Chapter 2

After school I leave the building with Luce. Hanging over the gate to the vegetable garden near the science block is Fuller’s rug.

Luce and I both laugh at the wet patch and the shine that makes it look like it’s from the Cullens’ house in Twilight.

“He has a different shirt on,” Luce says.

“Yep. Mission accomplished.”

“I wish we’d planted a camera in there.”

“Next time,” I reply.

We walk along the riverside, the lush trees stretching what feels like miles above my head, keeping the path in the shade.

“What do you think my prank will be?” Luce asks.

“Who knows,” I reply, my mind drifting back to what Rhett said outside math. Things are about to get interesting for me and my friends. I don’t want to worry Luce, because she will totally stress if she thinks that Rhett is going to give us the worst dares. Besides, he’ll likely only give the worst ones to me.

“We’re not doing the dumb stuff, remember. Replacing the photos in Fuller’s office with ones of Taylor Swift, that’s the kind of thing we’ll stick to.”

I cut her a look. “Why does everyone seem to have such a short memory? You do remember how these dares have gone wrong both years?”

Nudging me, she replies, “No one’s forgotten, Marley. We all remember and we’re ready this year. You let Rhett get to you too often, and before you say anything, I know he winds you up.”

“He gets on every single one of my seven trillion nerves.”

She laughs, nudging me. “It’s his superpower. But we have the last three weeks of school coming up, and I’m going to miss you guys so much. Can we try extra hard to ignore Rhett and have the best time? Please?”

As the only one with a bad feeling about this, I start to wonder if I’m just being dramatic. I mean, every school does senior pranks, right? Ours is the first I’ve heard of that really went wrong.

Sighing, I relent and say, “I’ll try to lighten up.”

“Try hard. Like, hard, or you’re going to regret it after graduation. Look, the door to Creepy Arthur’s creepy house is wide-open. What do you think he’s doing?”

I look across to the mountain in the distance, where “Creepy Arthur” lives. The river curls around his property, avoiding it as if it knows there’s something wrong with it. Set on about twenty acres of land, his huge decaying house is both stunning and, as Luce said, creepy.

Arthur is in his sixties and a total loner. No one visits him, except for his grandson, George, once a year, and he only comes into town to get supplies. He rattles around in that house, letting it slowly fall apart around him. He’s had tons of offers on it, from developers to locals wanting to renovate. He always says no…yet continues to do nothing with it.

I’d take the money and run. It’s worth a fortune.

The Wilders have offered him millions, apparently. I’m not sure what it’s worth or why they’d want it, since their house is bigger and, you know, not crumbling. But it could all be a rumor.

Most things around here are.

“Do you think he’s okay?” I ask, straining to see from this distance. But the only thing visible from here is the house. We have no chance of seeing through the door or any of the windows, two of which have been boarded up for the last year.

A couple of times, Arthur has “disappeared.” Last year it was the mailman who let the cops know because he hadn’t collected a package from his porch in two days. But it turned out that he’d just been hiking and fishing down the mountain.

“I’m not going in there, so don’t even suggest it! His house is haunted,” Luce says with a straight face.

I stop dead in my tracks, staring at my science-minded best friend and trying to figure out who’s taken over her body. “Tell me you don’t actually believe that.”

She throws her hands up. “Well, I don’t know, do I? Things have happened there that can’t be explained.”

“Such as?”

“How many people have gone in there and felt that weird vibe? Like something isn’t quite right.”

“That not quite right thing, Luce, is breaking and entering. You let yourself into someone’s house and you start to feel a bit paranoid. Come on, you know it’s not haunted.”

A shudder visibly ripples across her body. “Fine, but you have to admit the house is spooky and Arthur’s weird.”

“I’ll give you that. I’ve only been in there twice, once with George. He told me his grandad doesn’t care about it anymore, thinks he’s only staying to piss the Wilders off for wanting to buy him out. What do you think is going on? I’ve never seen the door left open like that.”

“Pass. He’s probably doing some work outside,” she says, taking her phone out of her pocket at the same time we both get an alert.

Groaning, I open the group message, titled Senior Dares, my heart in my mouth.

It’s time seniors! Creek 9pm. U know what happens if ur not there.

We don’t, in fact, know what will happen, because he hasn’t laid out any forfeits to scare us into following through with the stupid dares. None of us want to find out, though.

“Looks like it’s starting,” Luce says, her tanned skin turning rather pale. She’s now stripped of her earlier confidence and enthusiasm, her dark eyes full to the brim with worry. With a place at Vanderbilt in the fall, she also has a lot to lose.

Why risk your future for some dumbass dare a juvenile delinquent has given you?

This was always coming, and since it’s Monday and we only have three weeks left, it makes sense to kick it off now.

“Do you think any of the pranks Rhett has in mind are also on Fuller’s authorized list?” I ask, laughing.

The sound is hollow, and I wince at how nervous I sound, unease growing in my gut like black mold.

My gut is rarely wrong.

“Not a chance,” she replies, shoving the phone back into her pocket. “Are you going?”

We start walking again, the open door to Arthur’s house forgotten. “I don’t want to…but I kind of do. Do you think he actually has something on us?”

“It’s not like we’ve killed a person, Marley. What could he have?”

She makes a solid point. The worst thing I’ve done is forgotten to reply to messages or call people back. Hardly a crime and not something I think any college would care about.

Still, we look at each other, both thinking the same thing. “We should go…just to observe,” she says.

And that is exactly how people get pulled into the game.

The Wilders have raised the stakes with the pranks, and that’s fine, it’s a laugh, but there is no risk to them, not with all their money. But without risk is it even fun?

Luce and I could’ve been caught in Fuller’s office earlier. It was part of the thrill. I can still feel the rush I got from sneaking in and out.

“Yeah, we’ll observe,” I agree. “Atlas and Jesse will want to go. I think Jesse is hoping for something that he can use to mess with Rhett.”

“Like what?”

“No clue. Maybe he’ll dare us to spray-paint cars. That way we really could turn it around on him.”

“Paint those bunnies on his flashy car. I’d do it with my key,” she adds, laughing and linking her arm through mine, though we’re practically at her house now.

“See you tonight, I guess,” she says, dropping my arm.

“Love ya,” I reply, and walk on.

The sun set a little while ago but it’s not that dark out. The sky sparkles with thousands of stars that stretch as far as I can see; it looks like someone dropped a bag of diamonds on navy silk. Or like Fuller’s rug, post glitter bomb.

It’s so pretty here, but after weeks of unrelenting sun, everything that was green is slowly turning yellow and crusty. The singed grass barely holding in there.

I make a left and walk down the valley to the creek, Arthur’s house looming in the distance. I do a double take and realize that his door is now closed, and that makes me feel a whole lot better about being out here alone.

Arthur Nelson has never done anything wrong, other than hate the Wilder family, and that hardly makes him a bad person, but the mystery surrounding him and his lack of human interaction makes people talk.

Gossip is an occupation in our town.

I don’t know what to believe. He could be a kingpin or a serial killer or a man who just wants to be left alone. Can we really blame him for not being involved in the town? A town he cofounded with Samuel Wilder, Rhett’s grandad, before he was left behind?

I take the shortcut, my calf muscles burning as I carefully walk down the steep incline. Up ahead I can hear muffled voices, like they’re speaking to me through a door. Trees loom over my head, and as I move deeper, they swallow me whole.

The brittle sticks and leaves beneath my feet crunch and snap, announcing my arrival.

There’s a strict No Open Flame warning posted.

Note to self: don’t accept any dares if matches are involved. The whole mountain would go up in smoke.

I leap over the stream that links the creek and river together and dart back into the forest in front of it. The hovering trees watch down over me like giants tracking my path. They’re easily over two hundred feet tall in this part and so dense that the branches look like they’re holding hands. Even during the day, they block out all sunlight, preventing much else besides moss from growing.

Two years ago, Rhett’s older brother dared his classmates Bryany and Elizabeth to camp here overnight. They saw a bear and freaked out, getting lost for an hour before making it out of the woods. There was a search party because they’d managed to make a frantic call to Elizabeth’s dad, who didn’t know where she was, before losing the signal.

I never understood why Rhett’s eldest brother made them do that; it wasn’t a prank on the school, but it was the start of the shift.

The high from putting baby powder in the hand dryers and watching someone getting covered in white was no longer enough.

Rhett and I used to do our own version of parkour in the mountains and woods. We’d be out for hours building dens, jumping to rivers from a higher spot on the mountain each time, and making campfires. So yeah, I understand wanting to take risks and chasing that adrenaline rush you can only get from doing something outside your comfort zone. But why force others to do it?

My stomach clenches in the gnarly grip of anxiety as I move deeper. The trees could be the only other thing in the world out here. I should’ve gone the long way, where I wouldn’t be able to freak myself out.

Just keep going.

Rhett’s games haven’t even started yet, so it’s not like someone’s first dare is going to be scaring the crap out of me.

The woods are doing a good enough job of that.

I force myself to move deeper into the shadows. The thick trees start to ease up ahead, giving each other personal space and allowing those who pass through to breathe.

I walk the trodden path, a shortcut from the outskirts of town to the creek. The Wilders live closest to the creek, so Rhett basically thinks he owns it. But it’s not on their land.

Another few steps and I’m past the dense vegetation. The incline dips sharply and my feet move faster than I intended. I stumble, my arms wheeling, and then I stop at the bottom, the tips of my shoes buried in the muddy sand.

I look up at the sound of laughter. Rhett leaps over the shallow stream, on his way to the creek. He ignores me, other than finding my stumble amusing.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask why he’s walking to the creek from that direction, but he’s likely been off somewhere plotting. There’s a shack in the woods that we all meet at to party in the summer.

I need to remember to look where I’m walking, watch out for things that might fall when I open doors, and check the toilet. All things last year’s seniors did that I don’t want to be victim of.

I let him get ahead and then follow. We’d look weird if anyone could see us, ten feet apart and going in the same direction. I bet I look like one of his admirers. Girls fawn over him; it’s all the money and the pretty face—not the personality.

He looks over his shoulder and laughs for a second time.

My patience evaporates. “What do you want?”

“Nothing.” His smile couldn’t be more fake if he tried. Devious twilight eyes sparkle like the stars above us. There’s nothing pretty about his—they’re all ego and the desire to meddle in other people’s lives.

I grit my teeth to the point where they might snap. He gets under my skin, more so since last year when he accused me of cheating from him on a test. It was settled pretty quickly when the teacher saw that our answers were nothing alike, but it still scared me. Accusations like that have a way of following you around.

That was when I realized just how far he was willing to go to ease his boredom. Before that he mostly ignored me. I get whiplash from his mood changes. Friends to nothing to enemies. I wish he would leave me alone.

“Just keep walking, yeah. I’m sure you’re dying to tell us what pranks you’ve thought up to make your life feel less tragic.”

He grips his heart, turning to face me. I stop walking, not wanting to be anywhere near him. “I’m rich, Marley, and you’re the scholarship queen waiting for handouts to pay your way through college.”

I’ve heard that enough times from him for it to bounce off me now. His words used to cut, but I’m not ashamed to have worked hard for those scholarships.

“I have a scholarship, and you have your mommy and daddy paying your way. What’s the difference, really?”

“Whatever, freak.”

I snort, knowing that I’ve won this round. He resorts to petty name-calling when he’s been outsmarted. I press on, walking past him.

Rhett follows me to the creek, where half the senior class has gathered. I don’t look back or speed up, because I’m not intimidated by him.

Atlas, Jesse, and Luce are already here, sitting on rocks. Luce has her sandals in her hand, feet gently splashing the clear water, while Jesse looks on like she’s lost her mind. He’s never been a fan of our little town on the mountain and doesn’t understand how anyone could find it magical. He’s destined for a big city, preferably one near a racetrack to feed his desire to be the next JimmieJohnson.

Atlas beckons me over with a wave of his hand.

“Hey.” I greet my friends as I sit down and turn to Rhett, who’s now holding court.

“Idiot,” Luce mutters as we watch Rhett call for silence and stand on a rock as if he’s stepping up to a podium.

“I’d love to shove him off that rock,” Jesse mutters.

“Seniors, are we ready to raise some hell?” Rhett shouts, lifting his arms in the air.

There’s a collective cheer, followed by a couple of suggestions. Burn down the school. Put Fuller on Tinder. Steal the cars of the four senior staff and park them in each other’s driveways. I do like the last one.

Rhett points to Leon. “The car thing is sick, dude. As you’re aware, over the past two years I’ve been gathering information. Insurance, if you will. To ensure you all play your parts.”

“That’s not insurance, that’s blackmail,” Jesse mutters, glaring at Rhett as if he could slice him down.

I don’t know what he could possibly have on anyone. We all have our secrets, but enough to force us to participate in dangerous dares? I’m not so sure.

“Why are we all doing this?” I mutter.

But my question is met with silence because we all know why we don’t tell Rhett to get lost.

Henrietta Van Buskirk.

She’s the reason that last year’s seniors didn’t say no to Rhett’s equally dumb brother.

The next two Wilder brothers will also get zero resistance. Then what? The current freshmen get a clean slate. No more Wilders. They’re so lucky.

I was a sophomore myself when Henrietta’s life unraveled. All because she refused to slash the tires on Fuller’s brand-new Jeep.

Everett didn’t care for Henrietta’s lack of participation. It was the first year of the prank hijack, and he wanted to make a mark. Only he didn’t have anything on the straight-A student who kept her head down and never so much as called another person a crappy name.

With no scandal in her life to exploit, he cruelly made up his own tea. Took a couple of rather sketchy pictures of her cello instructor comforting her after a mistake in a recital. The student-teacher relationship rumor spread like wildfire. Despite there being no evidence and them both denying it, her teacher had to take another job somewhere else and she had to leave school early.

So I guess it doesn’t matter what Rhett has on me.

And I guess that’s why we’re here now.

“So without further ado, our first dare is for my favorite group of losers. Marley, Atlas, Lucia, and Jesse. You’re going to sneak into Creepy Arthur’s dilapidated house of horrors and bring me a watch. A gold watch. Chunky, black dials.”

I stare at him while the rest of the senior class turns to us, their eyes wide in both alarm and relief. What?

“How’s that a prank?” Jesse asks.

“I never said anything about pranks, keep up. These are dares,” Rhett replies.

“Whatever.”

We can’t show him that we’re scared. I don’t even allow myself to acknowledge the churning in my stomach or the dampening of my palms.

No, we can do this. Easy. I’m not letting a damn watch derail my college dreams when we can just think of a way to return it later.

“Well,” Rhett says, craning his neck. “What are you waiting for? Time to pay old Arthur a visit.”