The Dare

Chapter One

There's a ringing in my ears, the voices of the excited teenagers in the hall sound miles away. I feel like my head is stuck underwater, everyone's voices are muffled and their faces blurry. Nothing in my brain or body wills me to be awake. Nothing to be conscious of during this time.

My sister Salem's face comes into my view, snapping me into current events. She smiles at me and combs fingers through her pencil straight blonde hair and eyes the crowd of football boys walking on by.

"Maybe this move wasn't so shabby after all," Salem says to me, nudging my shoulder with hers and wiggling her eyebrows at the boys. I don't say anything and when she looks at me her face gets covered in annoyance. Her voice drops and she faces me sternly. "Stop being so negative, Sage. I'm sick of your shit, so snap out of it before I leave you in the dust." I sigh and fake a smile, I owe her that much after everything I did for this family.

She smiles back at me and loops her arm through mine, pulling me towards the receptionist's office. "Silver lining!" Salem sings and yanks open the door to the office to get our first day schedules at this new high school.

The woman behind the desk is a short and stout older woman, whose long pink press on click loudly on the keyboard. When she sees us come in she breaks out into a grin, dimples appearing in her chubby cheeks. Walking into the office is like walking into a perfume parlor, it smells so strongly my nose and eyes start to burn immediately upon entry.

"Hello! Hello! Oh, I love new faces!" She coos at us and waves us over, Salem practically skips over and I roll my eyes. People who are too nice are pretty annoying, and these two are cotton candy sweet.

"Hi!" Salem all but squealed back, rushing us to her desk where the smell of perfume is somehow even stronger. "We are here for our schedules, it's our first day." I roll my eyes, well duh of course it's our first day.

"Of course let me grab those for you, I have been looking forward to doing this since we were informed that we had new students. Not one, but two! LakeView High hasn't seen a new face in years, nobody comes to this neck of the woods." She opens a filing cabinet and pulls out two sheets of paper, eyeing them carefully as if to check her work.

"This is a good school right?" Salem prods, gripping the straps of her backpack tightly. "I have plans to be a vet, and I need access to good classes to reach my goals." I breathe out a small laugh and avoid looking at my over-ambitious sister and the poor receptionist who's probably not used to forceful people like Salem.

I drown out their excited chatter about big dreams and bold professions, looking over my shoulder through the glass door at all the people scattering to class. All of them laughing, having too loud conversations, living their own lives, already friends with each other. I don't want to go through this process all over again.

Starting school once is scary enough, but even more so when it's Senior year and everyone has established a life in this school. Anxiety creeps into my throat and causes a deep pit in my stomach, I breathe deeply and pull my eyes from the hall; back to the conversation.

"Well if this lovely girl is Salem, then you must be Sage." The receptionist says, smiling at me and handing me my schedule. "I hope you two enjoy your day here, I got you each a guide to help----" As if they could hear our conversation from the busy hall a boy and girl welcome themselves into the office and approach us.

The one I notice first is the female, a short girl who resembles a pixie with short purple-dyed hair and a face full of freckles, who can't be more than 4′11". The boy wears a varsity football jacket, with bleached blonde hair and striking blue eyes; he looks annoyingly cocky.

On reflex, I edge more towards the short pixie girl and hope for the jock to go towards my sister; who already seemed to be thirsting over him. However, even the sweet-looking girl looks like trouble; sweet people don't tend to like me. As Salem says, I am too glum.