Dare Me Part 35

"I was always afraid of you," she says, touching her cheek lightly, the tread of my shoe dancing faintly there. "Even more than Beth. I heard what you did to her. That scar on her ear."

This time, I don't correct it. What I'd done to Beth. What I I had done to Beth, the scariest bada.s.s we ever knew. had done to Beth, the scariest bada.s.s we ever knew.

I fold my arms and glance down at Tacy. She looks so small.

"I just wanted to be Flyer," she says. "I'm going to be again."

"Sure you are," I say, handing her phone back to her.

She looks up at me as she takes it, and something pa.s.ses over her face.

Dropping her phone into her pocket, she flings her hand upward, as if I should help her to her feet.

"Sure I am," she repeats, brightening. "I mean, you're gonna bust Beth now, right?"

A smile wiggling there, she adds, "Then I'll be Flyer again."

I was there, but I didn't do anything. That's what Coach had said. That's what Coach had said.

I was with him, but I found him too. It's all true.

Matt French's phone blips, he looks at the screen, he sees that picture, reads those words: Look at the kind of woman you're married to. Look at the trash she opens her legs for.

A mistake that also happens to be true.

So Matt French, he sees the military uniform and goes hunting. Finds out who the recruiter is. Or he just checks his wife's phone, her e-mails, something. Anything.

He finds out where this recruiter lives, and he drives out there, to that empty steel tower on the edge of nothing, and he finds his wife and her lover.

And...and...

And he wants me to know.

And then there's Coach, the alibi she built for me.

"So last Monday you were there with your coach and her husband?" the detective had asked.

"Yes," I said.

Coach protecting Matt French, Matt French protecting Coach. The things between them, their webbed history and hidden hearts, and so instead of turning on each other, they are raising the ramparts high. The two of them locked in something blood-deep. Who knows what lies between them now? Wrists crossed, head to head, they are closing so tight, but they need me.

They do.

And Beth. There is Beth.

30

MONDAY: TWELVE HOURS TO FINAL GAME

Work hard and believe in yourself. believe in yourself. That's what they always tell you. But that's not really it at all. It's the things you can't say aloud, the knowledge that what you're doing, climbing high, jumping, hurling yourself into the air, hooking arms, legs around each other to create something that will collapse with the bobble of one knee, a twist of a wrist. That's what they always tell you. But that's not really it at all. It's the things you can't say aloud, the knowledge that what you're doing, climbing high, jumping, hurling yourself into the air, hooking arms, legs around each other to create something that will collapse with the bobble of one knee, a twist of a wrist.

Standing back, Emily said, saying the thing you're never supposed to say, Emily said, saying the thing you're never supposed to say, it's like you're trying to kill each other and yourself. it's like you're trying to kill each other and yourself.

The knowing that what you are all doing, together, is the most delicate thing, fragile as spun gla.s.s, and driven by magic and abandon, your body doing things your head knows it can't, your bodies locking together to defy gravity, logic, death itself.

If they told you these things, you would never join cheer. Or maybe you would.

In the morning, it takes a long time under the showerhead to get my blood moving. To pinp.r.i.c.k my skin to life. To get my head game.

I stand under the bracing gush for so long, looking at my body, counting every bruise. Touching every tender place. Watching the swirl at my feet.

I'm really just trying to jack up my heart.

I think, This is my body, and I can make it do things. I can make it move, flip, fly. This is my body, and I can make it do things. I can make it move, flip, fly.

After the squall of a blow-dryer, I gather my hair, sliding in bobby pin after bobby pin, pulling it all into place.

I stand in front of the mirror, my face bare, flushed, taut.

Slowly, my hands lifting, the sticky nozzle, dusty brushes, oily wands waving in front of my face, fuchsia streaking up my cheeks, my lashes stiffened to brilliant black, my hair stiff, gleaming, pin-tucked.

The perfumed mist, thick in my throat, settling.

I look in the mirror.

And it's finally me there, and I look like no one I've ever seen before.

"Game Day-Kill Celts!!" shrieks the banner across the school entrance, a tissue paper eagle, wings stiff and high, rising behind it.

I let my heart rise to it.

The morning pa.s.ses, I don't see Beth at all, and Coach has called in sick. That's all anyone can talk about.

She's abandoned us twice, three times over. We are losing count.

She doesn't care about us at all.

She hates us.

"What did we do wrong?" the JV girl sobs, pressing her face against her locker door. "What did we do?"

School skitters by without touching me, and Tacy, face bleach-white, will not meet my gaze.

I am thinking of things, of the Abyss and its greasy stare and how I won't blink. I can't.

At three fifteen we are in the gym, jumping high.

"Scout's a-coming!" RiRi hollers. "Wait till she sees what we got!"

Everyone screams.

And it feels like G.o.d touching me. What would I do without this, because here I am, propelling to heaven itself, soles resting on Mindy's knotty shoulders-or on the floor, knees sponging, lifting Brinnie c.o.x, nimble feet in my palm, surging her straight to G.o.d.

That feeling, it is G.o.d's greatest gift.

Just like that adderall. Found that morning in the corner of my hoodie pocket from a long ago act of Beth's generosity, it gallops through me, and I know I can do anything.

When you have nothing inside you, you feel everything more, and feel you can control all of it.

With Jesus in my heart, and with that seismic blast, who could stop my ascent? Any of ours?

In the locker room, forty minutes to game time, we are Vegas showgirlspangled. The air thick with biofreeze and tiger balm and hairspray and the sugared coconut of tawny body sprays, it is like being in a soft coc.o.o.n of sugar and love.

There's RiRi, slinging her curling iron like a gunfighter, shaping the spring-shot ponytail, its helix curls.

There's Paige Shepherd, temp tattoo blazing across her tan face, kicking her leg high and twisting, tumbling into Mindy's arms, her wrists black duct-taped like Roman gladiator cuffs.

See Cori Brisky, rubbing flexall on her numbing wrists, her smile showing all her teeth, and how sharp they are, and I know that there's a jungle princess in there who's ready for hot blood.

See even sh.e.l.l-shocked Emily, our fallen comrade, fingers glazed with icy hot, running it across Mindy's armor shoulder blades, whispering in her ear.

And there I am. If you could see me-tall, tight, lightsome, and powerful, flipping my back tucks on the slippery tile, afraid of nothing, no one. Just try to stop me.

That's what people never understand: They see us hard little pretty things, brightly lacquered and sequin-studded, and they laugh, they mock, they arouse themselves. They miss everything.

You see, these glitters and sparkle dusts and magicks? It's war paint, it's feathers and claws, it's blood sacrifice.

But where's our fearsome leader? Either of them?

We need somebody to gather all this hectic energy, to link these pulsing organs into one powerful, unstoppable body.

What if that somebody were me?

Moving girl to girl, I start back-stroking, French-braiding, tiger-balming, offering rallying words, C'mon girls, let's show them what we got. C'mon girls, let's show them what we got.

I even talk, for the first time ever, to that poor yellow peep JV, the one who will have to fly tonight if Beth doesn't show, the one shivering like a downy chick.

I know I can lift her, I can.

She's not a girl but a b.u.t.terfly resting on my fingertips.

But then there's a clatter from the backdoors, and a flurry of whoops and bratty squeals and, baby lamb JV tucked under my arm, I turn and know I will see her.

Beth.

Leaping up on the locker room bench, eyelids scorched with blue glitter, she heaves her throaty voice to the drop ceiling.

"h.e.l.la, b.i.t.c.hes!" she bellows, rocking her feet on the bench so it shudders. "Our scout, that Regionals scout, I can feel her out there, waiting. And, b.i.t.c.hes, she is so ready to be f.u.c.ked."

The gasp from us is loud and exultant.

"I've just trawled through that gym to check out the Celt squad and I've never seen anything so appalling. Ana girls with accordion ribs, a coupla d.y.k.ey ringers with treebark legs and Charlie Brown faces. And those Celt ballers, skidding and squeaking, tossing that baby's ball around like they're kings of the world? Pathetic."

Everyone, so eager, twirling near her, just like the old days when she'd preen and twist and flash her blue Eagles tatts and we'd clamor, Give it to us, Captain, rise up, rise up!... Give it to us, Captain, rise up, rise up!...

"You know who the stars are? We are. Why? Because we don't throw around a f.u.c.king rubber ball. You know what we we throw around? Live girls. Do you know who flies? We do. You know what we hurl to the rafters? Each other." throw around? Live girls. Do you know who flies? We do. You know what we hurl to the rafters? Each other."

I hear Emily's tender gasp behind me, her boot brace clacking, and the m.u.f.fled squeal of the JV Flyer.

"Tonight, you've got to spill their blood," she says, her raised arm, her temples, her neck pulsing, "or I promise you they will spill yours."

There's a dark roiling on Beth and it's starting to sweep through us. We are letting it, all of us.

"Brace those arms. Bolt those knees. Look at that crowd like you're about to give them the best piece of a.s.s they ever had. Sell it."

The feelings charging through the room, they're complicated and incendiary and none of us, not even me, can name them all. Everything in Beth, in her swarthy energy, so repulsive and so captivating- "Bases, eyes on your Flyer, she is yours. You lock her to your heart. You lose her, blood on the mat. She is yours. Make her."

All the swirling ponytails nod in unison, as if they know, as if any of us know what Beth, veins tight on her upstretched arms, means or could ever mean.

"JV," Beth says, pointing her witching finger at the yearling under my arm, and because none of us really know her name. "You fail, you fail all of us. So you will not fail."

The JV shakes her head back and forth, looking like she might cry.