I try to wrestle away from them, but their grip is too strong. It’s two against one. I’m outnumbered, and I’m not very strong. I’m curvy, and one time a guy told me I was built like a brick house but that’s not accurate at all. I’m more like a house of cards.
“Come on,” Katie says. “It’s not real. It’s just for fun.”
“Then you do it!” My eyes flash around at everyone. “Or someone else!”
She looks at me with a little smirk. “You’re the only one here still carrying the v-card around at twenty years old.” She steps toward me. “That’s kind of a prerequisite for this.”
They grab my wrists and pin them behind me, then I’m pulled to the tree and pushed up against it.
“I don’t like this!” I say, twisting against the ropes to no avail.
The harder I try to get out of them, the more they rub against my wrists and start to burn. I’m going to need a freaking metric ton of lotion to get my hands soft again after this.
I’m still writhing and thrashing as the guys lock my ankles together and bind them with more rope. Then a longer piece of the frayed, thick twine is fastened around me to bind me to the tree.
“You’re doing my laundry for two weeks to pay me back for this,” I say to Katie.
“Fine,” she says, crossing her arms.
“And you’re cleaning the microwave.”
Everyone lets out a collective gasp.
“But you know that microwave is haunted,” Katie hisses in a soft voice as she creeps over. “It’s like every time one of us tries to clean it, it just gets dirtier.”
I raise my chin at her.
“Damn it,” she says. “Fine.”
I try to get loose, just to test out the strength of the ropes. My heart flips when I feel how tight they really are.
I guess I just need to accept my fate with open arms—or with my arms tied behind my back, I guess.
It’s not like I have any other choice.
Chapter Two
Emma
The ringleader—likein the circus, because I kind of feel like I’m part of a circus sideshow right now—raises a piece of wood into the sky and touches it to the bonfire with a ceremonial flourish.
He brandishes it around me with in a wave and says some secret incantation.
“Is that pig Latin?” I say as I give the ropes a little tug.
“We now invoke the ancient rite of the goddess igbay armaphay, who will reign over this mortal coil like the cold November rain from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters!”
“This is starting to sound like a TikTok mashup,” I say with a shudder. “Now that’s scary.”
Katie laughs. “Don’t pretend you don’t love this,” she says.
“In theory, I think it’s cool.” I pull against the ropes. “In practice, it’s not cool to spring this on someone.”
Maybe part of me does. I broke out the black nail polish at one minute after midnight on October 1 and started my 30 nights of horror with a Steven King book on my phone every night before bed. I wish I could read more, but my classes are kicking my ass so hard that I fall asleep almost immediately after my head hits the pillow.
“We must now complete the sacrifice by setting ablaze our pure, untouched friend, who will now bring peace to the world that hasn’t been felt in the last two thousand years.”
Katie runs over with a handful of candy corn and sprinkles them on me, I guess to imitate fire.