Nightmare Fuel / What If… (Gamebooks)

• Most dead ends are just problematic rather than frightening to a reader, but there are a few standout moments:
  • Making out with an older guy when you're supposed to pick up your brother from therapy. He breaks his arm on the playground, your friend spreads rumours about you, and your father is traumatized from seeing his daughter in such a compromising situation.
  • A video of you wearing nothing but your bra and panties ends up on the internet, and even when you're on vacation, people recognize you and tease you about it.
  • You haze two younger girls on the soccer team by making them drink a gallon of water, not realizing how dangerous it is, and both of them end up in the emergency room with water intoxication. You get kicked off the soccer team, expelled from school, and then an article about hazing comes out and blames you for all of it, making the whole town shun you.
  • Your most fragile friend has her home life wrecked by a rumour you started, and she becomes bulimic and starts shoplifting in an attempt to feel in-control, both behaviours she'd had and managed to turn around beforehand.
  • You follow a New Year diet that is akin to anorexia and end up severely dehydrated.
  • You start using slimming pills and manage to lose weight without losing energy, but get found out and sent to a psych ward for weeks, along with the friend who told you to use them.
  • Your friend is popping dangerous pills, and when you try to talk her out of it, she ignores you and ends up in the emergency room because you went to her first instead of the school nurse.
• The chapter when Haley doesn't pick up her brother from therapy and her mom didn't get the message to find someone else to do it is rife with worries about leaving your son in a deserted room for hours while he goes into shutdown.
• The hazing rituals in the fifth book are rather scary. The water intoxication is bad enough, but previous teams had made new teammates do things such as eat laxative-laced brownies or drink too much alcohol. They were using water instead not because they thought it was safer (although they did consider that), but because it didn't leave any evidence.

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