Dare Me Part 11

My house is farther, and Coach gets dropped off first, which is a mind-bending prospect.

Will pulls over a half block from her house. Watching them kiss, watching the way he opens her mouth with his, her sneaky looks back at me, the pleasure on her, I feel myself go loose and wondrous inside. I want to be a part of their kiss, and maybe even they want it too.

It's only a five-minute drive to my house, but it feels like it lasts forever, all the misted lightness of Lanvers Peak gone.

"Tonight was the first time I ever saw you without that other girl," Will says. "The one with the freckles."

This seems the craziest way to describe Beth ever, but it makes everything go tight in my head and I remember, coming off the peak, flipping open my phone and seeing missed call, missed call, missed call, missed call, missed call. missed call. A text: A text: you'd best pay attn to me. you'd best pay attn to me.

He looks at me and smiles.

Suddenly, I want to hold the whole night close to my chest and I decide it is mine alone.

"Seeing her tonight, I understand now," he says. "She needs this."

For a second I think he means himself. And, thinking of her that night, so carefree, all the antic restlessness blown out of her, I think he is surely right.

But then he gestures toward my Sutton Eagles duffel bag, and I see he means being coach.

"She needs you girls," he adds.

I nod, meaningfully as I can.

"I know what that's like," he says. "The way you can be saved without ever knowing you were in trouble."

These are the words he says, but they sound like something I'm overhearing, a conversation I'd never be a part of.

"I guess it's funny, me talking to you like this," he says.

I guess it is. Sometimes Coach doesn't seem that much older than me, but Will, with his tragic dead wife and tours of duty, sure does.

"I know we don't really know each other," he admits. "But we know each other in a strange way."

I nod again, though really we don't know each other at all. It makes me think Will is one of those people who just tell everybody everything right away, and usually I don't like those people, those girls at summer camp sharing tales of cutting and kissing their babysitters. But this feels different. Maybe because he's right. Because we share a secret. And because I saw them together that day in the teachers' lounge, which felt like seeing everything.

"She has it hard," he says. "Her husband, he's not the guy you might think he is. She has it very hard."

Maybe it's the bourbon, or the bourbon wearing off, but this doesn't sound exactly right either, not really.

"He gave her that house," I point out.

"It's a cold house," he says, looking out the window. "He gave her a cold house."

"It's her house," I say. "I mean, even if it's cold, it's hers."

He doesn't say anything, and I feel him slipping from me.

"And Caitlin," I say, but this sounds even less convincing. "There's Caitlin."

"Right," he says, shaking his head. "Caitlin."

We both sit for a moment, and I feel suddenly like we both might know something we can't name. About how, in some obscure way, Caitlin was another thing that wasn't a gift so much as the thing that stands in place of the gift. My wedding, my house, my daughter, my cold, cold heart. My wedding, my house, my daughter, my cold, cold heart.

12

"Freaking rock star," RiRi marvels, finger spotting me. RiRi marvels, finger spotting me.

I am doing perfect back tucks, one after another.

I know suddenly I was born to do them. I am a propeller.

"This is what a coach can do." RiRi grins. "Beth would never have let you get this good." is what a coach can do." RiRi grins. "Beth would never have let you get this good."

As soon as she says it, she seems almost to take it back, laughing, like it's a joke. Maybe it is.

"Knees to nose, Hanlon," Coach barks, a sneaky smile dancing there as she walks back into her office.

"Pffht-pffht," comes the sound from the bleachers, where Beth has slunk. "Watch that neck, Addy-Faddy, or it's the ventilator for you. comes the sound from the bleachers, where Beth has slunk. "Watch that neck, Addy-Faddy, or it's the ventilator for you. Pffht-pffht Pffht-pffht."

"Tres J," whistles Emily. But I know Beth isn't jealous of my tuck. She can back handspring, back tuck me into the ground, her body like a twirling streamer.

In the locker room after, Emily kicks her leg up, grabbing her toes as she stands on the center bench. Pea-shoot thin now, fifteen pounds lighter since the month before, she's set to fly with Tacy at the Stallions game. All the hydroxy-hot and activ-8 and boom blasters and South African hoodia-with-green-coffee-extract and most of all her private exertions have made her airy and audacious.

Eyeing her, Tacy is sullen, uneager to share Flyer glory.

Lying on the far end of the bench, Beth stares abstractedly up at the drop ceiling.

"c.o.x-sucka," she calls out to Brinnie c.o.x, who is curling her hair into long sausages and singing to the locker mirror. "How's your head?"

"What do you mean?" Brinnie asks, her arm frozen. "My head is fine."

"That's a relief," Beth says. "I wondered if maybe you were still feeling the blood pushing against your brain. From that header you took a few weeks back."

"No," she says, quietly.

"Beth," I say, a faint try at warning.

"As long as you're not a purger, you should be okay out there tonight. It's the regurgitators who drop like dead weight."

At the other end of the long bench, our girl Emily releases her leg and looks at the reclining Beth, who is staring straight up at the fluorescent lights.

"Chumming all the time," Beth says, "they bust all those blood vessels in their eyes. Then one day, out on the mat, they hit their head and...ping."

Beth snaps her fingers beside her temple.

"Once," she continues, "I heard a 'mia girl fell during a dismount and an eye popped out."

Propping herself up on her elbows, she looks down the long bench straight at Emily.

"But let's not talk of ugly matters," she says. "Our girl Em's going to rock it out tonight. Going out a youngster and coming back a star."

"She'd really miss the Stallions game?"

Ten minutes before kickoff, Beth is nowhere to be found.

She's never no-showed a game. Everyone wonders if something happened, like that time she followed her dad and his paralegal to that Hyatt downtown and keyed the words MAN Wh.o.r.e MAN Wh.o.r.e into the hood of his car. into the hood of his car.

Without her, we have to reconfigure the whole double-hitch pyramid. We count on Beth to be the Middle Flyer, holding onto Tacy's and Emily's inside legs as they swing out their other legs and stretch them sky high. She's the only one light enough to be that high and strong enough to support both girls. It's like juggling jigsaw pieces that don't fit and I can see Coach's face tighten.

"Should we skip the stunt?" I ask Coach.

"No," Coach says, eyes on the field, breeze kicking up. "c.o.x can stand for her."

I look at flimsy Brinnie with her chicken bone legs. Now I see what Beth's game was, putting the scare in Brinnie.

RiRi looks at me, squintingly. But I shrug.

"Coach knows what to do," I say.

Brinnie's right arm starts shaking during the double hitch.

I can see it from the back spot and I'm shouting at her, but fear hurtles across her eyes and there is no stopping it.

On the half-twist Deadman fall, that pin-thin arm of hers gives entirely and Emily, now just an eyelash of a girl, her head dizzy with visions of blood burst, slips and crashes, knee-first, into the foam floor.

Oh, to see her fall is to see how everything can fall.

Her body popping like bubble wrap.

In the back of my brain, I know that the clap we all hear from Emily's knee, like a New Year's champagne cork, is about that back tuck of mine.

Is about Coach and me.

I had epic cramps, Beth texts me that night. Beth texts me that night.

You had it last week, I say. We all had our periods at the same time, the witchiness of girls. I say. We all had our periods at the same time, the witchiness of girls.

Infection, she texts. she texts. Cranjuice all nite, and mom's narvox. Cranjuice all nite, and mom's narvox.

Come clean, I text. She has never missed a game, ever. Not even when her mother slipped on the living room carpet and dented her forehead on the coffee table, forty-seven st.i.tches and three years' worth of vicodin. I text. She has never missed a game, ever. Not even when her mother slipped on the living room carpet and dented her forehead on the coffee table, forty-seven st.i.tches and three years' worth of vicodin.

Clean as a whistle, Merry Sunshine, she texts back. she texts back. Cleaner than yr coach. Cleaner than yr coach.

U know what I mean, I text. I text. Em might have a torn lig. Em might have a torn lig.

There is a long moment and I can almost feel something black open inside Beth's head.

I have a torn life. f.u.c.k all of you.

"Two-game suspension," RiRi tells us. "No Beth for two games. Em's down. And with Miz Jimmy-Arm Brinnie c.o.x spotting us, it means our heads'll be popping all over the mat."

"Tough break," Tacy Slaussen says, trying not to grin. She has her eye on the prize. With Emily and Beth out, she's the only bitty girl left to fly.

"Beth blames it all on Coach," RiRi says.

"Coach?" I say, my eyebrow twitching.

"She said Em fell because she's been living on puffed air and hydroxy for six weeks to hit weight for Coach."

I look at her. "Is that what you think?" I say, surprised at the hardness in my voice, the old lieutenant steel. It doesn't go away.

RiRi's eyes go wide. "No," she says. "No."

I find Beth lying on the bleachers out back, sungla.s.ses on.

"I look at all of you, how you are with her. Your paper-heart parade," she says.

"You never like anyone," I say. "Or anything."

"She never should've staked Brinnie c.o.x, she's too short and too stupid," she says. "And you know how I feel about her teeth."

"You should've showed up," I say, trying to peer behind the black lenses, to see how deep this goes.

"Coach can't top-girl anyone else," Beth says. "She'll beg for me back."