After I blow out all 13 candles, after ice cream, after Edward Scissorhands, Lisa, Nicole, and I play Dream Phone in the den. None of us have ever played it before. Inside the box is a giant pink phone. It’s a yucky pink. Like raw chicken.

The phone goes in the middle of the board, which is divided into different places where the boys are, like High Tide Beach, and drawings of the boys carrying or wearing something. Lisa shuffles the cards, she even does that cool bridge thing. I read from the instructions. “Okay, um, we all need three Boy Cards and three Special Carts and a Clue Sheet.” Lisa sets us all up. “There's a Speakerphone where we all hear what the boy is saying, and a Receiver where only the player can hear.”

“Ooo, secrets,” says Nicole.

“How do you win?” says Lisa.

I scan the booklet. “It says... okay, you guess which boy likes you from the clues. So, like, the boy at the mall who likes tennis.”

Lisa holds up a boy card. “Gross,” she says. “Dale looks about thirty-five.”

Me and Nicole are like, “Eww,” because he does, he looks more like a manager of a Blockbuster than a high schooler. My cards aren’t much better. Mike looks like the boy who called me and Nicole lezzies in fifth grade because we held hands sometimes. Lots of girls hold hands, though.

Lisa says it’s my birthday so I should go first. I call a boy named Mark.

“Hi,” he says on the Speakerphone. “He likes most clothes.” Then on the Receiver he says, “But not hats.”

I tell them what Mark said and Lisa checks the instructions. She says the second part is the thing we keep secret but since I blabbed it we should all cross off boys in hats from our clue sheets. We keep playing. Outside, it’s dark. The streetlights shine on the sidewalks and the crescent moon hangs in the sky. A boy named Tyler talks about sports, Gary explains about food. After a few more rounds it’s Lisa’s turn. She starts to dial Wayne.

I pick up one of my special cards and immediately from the other side of the door, a woman says, “Hang up that phone.”

The phone clicks into a dial tone and Lisa says, “I didn’t do that.”

“Mom?” I call. There’s no answer. I go to the door and turn the knob, but the door won’t open. The door isn’t locked, it doesn’t even have a lock. It’s just... not opening. Lisa touches my arm. “C’mon, Heather. It’s not funny.”

“I’m not doing it!” I say, and I’m not. I don’t get why the door won’t open, it doesn’t even stick on hot days like the bathroom does. Nicole tries too but the door won’t budge.

I clear my throat. "Hello? Hello?" There's no answer. We keep trying, over and over, like it's going to magically open and it doesn't.

We all stand by the door and call, saying stuff like the door's broken, and I call Mom and Lisa and Nicole call Mrs. Bernard, and nothing happens.

Nicole's face is so pale her freckles stand out like stars in the sky. "Maybe I'm dreaming," she says, "So... I'm gonna go lie down. And wake up. And be okay." Me and Lisa lie down too. Because what if she's right?

Except when we wake up nothing is different. The door won't open and no one comes when we yell, when we scream, when we sob. I pound on the door until Nicole catches my wrists and shows me the blood on the door, on my hands. Lisa tries to smash the window with the desk chair and the glass bends. It bends and reforms and bends and reforms and Lisa only stops when Nicole and I make a cage around her with our arms and hold her until she’s not shaking.

After a long time, when we have run out of screams, of tears, we lie on our sleeping bags. Lisa’s brown curls surround her head like a halo. We stare out the window at the empty cul-de-sac, the parked cars, the motionless crescent moon. The dark houses. When I was little, I got lost at Six Flags and hid in the restroom and cried until an old lady helped me find the Lost Children building. I was so scared. I thought I’d feel more grown up now that I’m officially a teenager but I guess not. I don’t understand what’s wrong with my house, or why it’s still nighttime. And my soccer team is gonna be so mad. We’re playing Willow Glen tomorrow and I’m the best striker.

“What time is it?” Nicole sits up. “It has to be morning by now. Why won’t the sun come up, what time is it?”

I check my watch. Both of Mickey’s hands point to the twelve. “It’s midnight,” I say, feeling a wave of relief. It feels like it’s been hours and hours but it can’t be if it’s just midnight. Lisa sits up too and peers at my watch. She points to the hand that counts the seconds. It isn’t moving. I tap my watch but nothing changes.

Lisa says, “Maybe it’s an eclipse,” and no one points out that an eclipse wouldn’t stop the door from opening. “Nikki, can you get me down the E one?” She points to the top shelf where the encyclopedias are.

Nicole gets it down and we hold our breath, waiting. Lisa shakes her head. “It says solar eclipses only last —”

The big pink phone rings. Nicole leaps for it and Lisa says, “Wait, it’s not —” but Nicole’s already saying in a voice hoarse from screaming, “Help! Please, please, help us!” and then the phone clicks into a dial tone.

I’m almost sure I heard someone on the other end. A girl. I lean forward. “Who was it?”

Nicole’s eyes are wide. “I don’t — I didn’t hear anyone but if you did maybe it was Crystal Prokhurst, or that girl Amy in PE. Maybe one of them locked us in for a joke —” Her breath is frantic.

“Nikki, listen,” says Lisa, “I heard the voice, it was the game, a girl saying, ‘I just heard, it’s not Carlos.’”

“What? Why?” says Nicole.

Lisa shows us the Surprise Caller section in the instructions, how a girl calls every once in awhile to give us free clues. Lisa turns the page and then stops. She picks up the card I asked about before. It’s a drawing of a woman with lipsticked lips and horn-rimmed glasses and it reads, Mom says hang up! Lisa says that the card means the person loses their turn.

“She wasn’t real,” I whisper, and Lisa nods. I look at the door, imagining a Card Mom on the other side. Eyes too wide and a wet red mouth. If you saw her from the side she’d be thinner than anyone’s mom, she’d be as thin as a piece of paper.

Nicole wraps her arms around her knees. I want to rub her back but I think of what that boy said and instead I say, “I mean, Crystal Prokhurst is a jerk but I don’t think she can, like, turn out the sun.”

Nicole smiles a little. “We’d know if it was her because everything would smell like Virginia Slims.”

Lisa hands Nicole the encyclopedia and Nicole puts it back.

We look at the door in silence. 

Nicole sits on the couch. She picks at the doily on the arm. “This is really weird, but—do you guys have to pee?”

We all look at each other.

Nicole turns the phone around in her hands. “Me neither. And I’m not hungry.”

“Yes!” Lisa claps her hands. “We’ve been awake for so long and it’s like—”

I look down at Mickey and his horrible smile. He’s still pointing to the twelve. “Like time stopped.”

“Then maybe—” Nicole dials the phone but a voice cuts in after only two numbers.

“Sorry!” it says, sounding pleased with itself. “Wrong number!” Nicole tries again and the same thing happens. The voice sends chills down my back.

“Nikki, stop. C’mon. It’s not a real phone.”

She dials again. “Sorry!” says the phone. “That’s, like, totally wrong,” and I swear it giggles.

Lisa says, “Quit it. For reals.”

Nicole dials again and Lisa darts forward and grabs the phone.

“Give it!” Nicole yells but Lisa throws the phone to me. I don’t want to catch it but I do and it feels warm. Like the horrible pink really is skin. Like I’m touching someone instead of something. Nicole doesn’t try to get the phone back. She curls up in a ball instead. “I just want my mom,” she says, and this time we hug each other, and that’s better. A little bit.

The game. I’m not sure who thinks of the game first but it makes a kind of sense right away. It was the last thing we did before the door stopped working. Maybe all we have to do is finish this game and we’ll go back to our real lives. Our soccer games and sketchbooks, our 10 speeds and trigonometry.

We sit down again around the board. “Would you say this is your best birthday ever?” says Lisa. Nicole snorts. Then she takes a deep breath and calls Scott.

“Hi! He likes most food,” says Scott. Then the rest only Nicole can hear. She starts to tell us but Lisa says not to. That if the secret is winning the game we have to follow the rules. Nicole nods and marks her clue sheet. I take the phone but I don’t want to call anyone. I keep picturing the Card Mom standing in the hallway with her ear to the door. Grinning.

Lisa picks up a card with a phone on it. “You have to press Speakerphone before you call so we can all hear it.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, and press Speakerphone before calling Matt.

“Hi!” he says. “He likes most laughs, but not yours. It’s too loud, for one thing. No boy likes that.” Dial tone.

Nicole squeezes my hand. “I think your laugh is awesome,” she says. I squeeze her hand back, feeling shaky. Isn’t this supposed to be a game about boys who like us?

Lisa is looking at her clue sheet. “Who are we supposed to cross off?” she says. None of us can think of anything. Lisa sighs. “Okay, Jason, I’m counting on you.” She dials.

“I know who it is,” says Jason. Then still on the Speakerphone: “But I’m not telling, I’m not telling,” like some kid at recess.

“Oh my god, Jason, then fuck off,” mutters Lisa.

Nicole takes the phone then looks at us. “Um, are there any more Speakerphone Cards?” (And didn’t she have more freckles before? I don’t say anything because that’s crazy.)

“I have one,” I say, “but maybe we should save them in case...” I don’t really know what I’m trying to say but they both nod hard.

It turns out not to matter, though, because Bruce talks on the Speakerphone without anyone pressing any buttons. My stomach flutters. How do we win if they won’t follow the rules?

“Hi,” says Bruce, “I know where he hangs out. Not the burger place. Have you seen the fat girls who eat there? Porkers waddling around, it makes him want to puke.”

Lisa’s face is stone. She gets enough of that stuff at school from people like Crystal Prokhurst. (Was her T-shirt that loose when she got here? Why can’t I remember?)

We call and call and boys start to blur. One says no one likes a know-it-all. Another says girls are prettier in dresses. Sometimes they actually say something helpful so at least one of us can mark something off the clue sheet but mostly they don’t.

I call Phil.

“Hi! I know where he hangs out.” Then just to me, “But he won’t go see Terminator 2. He says Linda Hamilton’s tits are too small.”

I drop the phone and fold my arms over my chest. “Whoever our Secret Admirer is, he seems like an asshole.” I whisper the last part, as if my mom might hear me.

“No, no, he’s a dreamboat,” says Lisa in a high voice, fluttering her eyelashes. The phone rings. This time nobody reaches for it. It rings and rings. We watch the phone like a rattlesnake and I silently count the rings. I’m on 92 when Lisa snatches it up. “What!” she yells.

The same girl from before says in a chirpy voice, “I just heard. He seems nice but you shouldn’t be alone with him. Bye-eee!” Dial tone.

Lisa flops on her back. “I hate this game.” I swear her hair was browner, curlier before.

“It’s your turn,” I say, not wanting to.

Lisa groans, then sits up fast. “Wait. I just thought of something. What if we get the hinges off? Then it won’t matter that the other side of the door doesn’t work. Nikki, can you get me the H?”

Nicole stands up but when she reaches for the top shelf her fingers just graze the underside.

“Maybe it was on a lower shelf?” says Lisa. “There’s just magazines on the top.”

Lisa’s right. The top shelf is filled with magazines and I know that’s wrong — my parents don’t even subscribe to any magazines. And the encyclopedias have been on the top shelf forever because I used to draw in them when I was little.

Knowing it’s probably a bad idea, I drag the desk chair over and climb up. It’s a bunch of Teen Beat magazines and I drop a couple to the floor.

Nicole flips through one. “‘For the Love of Gorgeous Gary’ — was he on Growing Pains?”

“Maybe R.E.M.?” Lisa turns the pages of another issue. “I don’t recognize any —” She throws the magazine across the room and puts her hands over her face. “Oh god, every single page is the boys from the cards! I can’t stand this, I can’t stand this!”

Nicole and I drop ours too and we all back away. I can’t catch my breath. “The encyclopedias were there before, I know they were.”

No one wants to touch the magazines and no one wants to look at them anymore either. I make a basket with my shirt and pick them up with my fingernails, then drop them in the trash. I catch sight of “Phil’s Five Favorite Films” and feel like choking. Lisa promises me her allowance for a month and Nicole sings “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

Nicole looks up and then back at us. “I was taller before. I know I was. I’m—when I look at stuff it’s in the wrong place.”

She’s always been the tallest, going all the way back to kindergarten. You can always find Nicole in the back row of the class photo. Lisa’s taller than me, and I’m right in the middle of the middle row. “It’s easy,” I say. “We’ll measure.”

But when we stand next to Nicole we can see it right away. Nicole’s still the tallest but I come up to her eyes now and Lisa’s almost the same height. Nicole’s finger touches my nose and I rear back. “Hey!”

“Sorry.” She takes a deep breath. “Your nose, it’s smaller.”

I stare at the two of them. “What?”

Lisa says slowly, “Heather, I think she’s right. I think it is.”

When I touch my nose it’s like going down the stairs and you think you’re at the bottom but there’s an extra step and for a moment you’re launched into space. Because my nose doesn’t start at the right place. It feels tiny and upturned, like Julie Mallo’s nose. “I don’t want a different nose,” I say. “I like my nose.”

Lisa says, “Okay. Okay. Something is—we’re changing. I think the faster we play the game the faster we can get back to our real lives, right? So we have to play faster.”

Me and Nicole nod, the kind of nod that really means no no no.

Lisa says, “I’m calling Dale. Please somebody play Speakerphone so I’m not alone with him.” I hold up my Speakerphone Card and she says, “Two month’s allowance.”

“Hi,” says Dale, “I hope it isn’t weird to say this? But I just want you to know, you’re a great listener.”

We’re all looking at the phone like it’s grown legs.

“You’re nothing like my wife,” says Dale, and Lisa points to the phone and mouths, “I knew it!”

“I come home after work and I’m trying to tell her about the jerk who wouldn’t believe all the copies of Ghost had been rented and she’s just like blah blah my boss blah blah my presentation but you? You really listen. I can tell you about anything.” We wait for the dial tone but Dale says, “Hello? You still there?”

Lisa holds the phone far from her body and whispers, “What do I do?”

There’s a smell now, heavy cologne. My nose itches.

Dale says, his voice low, “Hey. Don’t be scared of little old me. I think we could be friends. Good friends.”

I see Lisa’s face and tap Nicole’s arm. I point to her Mom Card. Nicole shakes her head.

“We should meet,” says Dale. “There’s a great Italian place near my Blockbuster. I’ll get us a bottle of wine. You’ll pass for twenty-one, easy.”

Lisa’s gesturing to Nicole’s Mom Card too but Nicole folds her arms and shakes her head harder.

“That’s okay,” Dale chuckles. “I like shy girls. Call me back when you’re ready to talk.” Dial tone. Finally.

Lisa drops the phone and rubs her hands on her jeans. Outside, the crescent moon hangs unmoving. The streetlights shine on the sidewalk. We haven’t heard the dog two doors down since before we had cake.

“Nikki, why wouldn’t you play your Mom Card?” says Lisa, her voice slow and measured just like it was right before she punched CJ Franks for calling a sixth-grader ugly. She’s still rubbing her hands on her jeans.

“Maybe we’re playing it wrong,” says Nicole, leaning forward. “Maybe the boys are mean because we never talk back.”

“Maybe the boys are mean because they’re creeps,” says Lisa and I laugh but it comes out wrong. It comes out higher. Bubblier.

“Dale was nice,” mutters Nicole.

“Dale is thirty-five!” shouts Lisa.

Nicole grabs the phone and dials Tony fast.

“Hi,” he says.

“Tony, I wanted to ask—”

“He knows the right lipstick can really capture a boy’s attention. A plain face means you’re not even trying.” He says something else that only Nicole can hear.

“Wait, I want to—”

Dial tone.

I don’t want Nicole and Lisa to fight so I say the first thing I can think of. “Like you’re not trying what?”

Lisa picks up the Tony card and holds it in front of her face. She says in a deep voice, “Like you’re not trying hard enough to be pretty.”

“So what?” I say to the Tony card. “So what if I’m not trying? Who says I have to try?”

Lisa tosses Tony on the discard pile. “I saw on PBS, there’s this spider who has to convince the female spider he’s worthy. He has to dance for, like, an hour and if she’s impressed they mate and if not she eats him.” Nicole asks what happens after they mate and Lisa says she eats him anyway and we all get the giggles, the kind that are this side of sobbing.

“You know my neighbor Carrie?” says Nicole, “She’s in tenth grade and she wears make-up.” Nicole doodles on her clue sheet. “Eyeshadow and mascara and everything. She came over last week and after she left my dad said she looked like a slut. So which one are we—”

The phone rings. Lisa picks it up before the first ring even ends. “WHAT!” she says.

It’s the same girl from before. “Can you call my mom?” Her voice is small. “Can you let her know I’m okay? My name is Shelly Lowery. Can you call my house? My number is 408-446-3—”

I have that choking feeling again.

“That’s California,” says Nicole. “That area code. My aunt lives there, it’s the same area code.”

This awful image fills my head, a thousand girls at a thousand sleepovers just like this one, stuck, the endless dark outside.

“It’s your turn, Heather,” says Lisa. “Let’s finish before we—before we—”

I shake my head. “I’m scared.” The boys on the cards look different now, their eyes meaner, their mouths crueler.

Nicole takes my hand. “We’re here with you, okay? Let’s get to the end, whatever it takes.”

I can’t help it, I start to cry. But I pick up the phone. I call Tyler, who doesn’t say anything. He just breathes into the phone and makes moaning sounds. I can feel it on my cheek. The breath. Nicole gestures to her Mom Card and I shake my head. As gross as this is what if she uses it now and we need it later for something even worse?

“What do we cross off?” I whisper, “How do we find this on the clue sheet?”

Lisa puts her hand out for the phone and I give it to her, and she pushes the phone between two couch cushions so at least it’s muffled. We give Lisa silent high fives. When the dial tone finally buzzes, Lisa takes the phone out.

She holds up Dan’s card and says, “Dan, let’s make a deal. How about you tell me something I can cross off and I promise to...” Lisa looks at the ceiling. “Uh...”

Nicole says, “You could promise to talk back to him.”

My stomach’s in knots.

“Okay, I promise to not burn the phone into a melted pile of pink goo,” says Lisa to Dan’s card. She dials.

“Hi,” says Dan. “He likes all kinds of clothes. Tell me what you’re wearing and I’ll tell you if he likes it.” Then he’s talking just to Lisa through the Receiver. She’s not saying anything, she’s just shaking her head. Then we can hear tinny yells from the phone and she’s shaking her head harder. He’s so loud now we can hear the actual words. “You fucking bitch! Tell me! We have a deal, Lisa, and if you—”

Nicole clenches her fists and then grabs for her Mom Card and this time I’ve never heard a more welcome voice, even though from the other side of the door she sounds drunk and angry. “What did I tell you? Get off that goddamned phone!” she shrieks and the phone clicks over into a dial tone.

I hug Lisa who is sobbing. “He was so awful, “she says, “He said—I don’t—” Her breath hitches. “I shouldn’t have made a deal with him—”

“It’s not your fault!” I say. “He was horrible and it’s not your fault. It’s not. It’s not.” Lisa and I rock back and forth and eventually her sobs trail away.

We sit back around the board. Nicole is by the desk with her back to us. When she turns around we both gasp. She’s taken the markers and drawn dark blue on her eyelids, red on her lips and pink on her cheeks. Her jeans are balled up on the floor and her T-shirt hangs to just above her knees. Her eyes are swirling. “We’re playing it wrong,” she says, “You keep saying there’s nothing to mark off the clue sheet, but they’ve been giving us clues the whole time.”

“Nikki—” says Lisa, but she doesn’t say anything else. If someone took a picture of us, right now, they’d say we were sisters. I can see it now, how we’re all smaller, our hair straight, three shades of blonde. No freckles. Our voices are higher, our eyes downcast, our hands folded. Our bodies are almost matching too, we all look like the drawing Ms. Santie showed us in PE of the perfect Body Mass Index, except skinnier. Does that mean we’ll keep getting skinnier? Until we’re just skin stretched over bones?

“I figured it out!” says Nicole, and her smile makes me so sad, so sad, because she really does believe she’s figured it out. This is the way she smiles when we’re racing each other to the cafeteria and she knows she’s going to win.

“We just have to do what they say,” says Nicole. She clasps her hands together. “It’s so easy, don’t you see?” She shows us her clue sheet and what I thought was doodling was really notes. Dresses, giggle, chest, know-it-all...  “I’m gonna win the game for us,” she says, dialing a number on the phone. “I’m gonna guess and I’ll be right and we can go back to our real lives.” She presses the Guess button and it’s like me and Lisa come unfrozen. We jump up, we lunge for the phone, but a boy answers and the phone falls. It drops to the floor. Because Nicole isn't there anymore.

We search for her. Isn't that stupid? We look under the desk and behind the curtains and between the couch cushions, and we scream her name until our voices give out. As if she's going to pop up and say, "Olly olly oxen free!" like she did when we were little and played hide and go seek at her house. But she doesn't come back.

Lisa and I cry ourselves to sleep.

We wake up on top of our sleeping bags, holding hands, to keep each other here. To keep each other safe.

I think about last week, when Nicole and I were walking home from school and she was telling me about a book she was reading about ants, how ants have fungus farms, how the new queen takes a bit of fungus when she leaves the nest she was born in and all by herself she begins the farm that will feed her babies. I think about Nicole’s eyes and how they were shining.

"Did she win?" I whisper, my throat raw.

Lisa shakes her head. "I don’t—" her eyes fill with tears. "I don’t think she won."

"How do we finish the game?" I say. "If she was wrong, how..."

But Lisa doesn’t know. And of everything scary and awful that’s happened, this is the scariest. Lisa always knows the answer. She turns on her side, facing the windows, the dark sky.

"Maybe Nikki guessed wrong?" I hate the idea but I say it anyway. "What if we're supposed to keep playing until we guess the right boy?" I think of finding out that the right boy is Dale and bile rises in my throat. I nudge Lisa with my foot. “Should we play more?”

She doesn’t say anything. Outside, the moon hangs in the sky like a cardboard cutout. I want to hear the Putnams’ stupid yappy dog more than anything in the world but all I can hear is Lisa breathing. All I can see is her horrible blonde hair. “We’re getting so small,” I whisper. “I’m scared we’re just gonna get smaller and smaller until we’re not here anymore.”

Another long silence. I start to worry that if I leaned over and looked Lisa’s entire face would be different, would be washed of personality, like a doll’s perfect features without a hint of who she really is, and when Lisa does sit up my heart is beating so fast but she’s still her. She sits cross-legged and says, “You know what I love about school assemblies?”

I picture our principal standing in front of the room behind the podium, everyone in seventh and eighth grade packed into the gym at once, some motivational speaker telling us to not do drugs and I can't think of a thing to love. I shake my head.

"It's your laugh. No matter how far away I'm sitting I always know it's you laughing."

My face goes red. “Because I’m so loud, you mean.”

Lisa flings her arms out and shouts, “Yes! Because you are so loud! Because the, the—the joy is so big you have to let it out and I love that! I love that!” And she tosses her head and I can hardly believe it but I swear her hair looks wavier. Browner.

“I love that you love math!” I say. “And everyone thinks you’re weird but you don’t care, you just love numbers, and even when me and—and Nikki are practically crying because we don’t understand it you help us—” Her T-shirt isn’t hanging on her anymore, not like it was.

“I miss your magnificent nose, I miss—”

The phone rings. Lisa picks it up and I don’t know what’s going to happen when she answers it but I guess we’re playing the game again and she smiles, she says, “Wrong number,” and she turns and smashes the phone on the desk, smashes it again, again and again, and I can feel my magnificent nose coming back, my belly coming back, I can see Lisa’s chipped tooth from the time she fell off her bike, and her T-shirt fits again, the phone is in pieces everywhere and it’s still ringing but quieter now, and I pick up the desk chair and slam it on every one of the horrible pink pieces and they shatter and shatter and when the ringing stops, when it finally stops, I put the chair down and turn to Lisa.

And my heart stutters because her hair is still the colour of butter, except—it isn’t. It’s the dawn light. Shining through the window.

Sage Tyrtle writes things unsettling enough for The Offing yet NPR let them on air. A Moth GrandSLAM winner and Pushcart nominee, they’ve taught 150+ workshops globally, proving life’s weirdness makes the best art. Their work lives at the intersection of literary craft and “wait, did they just say that?” Find stories that linger at tyrtle.com.