I Dare You

  by Steve Brezenoff illustrated by Phillip Hilliker

  Librarian Reviewer

  Marci Peschke

  Reading Consultant

  Elizabeth Stedem

  Raintree is an imprint of Capstone Global Library Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales having its registered office at 7 Pilgrim

  Street, London, EC4V 6LB – Registered company number: 6695582

  “Raintree” is a registered trademark of Pearson Education Limited,

  under licence to Capstone Global Library Limited

  Text © Stone Arch Books, 2009

  First published in United Kingdom by Capstone Global Library in 2010

  The moral rights of the proprietor have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS (www.cla.co.uk).Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission should be addressed to the publisher.

  Edited in the UK by Laura Knowles

  Art Director: Heather Kindseth

  Graphic Designer: Kay Fraser

  Originated by Capstone Global Library Ltd

  Printed and bound in China by CTPS

  Photo Credits

  Stone Arch Books/Kay Fraser, all

  ISBN 978 1 406215 79 3 (hardback)

  14 13 12 11 10

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978 1 406215 99 1 (paperback)

  14 13 12 11 10

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978 1 406254 72 3 (ebook)

  14 13 12 11 10

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Brezenoff, Steven.

  I dare you. — (School mysteries)

  813.6-dc22

  A full catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  How I Met Tad and the Two Zombies

  Chapter 2

  The Pike Street Mansion

  Chapter 3

  The Locked Room Dare

  Chapter 4

  Poison?

  Chapter 5

  The First Clue

  Chapter 6

  An Heir

  Chapter 7

  Shadowing

  Chapter 8

  Debrief

  Chapter 9

  Stop the Press!

  Chapter 10

  Great-Uncle Herbert

  Chapter 11

  Our Fifth Member

  CHAPTER 1

  How I Met Tad and the Two Zombies

  Call me Gutter. Everyone else does.

  My real name is James Guttierez. But some people think my last name is pronounced “gutters,” and also, I’m great at gutting fish. That’s how I got my nickname.

  I’m good at cleaning fish because my father is a fisherman. You see, we live in Tide Cliff, a little town right by the ocean. Only about fifty people live in Tide Cliff, and most of them are pretty good with fish.

  I spend a lot of time by the shore. That’s how I met Tad a few summers ago, when I was about twelve.

  I was walking by the rocks that stick out into the ocean. I saw a kid standing there at the end of the rocks, where sometimes it’s pretty slippery.

  I could tell he was a city boy right away from his clothes. City kids always wore clothes that were too expensive for the beach. Tide Cliff kids wore swimming trunks and tank tops.

  “Hey, city boy!” I called out to him. “Be careful out there!”

  He just looked back at me and waved me off. Next thing I knew, he pulled off his baggy shirt and jumped right into the ocean.

  “Hey!” I cried out. “Hey, kid!”

  I thought he was going to drown or something.

  But pretty soon, he came up out of the surf right by the beach, where I was standing. And he was holding a gold necklace.

  “I was diving for this,” he said, holding it up to show it to me.

  I had to admit, I was impressed.

  Most of the city kids in Tide Cliff are here with their families for the summer. A lot of those kids aren’t too happy to be here. At first, they love the ocean waves and the sun and swimming and going fishing, but then they get bored.

  Then they just lock themselves inside their parents’ cottages, with the air conditioning and video games. I don’t make friends with those kids.

  But this kid was different.

  He was staring up at me, holding that gold necklace, and grinning.

  “I dare you to dive for something,” he said.

  “I doubt there are more necklaces at the end of the rocks,” I said with a laugh.

  He shrugged. “So dive for a rock or a shell,” he said. “Bet you can’t!”

  I smirked. “Oh yeah?” I replied.

  Then I headed out on to the rocks, got to the edge, and dived right in. I can hold my breath for a long time, so I didn’t rush to come back up. Thought I’d give him a scare.

  When I finally got back to the shore with a rusty pocketknife I’d found on the ocean floor, the kid whistled.

  “Nice job,” he said.

  Well, I realized Tad wasn’t the usual kind of city kid. I called him Tad, short for “tadpole,” because he was kind of puny back then. Now he’s taller than I am.

  Tad and I decided to form a club. We called ourselves the Tide Cliff Summer Braves, or just the Braves for short. We’d dare each other to do things that were a little scary, or a little risky.

  That first summer, it was just Tad and me. We spent our time diving for stuff and checking out the old haunted mansions up on the hill.

  The mansion on Pike Street is the oldest and creepiest house on the hill. No one’s lived in it for as long as I’ve been alive. Tad and I had peeked in the windows, but that’s about it.

  Until one day, during Tad’s second summer in Tide Cliff, when we spotted two people inside.

  “Zombies!” I whispered.

  Tad shook his head slowly. “Don’t be silly,” he said.

  Really, neither of us believed in ghosts or anything like that. I was just playing around and having some fun.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s scare them!” So I knocked three times on the dirty old window, as loud as I could and very quickly.

  The two people inside screamed. Tad and I ducked down.

  “Sounds like girls,” Tad whispered.

  I nodded. “It has to be,” I whispered back.

  We peeked around at the front door as the two girls came sprinting out of the house, across the veranda, and all the way to the street.

  Well, Tad and I just cracked up. Then the girls spotted us. They looked at each other and must have felt pretty silly for being scared. But Tad and I decided they must be brave to have been inside the mansion on Pike Street at all.

  “We’ve decided that you two can join our club,” Tad announced as the girls walked over to us.

  One of them was short and had very dark hair. The other was very tall and had blond, almost white hair, and skin nearly as pale.

  “What makes you think we’d want to?” the shorter one said. That was May.

  “Well, it’s the only club in Tide Cliff, for one thing,” I said.

  The girls looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Okay,” said the tall one. She was taller than I was. That was Kayla. “We’ll join, then.”

  S
o that was the four Braves.

  The story I’m going to tell you is how we found a fifth member for our club. And how we almost lost another one.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Pike Street Mansion

  Curt is another city kid who spends summers in Tide Cliff. At the end of the summer before this story, Curt came over to the Braves one day as the Sun was going down.

  We were walking on the docks, heading back to our headquarters with the tacos we’d bought for dinner.

  Suddenly, Curt jogged up to us. “Hey, guys,” he said, out of breath.

  The four of us stopped and looked at each other. We’d seen Curt now and then, but he wasn’t someone we wanted to hang out with. He wasn’t anything like the Braves.

  “Hi, Curt,” I said. “What’s happening?”

  He put on a smile. “I want to join your club,” he said. “Can I?”

  We were all a little surprised, I think. But finally May spoke up.

  “Sure you can, Curt,” she said. “But you need to do a dare first.”

  “A dare?” Curt said.

  Tad walked over to Curt and put his arm around his shoulder. “Sure, a dare,” Tad said. “We all had to do something brave to be in this club.”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “Okay,” Curt said. “What do I have to do?”

  The Braves stood there, thinking and looking at each other. What dare could we give him?

  “I know the perfect dare,” Kayla said. She had a big smile on her face. She leaned down to whisper since she was much taller than any of us. “You have to go inside the Pike Street mansion.”

  “What?” Curt said.

  “Yeah. And you have to bring back the old locket from the bedside table upstairs,” Kayla finished.

  Curt squinted up at her. “Wait a minute,” he said. “How do you know there’s an old locket on the bedside table?”

  “We’ve been in there loads of times,” I said. “This is an easy dare!”

  Curt seemed to think about it for a second. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll do it.”

  As we walked up to the hill and Pike Street, all of the Braves were thinking that we might have a new member after all.

  When we got to Pike Street, Curt stepped onto the mansion’s veranda and pulled open the door. It creaked a lot, and the floor of the veranda squeaked.

  Suddenly, when the door was open about a foot, a grey cat came darting out with a loud hissy meow.

  Curt just about jumped to the moon.

  The Braves all cracked up laughing, but Curt got angry.

  “You think that’s pretty funny, Gutter?” he said. His face was red and everything.

  Kayla laughed. “It sure was funny, Curt,” she said. “You were scared of a cat! Don’t you think that’s funny?”

  But I guess Curt didn’t think it was very funny, because instead of laughing with us, he ran back down the hill.

  May shook her head. “I guess he’s not a Brave after all,” she said.

  Tad shrugged. “Guess not.”

  Curt may not have become a member of the club, but he always seemed to pop up whenever the Braves were doing stuff. Like he did this past summer.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Locked Room Dare

  One day last summer, we were sitting around in the shack behind my house. It’s separate from my house, so we get some privacy. It’s really close to the docks, too. You can hear the seagulls calling, and the clang of the old boats’ bells as they get near land.

  The shack is where my dad keeps all his old gear, fishing rods he doesn’t use anymore, broken lobster cages – that sort of thing. But there are chairs to sit on, and even a camp bed that I sleep on sometimes.

  The shack had enough room for all four of us to sit around and plan our adventures.

  May was the one who started the ball rolling. “I think it’s your turn to give the dare, Gutter,” she said.

  The way we do dares is like that old game Truth or Dare. Except we leave out the “truth” option. One person gives the dare, and the person it’s given to has to accept. Or else they’re out of the Braves.

  I smiled. “All right,” I said.

  Tad leaned forward. “I think it was Kayla’s turn to get a dare,” he added.

  “This is an easy choice,” I said. “The Pike Street mansion up on the hill.”

  “Ha!” Kayla said. “That’s too easy. Come on. You can think of something better than that, can’t you?”

  Kayla was snacking on these weird dried veggies and mushrooms her mum makes all the time. Kayla says she loves them, but they look gross to me. Kayla doesn’t eat meat, though, not even fish. She doesn’t eat cheese or fried food or sweets or anything good. So I guess she doesn’t have many options.

  “I wasn’t finished,” I said, smirking. “You don’t just have to go inside. You have to spend the night in one of the bedrooms.”

  Tad smiled. “Ooh, in the little room with the creepy old photos on the wall and the doll collection. The one on the second floor!” he said.

  “Perfect,” I said. I got up and reached under the camp bed. That’s where I keep a shoe box of our treasures and things from all the dares we’ve done.

  I pulled off the lid of the shoe box and dug around.

  There was the necklace and rusty pocketknife from the day I met Tad. There were tonnes of cool shells May and Kayla had collected. And there was one long, black skeleton key.

  “Here it is,” I said, holding up the key. “The Pike Street mansion key.”

  We’d found the old key the summer before. It was hanging on a nail in the kitchen, but we soon worked out that it unlocked – and locked – every room in the house.

  “To be sure you stay in the room all night, we’ll lock the door after you,” I explained.

  May opened her eyes wide. “That’s a good dare, Gutter,” she whispered.

  Kayla popped another handful of her weird dried veggies into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Okay,” she said after a minute.

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Yes!” I said, and I pumped my fist.

  “How about tonight?” Kayla suggested.

  “Tonight?” Tad almost shouted.

  Kayla shrugged. “Sure, why not? I’ll just go grab my sleeping bag from my mum’s cottage and head up there,” she said.

  “That’s why you’re a Brave,” I said.

  Pretty soon, the four of us were standing on Pike Street in front of the old mansion. We all looked up at the second-floor window.

  “There it is,” I said. “The little room in the tower.”

  Kayla checked her torch to make sure it worked. Then we all headed into the house.

  Slowly, we walked up two flights of stairs until we reached the small bedroom.

  “Here we are!” Kayla said, standing outside the door. “Home sweet home!”

  May laughed. “For tonight, anyway,” she said.

  Kayla giggled and walked into the bedroom. “Lock me in!” she said with a smile.

  “Good luck,” Tad said. He laughed like an evil character in an old cartoon.

  I pulled the door shut and locked it with the skeleton key. “Bye, Kayla,” I called through the door.

  I barely heard her when she called back through the heavy old door.

  Tad, May, and I headed back downstairs and out the front door. We all turned and looked up at the second floor.

  From the window, Kayla waved at us. In the dark, with her white hair and pale face, she looked like a ghost. “Good night!” she called.

  We all waved back. “Sweet dreams!” May yelled.

  “Sleep tight!” Tad called.

  “Don’t let the zombies bite!” I joked. “We’ll see you in the morning!”

  None of us knew what an awful morning it would be.

  CHAPTER 4

  Poison?

  The next morning, I woke up to the sound of my friends walking into our shack.

  I sleep out there a lot during the summer. The b
reeze off the water is nice and cool, and we don’t have air conditioning in the house.

  “Rise and shine, Gutter,” Tad said as he pulled the pillow from under my head.

  “Yeah, time to check in on Kayla,” May added.

  I groaned and sat up.

  “Okay,” I said through a yawn.

  I glanced out of the open door at the ocean. The orange light of the sunrise was reflecting on the water. It looked like a perfect postcard.

  As usual, I’d fallen asleep the night before in my swimming trunks and T-shirt. “Let’s go, then,” I said, getting up and stretching.

  The three of us headed out for the walk up to the hill.

  *

  Tad pushed open the door of the mansion on Pike Street. As usual, it creaked really loudly as it swung open.

  “Up to the second floor!” May said with a smile. She loved that spooky room more than the rest of us did. We thought the dolls were creepy. She just thought they were cute.

  The three of us headed upstairs.

  “Kayla?” I said when we reached the landing on the second floor. “Are you awake?”

  Tad led the way down the small hallway to the locked door at the end. “Knock knock,” he said, unlocking the door. He pushed it open, and had to duck a little to enter.

  Kayla was in her sleeping bag on the floor. It looked like she was still asleep after all.

  “Wake up, Kayla!” May said, laughing.

  I went over to her and kneeled down to give her shoulder a light shake. “Wake up, Kayla. You passed the dare!” I said.

  “She’s hard to wake up!” Tad said. He gave her foot a little kick. “Wake up, Kayla! It’s morning.”

  May’s eyes opened wide and she covered her mouth. “Guys,” she said. “Is Kayla … dead?”

  I jumped to my feet. “What?” I yelled. “No way! She’s just –”

  May reached down and grabbed Kayla’s wrist.

  “She’s not dead,” she said, sounding relieved. “Her heart’s beating.”