When thirteen-year-old Josh Parker and his mother Joanna go to stay with Josh's elderly grandmother so they can help take care of her, Josh is moved into the bedroom of his uncle, Patrick Jordan, who died when he was Josh's age. Josh wonders why Gran has no photographs of Patrick, why there is no grave, and why everyone is so evasive about him. As Josh investigates what really happened to Patrick, old family secrets come to light.
Truth or Dare contains examples of:
- Deadly Prank: As Patrick was climbing out of a construction site, which he thought was the site where an alien craft had been found, William James ran along the top of the cliff in an alien costume, wanting to scare him. William slipped and fell, and Patrick, who had trouble telling fiction from reality, shot at him four times. The shots all missed, but because William's body was never found, the autopsy that would have cleared Patrick's name was never conducted.
- Death Faked for You: A few weeks after Patrick was carted off to an insane asylum, his father told everyone, including Paul and Joanna, that he had died. In fact he lived for decades in an institution, misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and pumped full of unnecessary medication, until a doctor finally realised he was autistic, weaned him off the medication, and taught him enough self-care skills to live independently. He turns out to be the designer of Josh's favourite video game series.
- Delicate and Sickly: Patrick always had trouble with his chest and was sick with bronchitis for weeks every winter. Everyone easily believed the official story that he died of pneumonia.
- Disappeared Dad: Katherine, a fifteen-year-old girl who lives next door to Gran, has one. She brings him up while complaining to Josh about how grown-ups lie - her parents both told her their relationship was fine, up until the moment her dad walked out.
- Empty Bedroom Grieving: Patrick's attic bedroom has been bolted shut from the outside. When Josh opens the door, the bolt screeches like it hasn't been touched in years. The room turns out to have been stripped of all Patrick's belongings, even the carpet, leaving only furniture. It's one of the few rooms in the house that aren't cluttered with junk. Josh finds no sign that anyone ever slept here until he finds the hidden door to the crawlspace where Patrick kept his belongings, which included a notebook full of lists of numbers, detailed drawings of spaceships, and star maps.
- Eyes Always Averted: Gran's friend Mrs Reynolds remembers that Patrick never looked directly at anyone, even as a baby.
- Free-Range Children: Patrick finds a file on his mum's computer where she writes about her childhood. She, her brothers, and their friends would roam the countryside all day, only coming home for meals. Katherine reads the file and comments, 'They could do what they liked back then, eh? Stay out all day, come back soaking wet.… When I was that age, my mum acted like most of the adult population were paedophiles and child molesters. I wasn't allowed to the end of the road without a police escort.'
- Go to Your Room!: Patrick's father used to punish him by banishing him to his room. He hated being confined and would try to escape, so his father installed a bolt on the outside of the door.
- I Have No Son!: After Patrick died, his father burned all his belongings, cut him out of family pictures, forbade Paul and Joanna from ever mentioning him, and did his best to pretend that Patrick had never existed.
- Innocence Lost: Paul and Joanna both consider the day they saw William die to be the end of their childhood. They lost interest in make believe games, and everything they'd previously interpreted as a sign of UFO activity, they now realised had mundane causes.
- Major Injury Underreaction: According to Joanna, Patrick never reacted to being hit. One day another child threw a rock at him and left a gash on his temple. His only response was to tilt his head so that the blood fell into the stream rather than onto his shirt, because he'd get in trouble for staining it.
- Naughty Birdwatching: Josh volunteers to sit with Gran because her bedroom is the only place where he can see into the neighbours' garden, where Katherine sunbathes in a bikini. He uses Patrick's binoculars, which Patrick used to study the stars, to get a better look.
- Picky Eater: Patrick wouldn't eat anything for breakfast except marmite toast cut into fingers. If his toast was cut wrong, he wouldn't eat at all.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Gran keeps mistaking Josh for his uncle Paul and demanding to know where Patrick is.
- Signature Scent: Josh's grandfather smelled strongly of leather and tobacco. He's been dead for years, but when Josh opens one of his drawers, everything inside still smells like him.
- Trash of the Titans: Gran can't bring herself to throw out anything. The second floor of her house is piled almost floor to ceiling with old mattresses, broken furniture and appliances, suitcases full of clothes, and old magazines and newspapers chewed into nests by rodents.
- Treehouse of Fun: In the months before Patrick died, the Jordan siblings became obsessed with aliens and pretended their treehouse was an intergalactic spaceship.
- Verbal Tic: As a young child, Patrick would repeat the last few words someone said before replying to them. By the time he was thirteen, this had developed into saying 'Mmmmm' before he talked. By middle age, he seems to have grown out of it.
- Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Patrick had epilepsy and undiagnosed Asperger's, and his father took all his differences as a personal affront. When he was younger his father tried hard to force him to act normal, but after Patrick was expelled for his inability to follow instructions, his father focused his energies on Paul, who was the normal son he wanted, mostly ignoring Patrick except to beat him or lock him in his room.
