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“Am not.” I folded my arms across my chest and looked up at my parent’s bedroom window. Tiffany was going to be in so much trouble. Mommy never got mad at Tiffany. Not like she did me. For this, she would. Finally.
“Do you dare me?” My sister held out her arms for balance. She pretended she was walking a tightrope the way we did when our bedroom floor turned into lava. “Come on, you big baby,” she laughed. “Jump with me.”
I shook my head. “Mommy will be mad.”
“Dare me then.”
“Fine,” I said. “I double-dare you.”
Her eyes shifted. “If I do it, what will you give me?”
I thought about it. Tiffany had so much. She was a good girl, mommy said. Not like me. “My donut. I’ll save half for you.”
I could see the wheels turning in her mind. We were waiting for Daddy to wake up. If we were good girls and watched cartoons so mommy and daddy could get extra sleep, Daddy promised he’d take us for donuts. Mommy didn’t like him getting us all sugared up. But sometimes Daddy won.
“The whole thing,” Tiffany said. She expected me to say yes, I could see it in her eyes. That was the thing about my sister. She had a way of making you do things.
It would make mommy happy if I wasn’t all sugared up. “Okay,” I relented. She smiled like she was in on a secret I wasn’t privy to. And then she jumped. I waited for her to come up. I watched the water. I stood on the side looking in. It took a long time. And then she was asleep forever.
“Get up, sleeping beauty,” the male voice orders. I wasn’t sleeping which is how I see it’s Mark standing over the trunk. I’m exactly what you’d call surprised. I curl into myself. “She’s naked,” he says. “Why is she naked?”
“I didn’t do it,” Adam confesses, holding his palms up. “She’s pretty hammered. Just started dropping her clothes all over the place.”
“You.” I blink rapidly peering at Adam. “You did this?”
“Wonderful,” Mark says. “Now Beth really is going to kill me.”
Adam shrugs. Mark sighs. They both stare at me in my birthday suit. “You know she hates it when I bring work home.”
“Tom should be on his way.”
“Where are we?” I ask. Make a note of your surroundings. My eyes feel like they’re matted shut. It’s dark out. My mouth is dry. I feel like I’ve bathed in my own saliva. My head feels like someone has it in their fist and they’re squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing. It doesn’t hurt. But there’s pressure. So much pressure. “I need water.”
“Shut up,” they say in unison.
The two of them chat amongst themselves. I’m not the praying kind, exactly, but I say a silent wish that the video uploaded to Instalook. With my luck, it’ll probably get flagged on account of me being topless.
“Come on,” Mark says. “Let’s get you covered, before my wife kills me.”
Adam lifts me from the trunk.
“Am I going to die?” Obviously. The trunk is about as far from first class as it gets. They don’t put you there without reason. You have to earn it.
“If you don’t shut up,” they say, again in unison. Mark finishes. “You might.”
Fuck. I reach for the phone. My fingers brush it, but as I’m lifted, they’re forced to let go. It’s like one of those claw games where you try to win stuffed animals. It just slipped right through my fingertips.
I try to make a break and turn back for it. It’s no use. Adam’s grip tightens around my forearm. They’ve closed the trunk.
“I need to get back in there,” I tell them. “I forgot something.”
“Your shoelaces?” Mark laughs.
I’m not wearing shoes.
It’s a humid, cloudy, moonless night. Which is better than the alternative, on account of my nakedness. The further we get up the walk, the more I recognize where we are. Beth’s lake house. I’ve seen the photos on Instalook.
Inside, Mark tosses a robe in my direction. “Beth will be down soon.”
