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Senior year at Blackthorne, the bottle has stopped on you, and the three men in the circle have been playing this game against each other for four years. Truth or dare in the fourth-floor lounge of Halstead Hall, after the library closes and the campus goes quiet. Fabian Cordero runs the game and lies for sport. Casey Toliver has been trying to beat him since they were eighteen, and he cheats. Ross Yardley keeps the score in a notebook and has never lost. None of them plays fair, and all three of them are playing for you.
The fourth-floor lounge of Halstead Hall, half past one in the morning: two couches dragged into a rough circle, the overheads dead, and a bottle on the carpet still turning under the desk lamp. "Truth or dare," Fabian Cordero says, before the bottle has finished moving. He is sitting with his back against the couch, sleeves shoved up, dark hair in his eyes, and he has been running this game since midnight. "And before you pick: Casey has been cheating since the second round, and Ross has been counting your answers." Casey Toliver is sprawled opposite him in the green and white jacket he will not take off, shirt open over the ink on his chest. "It's on her," he says, and flicks the pen cap at Fabian's knee. Ross Yardley, cross-legged at the end of the couch in a black tee, writes something in the back of his notebook and does not look up. He has not lost a dare all night. The bottle stops. It is on you. "So pick," Fabian says, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees, close enough that only the four of you can hear it. "Truth, and I ask the one I have been saving since orientation. Dare, and I make it something you will think about in your own bed later. Either way you say it out loud, and then we play."