“Jake!” she cried again, grabbing his arm. “Tell me what it means!”

Abby's touch seemed to snap Jake out of his daze. He opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. “I can't—,” he began. “It's not possible—”

“What's going on?” Abby begged.

Jake closed his eyes as he sighed heavily. “It was our secret,” he said. His voice was halting, unsure. “Sara and I had this secret code. Every night before I went to bed, I'd send her an e-mail that said, ‘XOXO 24/7.' And when I woke up in the morning, I always had an e-mail waiting
from her that said, ‘7-4-2, OXOX, a mirror of my message.' After a while, she started texting me the number 7-4-2 during the day, after classes, on the weekends—you know, whenever. It was her way of telling me that she—that she was thinking about me. And no one in the world knew what it meant, except for the two of us. I never told anyone except for you, right now.”

Abby sucked in her breath sharply. This, more than anything else that had happened, confirmed her deepest fears.

“Listen,” Abby said slowly. “Don't freak out. But I have an idea.”

“What is it?” asked Jake.

“You asked for proof—and you got it,” Abby continued. “So let's take this to the next level.”

Abby bent down to the floor and picked up her phone. She started typing a text message as Jake stared over her shoulder.

SARA, JAKE IS HERE. HE MISSES YOU. CAN HE SEE YOU?

“Abby, wait—,” Jake began.

But it was too late. Abby had already pressed send.

“Why did you do that?” Jake exclaimed. “What were you thinking?”

“Jake, this has to end,” Abby said. “I can't have Sara's spirit
haunting
me like this. And it doesn't matter if you stop liking me—she'll just do it to the next girl you like. And the next, and the next, and the next.”

Jake shook his head. “I don't want to see her, Abby.”

“She needs to move on,” Abby replied. “And I think she needs your help to do it.”

“But I already said good-bye to Sara—at her funeral, and every day for the last year,” Jake said. “I don't want to say good-bye again.”

Abby opened her mouth to reply when—

BZZZZ.

Abby read the incoming text without saying a word. Then she held the screen up to Jake so he could read it too.

I'M @ ST. RAYMOND'S CEMETERY. COME SEE ME IF YOU DARE!

Jake and Abby exchanged a glance. They were both familiar with St. Raymond's Cemetery. It was where Sara had been buried nearly a year ago.

“Come on, Jake,” Abby said gently. “Let's go.”

“Okay,” Jake said at last. “I'll come with you. But only because it's time to put an end to this—for your sake and mine.”

Abby stared at Jake's face for a moment, and the way the light had gone out of his eyes. He looked tired and angry. “What?” she asked. “You don't believe it's Sara anymore?”

“No,” Jake said firmly. “And I can't believe you do either. There's no such thing as
ghosts
.”

“But—,” Abby began.

“Here's the other reason,” Jake interrupted her. He tapped the screen of Abby's phone. “This doesn't even
sound
like Sara. She really was a sweet and wonderful person. She'd never say anything like that. . . . ‘Come see me if you dare.'” Jake sighed. “If it was really Sara, she wouldn't have to dare me. She'd know that I would be there in a heartbeat.”

“Right,” Abby said awkwardly, feeling a flush of embarrassment for liking Jake when it was so painfully clear now that his heart belonged to someone else: a dead girl. “Let's get this over with.”

Abby and Jake didn't speak as they walked down the
long hallway toward the door and stepped into the crisp, clear autumn night.

Finally Jake's voice interrupted the silence. “Abby?” he said. “I want to—I want to tell you that I'm sorry.”

“For what?” Abby asked.

Jake waved his hand vaguely. “For all this,” he replied. “For everything. This is not exactly what I had in mind when I asked you to the dance.”

“Me neither,” Abby said. And then, to her surprise, they both laughed.

“I really like you, Abby,” Jake said shyly.

In the moonlight, Jake smiled at her, and Abby's heart skipped a beat, the way it always did when he looked at her. But then, slowly, his lips fell into the same sad expression that had grown so familiar to her over the last year.

This time there was something else, too: tension in his muscles and a hint of fear in his eyes as they looked past Abby.

And in that moment, she realized where they were: just steps away from the marble archway of St. Raymond's Cemetery. She shivered as the hair on the back of her neck rose, but she forced herself to look beyond
the entrance, where the tombstones stood in long, silent rows, illuminated by the pale moonlight. The close-cut grass; the stone-paved paths; the carefully-carved grave markers; all of it seemed so dark and lonely on this cold, starless night. But what Abby really hated about graveyards was the flowers. They seemed so out of place with their gaudy colors and sweet scents—especially when it was just a matter of time before they, too, died, their petals falling like tears.

Of course, worst of all were the forgotten graves, where no one bothered to leave anything.

Abby inhaled sharply.
All right. Time to go in
, she thought. She turned to Jake. “Are you ready?” she asked.

Jake nodded in reply.

Abby took a deep breath, and together they stepped into the cemetery. For a few moments, they walked in silence. Then Abby said, “Jake? I don't—I don't remember where Sara's grave is.”

“It's near the back,” he said. “By the border of the nature preserve.”

“Oh,” was all Abby said. But she thought,
Of course it is. And my house is right on the other side. How easy for Sara to—No. I won't go there. I can't.

A cool breeze kicked up, ruffling Abby's hair and sending chills down her spine. She pulled her jacket tighter around her, but the cold creeping through her body wasn't just from the night air. As they approached the area near Sara's grave, every muscle in her body resisted, and her steps grew heavy, leaden. She wanted to run, out of the cemetery, back to the school, anywhere away from this place of deathly stillness.

But Abby knew that she had come too far to turn back now. And, of course, there was Jake. He needed her. She wouldn't let him down.

No matter how afraid she was.

She forced herself to keep walking, one step after another, remembering the feel of Jake's hand in hers back at the gym, the way her own hand had felt warmer from his touch. In this dark, quiet graveyard, that memory told her something essential: that she and Jake were alive. It seemed a silly thing to focus on, but it was exactly what Abby needed to take those terrifying steps.

Suddenly Jake stopped. He stiffened. “You—do you see that?” he asked. “Abby, please tell me you see that.”

Abby's heart started pounding as she followed Jake's gaze to a gravestone that was as white as a pearl, with a
single rose carved into its front. But it wasn't the stone that had captured Jake's attention; it was the pale hand resting atop it. A hand that was connected to a slender arm, one that belonged to a girl.

A girl with gleaming red hair—a bright spot of color in the dark and dreary cemetery.

Is it Sara? Is it Sara?
Abby was only vaguely aware of Jake's hand gripping hers tightly.

Abby tried to remember how to talk, how to breathe, but those ordinary abilities seemed lost to her as the girl turned to face them, standing in a beam of moonlight. And Abby knew, all of a sudden, with brilliant clarity:

It wasn't Sara.

The realization hit Jake at the same moment; Abby could tell from the way he sighed and from the way his shoulders fell, the tension in them replaced by a great relief.

The resemblance was uncanny, though. The girl had Sara's long red hair, and her creamy skin, and even her glowing green eyes. But her nose was narrower
and her chin pointier; all around, the girl seemed somehow sharper and more angular.

And far more alive. That was certain.

Jake spoke first. “Who are you?” he asked, and his voice was harsh. Angry.

“My name is Samantha,” she said in a clipped English accent. “Hello.”

“Hello?” Jake asked. “Hello? You're going to have to do better than ‘hello.' Because you have a
lot
of explaining to do.”

Abby placed her hand gently on Jake's arm. Then she turned to face the stranger. “Who are you?” she asked. “I mean, really—who
are
you?”

Samantha sighed. “I'm Sara's cousin,” she replied. “I live in London with my mum. But she's on special assignment for her work, traveling through Africa, so I've come to live with my aunt Stacy and uncle Steven for six weeks.”

“Sara's parents?” asked Abby. Next to her, Jake nodded.

“I was so excited,” Samantha said. “I'd never been to America before. I was going to go to a new school and make new friends and everything. And Mum told me that Aunt Stacy and Uncle Steven couldn't wait for
me to arrive. They hadn't seen me in years and their house had been too quiet since . . .”