Dare Me Part 12

"I don't think so," I say. "She's a rule-keeper."

"Is that so?" Beth wriggles up and stares at me, eyes like silver-rimmed globes, an insect, or alien. "That hasn't been my experience of her."

I look at her.

"She may have the clipboard and the whistle," Beth says, "but I have something too."

"We're not saying anything," I say, my voice going faster. "We said we wouldn't."

"Are we a 'we' again?" she says, sinking back down onto the bench. "And I didn't promise anything."

"If you were going to say something," I say, "you would've."

"You know that's not how to play. That's not how to win."

"You don't understand," I say. "The two of them. It's not like you think."

"Yeah," she says, looking at me, nail-hard. "You know better? You've seen into her knotted soul?"

"There's things you don't know," I say. "About him, about them."

"Things I don't know, huh?" she says, something less than a taunt, more urgent. "Illuminate. Like what? Like what, Addy?"

But I don't tell. I don't want to give her anything. I see something now. She's building a war chest.

The next night, Coach has everyone over for a party for Emily, whose fall has put her on the DL for six weeks, maybe more.

No one can even imagine six weeks. It's a lifetime.

It's too cold to be outside, but after the wine swells in all of us, we're even taking off our jackets, lounging lovely across the deck, watching the sky grow dark. Emily gets prime seat, high-kicking her boot brace for all to see, her eyes stoned on percocet. The happiest girl in the world, for tonight.

I decide to banish Beth's hex from my head. She fell because she's been living on puffed air and hydroxy.... She fell because she's been living on puffed air and hydroxy....

Coach maps out our Sat.u.r.day stunts on napkins spread across the gla.s.s-top patio table. We huddle around eagerly, following Coach's sharpie as it plots our fates.

"We have three weeks until the final game against the Celts," Coach says. "We shine there, we have a qualifying tape to submit, we go to Regionals next year."

We are all beaming.

No one asks about Beth until Tacy, Beth's former flunky, our little stone-drunk Benedict Arnold, bleats, "And who needs Ca.s.sidy? We don't need the haters. We're going to Regionals with or without the haters."

We're all a little nervous, but Coach smiles lightly, looping her bracelet around her wrist. I smile to see it's my hamsa bracelet, its eye flashing in the porch light.

"Ca.s.sidy'll be back," she says. "Or not. But she won't be our Flyer again."

She looks down at her squiggled hieroglyphics.

"She's not the straw that stirs the drink," she says.

Eyeing the Flyer spot on the diagram, I watch her pen skim right and left, a big black X right in the center.

It's not until very late that we're jarred by Matt French's car door slamming from the driveway and, the same instant, Coach's deck chair shakes to life.

Dad's home, that's what it's like, and everyone jumps. We all scurry to the kitchen, start stacking plates and shaking wine gla.s.ses empty over our mouths, and I'm helping RiRi hide the empties behind the evergreen shrubs. The bottles clanging loudly. Matt French must know. He must hear everything. that's what it's like, and everyone jumps. We all scurry to the kitchen, start stacking plates and shaking wine gla.s.ses empty over our mouths, and I'm helping RiRi hide the empties behind the evergreen shrubs. The bottles clanging loudly. Matt French must know. He must hear everything.

We're swooping around the kitchen island, loading the dishwasher and chomping on our organic ginger gum, and Coach is talking to him in the other room, asking him, her speech so slow and careful, about his day.

Through the swinging cafe doors, he looks very tired and he's talking but I can't quite make out the words.

He reaches out to touch her arm just at the moment she turns to hand him the mail.

I think how exhausted he must be, how maybe if he were my husband, even though he's not handsome at all, maybe I'd want to sit him down and rub his shoulders, and maybe get one of those lemony men's lotions, and rub his shoulders and his hands. And maybe that'd be nice, even if he's not good-looking and his forehead is way too high and he has little wiry hairs in his ears and I never think about him like that, really.

But he's tired after his long day and he comes home and there we are, bansheeing all over his house, all cranked high and slipping-free braids and ponytails, and Coach talks to him and it's like how she talks to the other teachers at school, holding their mottled coffee mugs and making the smallest talk ever.

His shoulders tucking in wearily, I see him flinching at all the clamorous girl energy radiating from the kitchen.

"Colette," I think he says, "I was calling all day. I called all day."

I'm not sure, but I think I hear him say something about Caitlin, about the day care center phoning him, asking where she was.

Coach's hand is over her mouth and she is staring at her feet in a way I recognize from myself, the nights when my dad still waited up, demanded to know things.

Suddenly, there's a loud crash from the back deck, like gla.s.ses falling.

"Coach!" someone hollers from outside. "We're sorry. We're really sorry."

13

"Everybody give the chicken a warm welcome," Coach says, giving a gentle shove to the latest recruit, a JV cheerleader getting her shot at the show. A hammer-headed girl with a body like a tuning fork. No one will mind her landing headfirst on the spring floor. She'll just chicken a warm welcome," Coach says, giving a gentle shove to the latest recruit, a JV cheerleader getting her shot at the show. A hammer-headed girl with a body like a tuning fork. No one will mind her landing headfirst on the spring floor. She'll just ting. ting.

"She's on me," Mindy surmises, curling her neck side to side. "I turn her out."

Mindy knows she can lift the shavetail rafters-high, a girl like that, not more than ninety pounds soaking wet, and she even looks wet, a dew on her that's probably flop sweat.

"Not before she pays her dues," RiRi says, arms folded. "We all fly her first."

New girls get tossed hard first time out. Initiate-style. And we like to rock them side to side.

"Mat kill," mutters Tacy, newly hard, suddenly a senior statesman of the squad.

No one asks about Beth. She's barely been in school these past three days, and Coach seems very calm in her victory.

It's after midnight when my phone hisses, rattling my bedside tabletop.

Can u pick me up? Cnr Hutch & 15.

Beth. The first text in five days. The longest stretch since she went to horse camp in the mountains after seventh grade, returning with a ringlet of hickeys from a counselor and fresh revelations about the world.

Creeping through the house, I unhitch the car keys from the kitchen door hook. Anyone could hear the car shaking to life in the garage, but if they do, they ignore it. My father nuzzled close to my stepmother, she muzzled by her nightly dose of sleep aids.

Beth is standing on the corner, and her face when the headlights. .h.i.t is a surprise. It's Beth bare-faced, which is scarier than her hooded eyes, her teengirl snarl.

Her face splayed open, like it almost never is, and mascara-spattered eyes blinking relentlessly, staring straight into the center of me.

With the headlights in her face, she can't really see me, but it feels like she can. She knows I'm there.

It's a thing to see, her face so bare. I almost want to turn away. I don't want to feel for her.

By the time she's in the car, her face is shuttered tight once more. She doesn't give me much of anything, not even a h.e.l.lo, and sets about punching text messages.

"Where were you?" I ask.

"Guard duty," she mutters, thumbs flying on her little keyboard.

"What?" I say.

Thump-thump-thump that thumb of hers, thumping.

"What?" I say again. "What did you say?"

"Sarge Stud...," she says, and I hold my breath, "...ain't the only stars and stripes in town."

She sets her phone down and glances at me, sly smile playing there.

"Which one?" I ask. All those rawboned soldiers who stood at that table with Will, rawboned and callow, steel-wool scrubbed.

"Bullet head," Beth says. "Prine. Corporal Gregory Prine. Gregorius, let's call him. You know the one."

I picture him, tongue waggling at me, fingers forked there, that acne-studded brow and sense of frat menace.

"Well," I say, feeling sick. "Bad Girls' Club for you, eh?"

"h.e.l.ls-yeah," she says, a rattle laugh.

But I look at her hands, which are shaking. She clasps her phone to try to stop them. When I see it, something in me turns.

"Beth." I feel all the blood rushing from my face. I can't quite name it, but it's a sense of abandon. "Why?"

"Why not?" she replies, and her voice husky, her hair falling across her face. "Why not, Addy? Why not?"

I think she might cry. In her way, she is.

14

Little Caitlin, her doughy face with that cherry-stem mouth, baby-soft hair sticking to her bulbed forehead. doughy face with that cherry-stem mouth, baby-soft hair sticking to her bulbed forehead.

Sitting on Coach's sofa, I watch her amble around her strewn toys, the pink plastic and the yellow fluff of girlhood, everything glitter-silted. She steps with such care through the detritus of purple-maned ponies, gauzy-winged tutus, and all the big-eyed dolls-dolls nearly as empty-eyed as Caitlin, who reminds me of one of those stiff-limbed walking ones the richest girls always had, and we'd knock them over with the backs of our hands, or walk them into swimming pools or down bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. Like stacking them up in pyramids just to watch them fall.

"I know, I know. Please, will you, will you...listen to me, baby. Listen close."

In the dark dining room, Coach is on the phone, fingers hooked around the bottom of the low-hanging chandelier, turning it, twisting it in circles until I hear a sickly creak.

For hours she's been hand-wringing, jabbing her thumb into the center of her palm, molding it there, her teeth nearly grinding, her eyes straying constantly to her cell phone. Ten times in ten minutes, a phantom vibration. Picking it up, nearly shaking it. Begging it to come to life. We can't finish a conversation, sure can't practice dive rolls in the yard. Any of the things she promised me.

Finally, her surrender, slipping into the other room and her voice high and rushed. Will? Will? But you...but Will... Will? Will? But you...but Will...

Now, Caitlin's play-doh feet stomp over mine, her gummy hands on my knees as she pushes by me, and I want out. It's all so sticky and unfun and I feel the air clog in my throat. For the first time since Coach let me into her home, I wish I'd gone instead with RiRi to her new boyfriend's place, where they were drinking ginger-and-Jack in the backyard and smashing croquet b.a.l.l.s up and down the long slope of the lawn.

But then Coach, phone raised high in hand like a trophy, tears into the living room, her face suddenly shooting nervy energy.

She is transformed.

"Addy, can you do me a favor?" she says, fingering the hamsa bracelet, its amulet flaring at me. "Just this once?"

She kneels down before me, her arms resting on my knees. It's like a proposal.

Her face so soft and eager, I feel like she must feel when she looks at me.

"Yes," I say, smiling. "Sure, yes. Yes." Always. Always.