The Dare

Everybody in Hartley knew the rule. You don't go up Cordwood Lane after the streetlights come on. Nobody ever really explained the rule to you. It was just one of those things you knew, like you knew the creek was deeper than it looked or you knew not to knock on Mr. Pell's door at Halloween. The rule got handed to you when you were little and you carried it around the rest of your life without ever once checking if it was true. Danny had carried it around for seventeen years. He figured that was long enough. It was Marcus who started it, the way Marcus started most things, sitting on the hood of his brother's car in the parking lot behind the gas station with a bag of chips going stale in his lap. "My cousin did it," Marcus said. "Spent a whole night up there. In the Vesper house." "No he didn't," said Bree. "He did. He told me." "Your cousin also told you he met a guy who juggled chainsaws in the army." Marcus waved that off like it was a separate issue, which to Marcus it was. "Point is, nothing happened to him. He sat in that house all night and walked out in the morning and the only thing wrong with him was he was tired. So the whole rule is fake. It's a fake rule grown-ups made up so we wouldn't go fall through the floor in some old wreck and break our legs." Danny didn't say anything. He was looking up the hill, where Cordwood Lane peeled off the main road and climbed into the dark line of trees. You couldn't see the Vesper house from the gas station. You could only see where the trees got thicker, the place the house would be hiding behind if you went up far enough to find it. The streetlight above the gas station buzzed and flickered on. It always came on first; it was the start of the rule, every single night, like the town itself was clearing its throat. "I'll do it," Danny said. He hadn't planned to say it. The words just walked out of him, the way the rule had once walked into him, and once they were out he couldn't think of a single way to take them back without looking like exactly the kind of kid who believed in fake rules. Marcus grinned so wide it was almost frightening on its own. Bree didn't grin. Bree was looking at Danny the way you look at somebody who's stepped off a curb without checking, that half-second where you're not sure yet if a car is coming. "You don't have to," she said quietly. "It's a fake rule," Danny said. "Marcus said so." "Marcus says a lot of things." But it was already done. That was the thing about a dare in Hartley — once it was in the air it had its own weight, and you could feel it settle on you, heavy and certain. They worked out the rules of it right there on the car hood. One night. Sundown to sunup. Danny would go in alone, the others would wait at the bottom of the lane, and he'd text every hour so they knew he was okay. If he didn't text, they'd come up. "Tomorrow," Marcus said. "Tomorrow night." Danny nodded. He kept looking up the hill while the others argued about snacks and whose phone had the best flashlight, and the trees on Cordwood Lane stood there not moving in the windless evening, and Danny had the strange thick feeling that they were standing still on purpose. That they were the kind of still a thing goes when it's listening. He told himself that was stupid. He told himself it was a fake rule and an empty house and one boring night, and in the morning he'd be tired and famous and the whole thing would be over. He believed about half of that. The trees, up the hill, kept listening.