HAUNTED HOUSE DARE
CHAPTER 1
HILDA
The house smelled like dust. Very creepy s**t.
Midnight hit and there we were—six of us idiots crammed through the splintered front door, flashlights swinging like drunk fireflies, passing around the half-empty bottle of strawberry-flavored vodka that tasted like red candy.
“Twenty bucks each if we chicken out,” Malik had said earlier, grinning like the devil himself. “But if we make it till dawn? Bragging rights forever.”
I kept stealing looks at Jayden the whole walk over. He never looked back. Just walked ahead in that black hoodie that swallowed him whole, hands shoved deep in his pockets.
We’d never really talked. Not once. Just those awkward group-project nods across the lecture hall. “Hey.” “Yeah.” “Pass the stapler.” That was our entire his
