Face Forward #2

Chapter 1

“Truth . . . or dare!”

I tried to sound dramatic and spooky, but all I did was make my friends crack up. I laughed, too, because honestly, it did sound pretty funny. So far, my New Year’s Eve sleepover was completely amazing. We had already painted our nails and made jewelry out of about a zillion glow sticks. Truth or dare was going to take it to the next level. I’d spent the whole morning making a list of dares in my rainbow notebook, the one Mom and Dad had given me for Christmas.

And we were going to stay up until midnight and do the big countdown to the official start of the New Year—my first time ever!

“Okay, okay, seriously.” I tried again. “Truth . . . or—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Savannah interrupted me, holding up her hand. “Me first. I have one!”

And just like that, everybody turned to her. I don’t know how Savannah always manages to get everybody’s attention—and keep it, too.

“Maya,” Savannah said to my best friend, “truth or dare?”

Maya took a deep breath. “Truth.”

I held my breath a little, too. I didn’t want Savannah to ask Maya something super personal or really embarrassing. But Maya was not the bravest. I didn’t think she’d ever chosen “dare.” Not even once.

A little smile flickered on Savannah’s face. “Did you get your period yet?”

Ahhhh, I screamed inside my head. She said it—she said it!

Maya froze. She had the same look on her face as this raccoon we caught eating pizza out of the trash can outside last week: a mix of surprise and horror and alarm, like she sensed DANGER and was ready to run.

But Maya didn’t run. She just shrugged her shoulders and said, “Nope. Did you?”

“I didn’t say ‘truth,’ ” Savannah replied in this satisfied way. “I don’t have to answer anything.”

“Ana Ramirez did.” Grace spoke up. “I saw her with a pad in the bathroom before the break. She just, like, threw it in the trash, like, no big deal. But I do not want to get mine for the fifth-grade campout. Did you know that bears can smell it?”

“Wait. Bears?” I said in alarm.

Maya, though, threw back her head and laughed. “Come on,” she said. “My mom is a nurse at the hospital. I think we’d know if there were all these bear attacks on girls who have their period.”

“I’m not going to risk it,” Grace said. “If I have my period, I am not going.”

“Well, I’m not going to miss it for anything,” Maya announced. “Especially not for something like having my period. If I even have it by then.”

“Hey,” I said, tapping Maya’s arm. “It’s your turn, remember?”

“Right!” she said. Then Maya flashed me a grin, and I just knew what was coming next. “Abby, truth or dare?”

With all that talk about periods and bears, I knew what I had to say. “Dare!” I crossed my fingers for luck. Hopefully, Maya would remember she’s my best friend. Hopefully, she wouldn’t tell me to do something awful.

“I dare youuuu . . . ,” Maya began, “to . . . run outside . . .”

Savannah and Grace let out quiet screams.

“And touch the streetlight on the corner . . .”

More screams. Not so quiet this time.

“In your pajamas . . . with no coat and no shoes!”

Now I wanted to scream, too. Leave it to Maya to come up with such a good dare. And by good, I mean terrible. It had everything. Embarrassment! Who wants to go outside in their pajamas, where anybody could see them? Risk! If Mom caught me, I’d be in the biggest trouble ever. And also, this dare was going to be seriously uncomfortable. My toes were curling up just thinking about how cold the pavement would be.

Then I had a new thought. Maybe Maya had actually picked the perfect dare for me. After all, I’d gotten pretty fast at running since I joined the Run Wild! club last year. I thought I’d hate running more than anything, but I was wrong. Plus, Maya and I had become supergood friends, running together after school every day. I grinned. It was definitely not an accident that her dare for me included running.

“I accept this dare,” I said in my most serious voice. “But first, I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Sixty seconds,” Savannah announced. “Otherwise, it counts as chickening out.”

“Not chickening!” I retorted. A quick detour to my room on the way back from the bathroom wasn’t chickening . . . or cheating.

In my bedroom, I yanked on my bathrobe and pulled my old flamingo slippers out from under the bed. They were too small, but they’d be better than nothing.

When I left my room, all my friends were clustered by the front door, whispering so loud they might as well have been normal-talking.

“Shhh!” I hissed. If they got Mom’s attention . . . or worse, woke up my little brother, Max . . .

Maya’s face scrunched into a frown when she looked at me. “Hold up,” she said. “My dare, my rules. And I said no shoes and no coat.”

Now I was the one with the little smile. “A bathrobe isn’t a coat,” I replied. “And slippers aren’t shoes. Like, you wouldn’t wear them to school, right?”

Well, everybody had an opinion about that. Uh-oh. My sleepover was about to fall apart in the world’s most boring argument about whether slippers were more like shoes or socks. I had to do something . . . anything . . . to save it.

“Okay, fine!” I said, loud enough that everyone stopped talking. “No slippers. But I’m keeping the bathrobe.”

“Okay.” Maya nodded. “I’ll allow it.”

I kicked off my flamingos, unlocked the front door, and stepped outside.

The stars, sparkling like crystal through the cold, seemed so far away. When I shivered, it raced right into my heart and turned into a thrill of excitement . . . or maybe it was fear.

In the daytime, the corner wasn’t far. Just five houses away. But at night?

It looked like a mile.

I shivered again. The longer it took, the worse it got.

Go, I told myself.

And just like that, I was running down the path. It was so weird how the cold ground felt like fire on my bare feet. The grass, short and brown and sharp, wouldn’t have been any better.

The streetlight cast a warm circle, a halo of light, and that was the best/worst part of this dare. Stepping into that circle meant anybody who looked out their window would see me in my jammies. Nightmare!

But it also meant that I was almost done with the dare. And almost back inside my warm, cozy house.

As I touched the freezing metal pole with the tip of my finger, a bright light flooded the street. My head jerked around, and that’s when I saw it: Dad’s car, rumbling down the road.

Ratzit! Dad was almost home from work. I was about to be so busted!

Unless I could race him home . . . and win.

At Run Wild! we had learned all about speed, strength, and endurance. I knew what I needed now: all my speed! I took off running so hard and so fast that I didn’t pay any attention to the way my feet burned. I didn’t even glance behind me to check where Dad’s car was.

Then I was on the path. Then I was on the doorstep.

Then I was inside my house!

Everybody was laughing and shrieking as they crowded in for a hug. My smile was so big, it could’ve cracked my frozen cheeks.

And that’s exactly where Dad found us approximately 4.7 seconds later when he came in from the garage. If he wondered why we were all clustered at the front door, he didn’t say it.

“Happy almost New Year!” Dad announced as he shrugged off his coat. “We’ll be counting down in no time. Meet me in the kitchen—I have a surprise.”

A surprise in the kitchen could only mean one thing: something delicious!

“Something sweet to start the New Year,” Dad said as he hauled two grocery bags full of cupcakes and cookies onto the counter. Sometimes, at the end of his shift, if the bakery had too many baked goods left over, Dad got to buy them at a huuuuuge discount. That was one good thing about his new job as an assistant manager at King Foods.

The only good thing, if I’m being totally honest.

It had been seven months and twelve days since Dad had started his new job—and I still wasn’t used to him working second shift or this messed-up schedule that changed every single week. He went to work in the afternoon, just before I got home from school, and stayed there until way past my bedtime. Sometimes I only got to see him for a few minutes in the morning before I left for school. And when I finally saw him at breakfast, I could never remember all the stuff I wanted to tell him the night before.

But Dad was so relieved when he finally got the job that I didn’t want to complain. Dad said when he’d been there for a year, he’d be eligible for more daytime hours. That’s why I was keeping track of exactly how long he’d been working there—right down to the day.

Mom shuffled into the kitchen, wearing her squashy bathrobe. She definitely had a sixth sense when treats were involved. “How’s the haul?” she asked, peeking into one of the bags.

“Better than usual,” Dad replied. “The store was so dead tonight. I guess most people were out celebrating. But that means . . . more for us!”

I licked my lips as Mom and Dad unpacked the bags. There were chocolate-chocolate cupcakes, and cookies with hot-pink frosting and sprinkles, and even half a cherry pie!

Mom looked at me. “Abby, you’re so flushed,” she said, sounding a little concerned.

I pressed my hands against my face. The cold must have pinked up my cheeks in a big way.

“I’m sure it’s just all the excitement,” Dad said. “It’s not every night we get to welcome a brand-new year!”

I grinned. The New Year was just the start of my excitement. For one thing, there were less than six months left of fifth grade—and elementary school! That meant fifth-grade graduation, fifth-grade awards ceremony, fifth-grade party . . . and fifth-grade camping trip. The entire class and our teachers were going to spend three days in Bear Lake National Park for the annual Eco Campout. Sleeping in tents, cooking outside, watching out for the black bears that gave Bear Lake its name . . . just thinking about it made my stomach somersault, but I couldn’t tell if I was more excited or more nervous. I’d never been away from home for that long.

There was something else big and exciting that was going to happen this year. A giant, amazing secret nobody knew but me—not Maya and Savannah, not Mom and Dad, not even my cousin Zoe, who also just happened to be my best faraway -friend forever.

Last year, Zoe moved all the way to California, which meant that most of the time it was easier than ever to trust her with my secrets. The chance of her accidentally telling somebody at school who knew me was, like, 0 percent. And I got the sense that Zoe didn’t talk to her mom, my aunt Rachel, very much. Except to argue.

But this secret was too big for anybody else to know. Even Zoe.

Just then, Max stumbled into the room, dragging his pillow and blanket on the floor behind him. Oh, great! Just what my sleepover needed.

“Max!” Mom exclaimed. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“Is it New Year?” Max said through a giant yawn. All my friends giggled, but not me. I was too busy trying to message Mom and Dad with my brain. Send him to bed, send him to bed . . .

“Almost,” Dad said as he checked the clock.

Send him to bed, send him to bed, SEND HIM TO BED . . .

“Can I sleep over at the sleepover party?” Max asked, suddenly wide awake. “I’ll get my sleeping bag, please, Abby, please, Abby, please—”

“Absolutely not!” I said fast, before Mom and Dad could say yes. For one thing, it was my party with my friends.

And for another, Max still wet the bed sometimes. The last time we had a mini campout in the backyard, his sleeping bag was soaked right through to the tent.

“Sorry, Max,” Mom said. “You’re not quite old enough for a sleepover party. Maybe in a few years.”

I flashed Mom a grateful smile as Max pouted. Then his face got all hopeful-looking again.

“Can I stay up?” he asked. “Can I stay up for New Year?”

“Sure!” Dad said.

Ratzit!

But Max was so happy, I couldn’t be too mad. I snuck a glance at my friends. They didn’t really seem to care. Even Savannah was too busy picking out her dessert. I saw her staring at the half cherry pie. The crust was crushed on one side, and the berries were oozing out in kind of a yucky way. I could tell that’s what Savannah thought. She looked over at Grace like, What is this grossness? and flashed one of her bestie smiles. Savannah had this special way she could smile at you—like you were the best person in the world, the most fun, the most interesting. Sometimes I wished that I’d get a bestie smile from Savannah—not that I’d ever say that aloud or anything.

Suddenly, Mom gasped. “Two minutes!” she exclaimed. “Where are the party hats?”

“I’ve got the noisemaker,” Dad said, picking Max up and turning him upside down. Max squealed with glee as Dad tossed him around.

“Don’t forget the confetti!” I chimed in, not that anyone heard me over Max shrieking with laughter.

There was a lot of commotion as everybody scrambled to get a shiny hat or sparkly crown. We had a big bowl of paper confetti, too. I’d been tearing up construction paper into itty-bitty pieces for days.

“Grab some,” I said as I held the bowl out to my friends. Savannah hesitated for a half second. Was she about to make fun of it? You never could tell with Savannah.

“Ten!” Dad’s voice boomed out. “Nine! Eight!”

We all started counting down with him. “Seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one! Happy New Year!”

Confetti fell like rainbow snowflakes, landing in our hair, and there was so much shrieking, so much smiling, so much laughing. My favorite part of all, though, was that everyone—my friends and my parents and even Max—was there. Not just there, but happy, and all at the same time, too.

My smile was maybe the biggest it’s ever been, I’m sure of it.

This year was already off to an amazing start!