Promise Me Something by Sara Kocek Page B

girls. Just change here.”
    “OK…” Olive sighed, dropping her overnight bag next to mine.
    She bent over and took out some cotton shorts and a sweatshirt, while, next to her, Leah pulled off her own shirt, revealing a hot pink bra. When Olive saw it, she turned toward the wall and slid her sweatshirt over the blouse she was wearing. Then she put her arms inside, unbuttoned the shirt underneath, and pulled it out through one of the sleeves of the sweatshirt. I got into my own pajamas while she changed with lightning speed into her shorts.
    “So,” Madison said when we were all settled in our sleeping bags. “This wouldn’t be a sleepover without Truth or Dare.”
    I looked over at Olive, whose face was as blank and colorless as it had been earlier that morning when she’d carried her pitchfork up the front steps into school. I wondered if she was scared. “We don’t have to play,” I told her. “I mean, if you don’t want to.”
    “No, it’s fine.” Olive’s voice sounded strained.
    “That’s the spirit,” said Abby. “Want to go first?”
    “Do I have to?”
    “We won’t bite!”
    “Fine.” She turned slowly toward Madison, who was sitting on her right. “Truth or dare?”
    “Truth,” said Madison.
    Olive sighed. “OK. What was your first impression of me?”
    Madison laughed. “That is so not the kind of question you’re supposed to ask.”
    Two red splotches appeared on Olive’s cheeks.
    “I mean, whatever,” said Madison. “I guess my first impression was that you looked shy.”
    “I am around some people,” said Olive. “Next?”
    Madison turned to Abby. “Truth or Dare?”
    Abby chose dare—she always did—and Madison told her to make out with her pillow. Abby rolled her eyes and did it in a heartbeat. Then it was Leah’s turn. She had to call Drew Tubman’s house and leave a message on his parents’ machine saying that she was watching porn. Ten minutes later, after she and Madison recovered from their fit of hysterical laughing, it was my turn. “Reyna, truth or dare?” asked Leah.
    I chose truth. I was not about to make a prank call.
    “Hmmm.” Leah scrunched up her face. “If someone paid you fifty bucks, would you make out with a girl?”
    “Probably not,” I said.
    Olive looked up. “Why not?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “I totally would,” announced Leah, but nobody paid her any attention.
    “Let me guess.” The expression on Olive’s face was hard to read. “It’s against your religion?”
    “Maybe it is. Don’t take it personally,” I said. The truth was it had nothing to do with my religion. I just wouldn’t want anyone at school to start spreading the rumor that I was gay. It would be impossible to live down, and Levi might lose interest in me. But I wasn’t about to get into an argument with Olive, so I shrugged. “I just wouldn’t want to, OK?”
    She pressed her lips tightly and looked down at her fingernails.
    “Anyway,” said Abby, trying to smooth over the awkwardness. “Should we keep going?”
    “Yeah.” I looked back over at Olive without meeting her eye. “Truth or dare?”
    “Truth.”
    I didn’t know what to ask her. I would have liked to know what she saw in me—why she’d picked me out of the crowd and made me her friend on that day in the cafeteria—but it was another one of those questions you weren’t supposed to ask in Truth or Dare. The game was supposed to be about crushes and boys. Who you’d kissed, who you wanted to kiss—that sort of thing. In the end, I fell back on the classic question, “How far have you gotten?”
    Olive didn’t answer right away. She seemed to be waiting for me to finish the question. Then she said, “…Gotten where?”
    Leah, Abby, and Madison burst out laughing.
    Olive narrowed her eyes. “Do you mean like sexually?”
    “Obviously!” said Leah.
    Olive looked down at her lap. “Does online sex count?”
    The laughing stopped abruptly.
    “Like with a web cam?”