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Chloe is ten years old, and she's never played any sort of grown-up party game before when she calls up the playground hub to Max, "Truth or dare, Max?"
Max is nine, and tiny, and she comes slipping out the slide headfirst to meet Chloe at the bottom, breathless and looking up at her upside down. "What?"
"Truth or dare," Chloe repeats, and waits for Max to right herself and sit on the edge of the slide before continuing. "You pick one, and I get to either ask you a question or dare you to do something. You hafta answer or do what I say, too."
Max has a nose that crinkles, whether she's laughing or mad at Chloe or trying to keep a secret or pleased with herself. Right now it's bunched up in irritation. "I know what truth or dare is, Chloe," she says self-importantly, in the tone she takes to prove that even if Chloe's a little older Max knows just as much as she does. Then, "Truth."
In all honesty, Chloe hadn't thought ahead this far, had just wanted to see Max's nose crinkle and maybe her cheeks turn pink, so she just uses the generic question for truth. "Do you like anybody?"
To her credit, Max spends a long time thinking about it, long enough that the boys at the top of the slide start yelling at them and they have to run away to the jungle gym. Once they get there, panting and flushed, Max brushes the wispy hairs out of her face with a still-chubby hand and says, "No, not right now."
"Liar," Chloe says, even though she believes her, just to see Max puff up her cheeks.
She does, and Chloe pokes one. "It's true! Anyway, it's my turn. Truth or dare."
"Dare," Chloe says immediately, because she's decided if Max is the one who chooses truth in their relationship, she'll be the one who chooses dare.
Max thinks for a moment, then her face splits into a grin Chloe's dad would call shit-eating, and put a dollar in the swear jar for. "I dare you to lick the swing set."
Chloe's dad tells her later that there are no winners or losers in truth or dare, but from that day on, she keeps feeling as though Max always wins.
---
Chloe is thirteen, and Max picks dare.
Five minutes later, she's lying facedown on Chloe's bed, groaning, and Chloe is genuinely delighted- not just because it was fucking amazing to watch Max eat an entire box of chocolate doughnuts in less then five minutes, but also because picking dare means Max is growing a spine.
"It's your turn to ask me," she reminds Max, grinning. Max just groans again in response, flopping onto her back reluctantly with hands clutched over her stomach.
"I can't believe you made me do that," she says reproachfully, and Chloe giggles. "Truth or dare, Chloe."
Max's hair is down and fanning out across Chloe's pillow, and there's a smear of chocolate frosting by the corner of her mouth, and she looks silly and really pretty and it makes Chloe feel weird. Not a bad weird, but a kind of weird that's growing increasingly familiar and increasingly associated with Max. "Truth," she says, in order to be fair.
That makes Max's eyebrows go up, even as she scowls. "You never pick truth."
"You never pick dare," Chloe counters. "Besides, I ate too much pizza to funnel five doughnuts."
Fittingly, Max's stomach gurgles, and Chloe bursts into fresh laughter as Max moans loudly. "I am banning the word doughnuts for the rest of the night. God. Okay, uh. Do you like somebody, I guess?"
The scary part is, Chloe thinks she does. But Max picked dare, so she doesn't know if Max likes somebody, and if her somebody and Max's potential somebody are maybe contained to Chloe's small room, so she just says, "Yeah."
That surprises the formerly comatose Max into a sitting position, and she looks at Chloe as if Chloe's said the worse curse she knows. (Chloe would never say the worse curse she knows with Max in the room. Not yet anyway. Max is still only twelve.) "What? Who is it?"
Chloe just smirks, pleased with her own cunning. "It's not your turn anymore."
She's promptly smacked in the face with her own pillow. "Chloe!"
"Truth or dare, Max," she says, muffled behind the fabric.
Max gives her longest groan yet, then says defeatedly, "Truth."
That's what Chloe had figured, that Max would be too full of doughnut to dare anymore. Carefully, evenly, she says, "Do you like somebody, Miss Max?"
The irritation fades out of Max's face, replaced by a surprisingly coy grin. "Yes. Truth or dare, Chloe?"
So there are two somebodies. But Chloe won't admit to hers until Max does, so she says, "Dare."
Max's mouth falls open. "What- that's cheating!"
"It's not cheating," she says smugly. "I don't have to pick truth. Dare me."
And that makes Max puff up her cheeks, a habit she's almost lost but Chloe still likes to work out of her. She pokes her, and Max swats her hand away and whines, "Just tell me, Chloe, come on. Who is it?"
"Nope," she says. "Dare."
However, the plan doesn't go quite accordingly because Max keeps picking dare too, in seeming retribution, until they're too full and exhausted to truth or dare anymore.
When they're lying in bed, moonlight filtering through Chloe's window onto Max's feet, Max whispers, "Why don't you just tell me?"
Chloe's silent, asks herself the same thing, and murmurs back, "I'll tell you when you tell me."
After that, Max is silent, and while Chloe doesn't necessarily feel like she won that round, it does seem like she and Max are on even footing for once.
---
Chloe is fourteen, and her dad is ten hours away from death, but of course she doesn't know that. It's eleven at night and Max is blinking sleepily against her pillow when Chloe whispers, "Max. Truth or dare."
If she picks dare, the dare will be to kiss Chloe. And that will be that. It doesn't have to mean anything at all, if Max doesn't want it to.
Max's nose crinkles up, which even in the dark makes Chloe smile. "It's late."
"It's only eleven, and you're lame. Come on, Maxine."
She only used the full-name card to get under Max's skin, because it always works. "It's Max, you ass," she says, in a slightly louder voice that means she's waking herself up. Then, "Fine, but only one round. Truth."
But that's fine. Chloe's heart stays exactly where it is. "Tell me, um. Tell me who you like."
Max snorts. "How old are you?"
"Older than you. And you have to tell me."
There's a pause, then Max rolls onto her side, facing Chloe but somehow not looking at her. "Nobody," she says, and she sounds tired. "Not anymore, and that's the truth, I swear. I mean, there were some boys I liked before, there was- but it's in the past now. They're all assholes anyway. The only person I'm not sick of by now is you, Che."
Which is nice to hear, despite it all. Chloe preens, for Max's benefit. "Why, thank you ma'am."
Halfheartedly, Max shoves at her. "Okay, sasspants, truth or dare."
"Dare," Chloe says, just to return things to the status quo.
For a while, Max thinks, then she says quietly, "I dare you to tell the person you like that you like them."
That sounds an awful lot like a molded truth, but all Chloe says is, "What?"
"I know you've liked somebody for a while, even if you won't tell me who," Max says. "I dare you to tell them, next time you see them."
"Next time I see them?" Chloe says, and she can't help it if her voice sounds a little strange because her mind's going a mile a second to loophole her way out of this. She's never really done seeing Max, they're always together, so maybe that can mean it will be a long, long time to the 'next time'.
Max just nods, and her eyes close, lashes fluttering against the pillow as her hand comes up to brace it. "Yeah. That's my dare, and you have to do it."
Chloe ends up lucking out- the next time she sees Max is a funeral, and they don't talk; the next time after that, Max drives out of her life.
---
Chloe is fifteen, and Max is gone.
---
Chloe is sixteen, and Max is gone.
---
Chloe is seventeen, and Rachel's snuck a case of peach schnapps onto the cliffside for a picnic by the lighthouse. They're both tipsy and gorgeous in the sunsetting light, and Chloe hasn't felt this good in a really long time.
"Truth or dare," Rachel says, unexpectedly.
With a chuckle, Chloe closes her eyes, then opens them again when there's no response. "What? You're high."
"And you're boring," Rachel says. "Come on, truth or dare."
Uncomfortable now in the feeling of nostalgia, and subsequent inadequacy, Chloe shifts. "Are you six? Come on, Rach."
Rachel rolls her eyes. "What I am is not sober enough to put up with your bullshit. I'm not going to ask you again."
The thing about Rachel Amber is that she always gets what she asks for. Chloe doesn't resent that about her; it's been working out well for the both of them so far. "All right, fine. Truth."
That makes Rachel perk up, pleased, and take a final swig of the schnapps. "I knew you'd pick truth."
"Well, fucking ask me a question, then, if you're so smart."
She swallows. "All right, all right, keep your skinny jeans on. Okay. Have you ever had a crush on a girl- besides me, of course."
Chloe side-eyes her, but there's no accusatory or outing element to Rachel's gaze, just a sort of drunken fondness that's always there, sober or not. She can't even be embarrassed that Rachel knows- Rachel knows everything. "What, like who?"
"I don't know, like that girl whose pictures are all over your room?" Rachel says immediately, which kind of gives away the subtlety in her line of questioning. "How come you never talk about her? An ex?"
Thinking of Max as an ex is weird- the word's too dismissive, too simplistic. Plus, Chloe reminds herself, they were never fucking together. "Nah. We were, like, thirteen. Her name's Max. We were friends, then she left."
"Best friends." Not a question.
"Sure," Chloe says, wishing she'd picked dare and jumped off the cliff instead of this. "Anyway, isn't it your turn?"
Rachel cracks open a new bottle. "You haven't answered the question yet. Then it'll be my turn."
"Fucking-" Chloe snatches the liquor from her, downs at least half the bottle in one go, and can finally excuse the burning in her throat and eyes to the sting of alcohol. "Fucking fine, Rachel, yes, I had a crush on Max, happy? Look at how fucking great that worked out for me."
Another thing about Rachel is that she doesn't usually show much sympathy for Chloe's pity parties, which is of course another thing Chloe likes about her. She just takes the bottle back in manicured hands and says, "Okay, your turn to ask now."
"Truth or dare," Chloe spits.
Rachel giggles. "I'm not sure I want you daring me to do anything right now. But- dare."
A bitter, drunk part of Chloe tells her Rachel's keeping secrets, been acting weird- but she's buzzed, not trashed, and she ignores the thought. "Okay. Um. I dare you to- shit, I don't know, let me sext Nathan Prescott from your phone."
And that makes Rachel laugh, finally, the full belly laugh that Chloe had fallen in love with when she first met her. "Kinky."
They end up skinny dipping in the ocean instead, because Nathan Prescott is an asshole.
---
Chloe is eighteen, and Rachel is gone.
---
Chloe is nineteen, and she's too old to be playing stupid games anymore, but she's still stupid enough to be playing games with Max. She says, "I dare you to kiss me," because it's been too long and not long enough, all at once, because the words have been sitting on the tip of her tongue for a decade and it's about time they were free.
Max blinks at her, and she's bag-eyed and mussed and lovely in filtered sunlight. Rachel's clothes hang beside her as a reminder, as a challenge. "What?"
"I double dare you," Chloe says, "kiss me now."
You're not allowed to back out of double dares, and chickenshit or not, shoot-er-up or not, lawbreaker or not, Max almost always plays by the rules.