Dare Me Part 39

"After, I remember shouting, 'How could you do this to me?'" she says with almost a wry laugh. "But which one of them was I saying it to?"

How could you do this to me? I wonder if she knows she's still saying it in her sleep. I wonder if she knows she's still saying it in her sleep.

"When I came home that night, all the drawers were open, the file cabinet dumped on the floor. He'd gone through everything," Coach says. "But I don't know what started it."

I don't say anything.

"I don't think he ever meant to use that gun at all," she says. "That's not how he is."

"But if Matt explains how it was, if you both do," I say, my voice rising up, "maybe they'll let him go."

She looks at me wearily, as if to say, And then what, Addy? Then what? And then what, Addy? Then what?

"I saw his face right before," she says. "Will's face. I saw the way he was looking at Matt."

She turns to me.

"He never looked at me at all."

Picturing Will, I think I finally see what it was. I could never name it before, the way his eyes were always drifting, never connecting. There was the feeling with him always of a room everybody had left.

"Tonight, just before they came to arrest him," she says, "Matt said, 'What they'll never believe is that he wanted to die.' He said, 'Colette, it doesn't seem fair that I get to know that. That I get that. But it's true.'"

She looks at me, smiling sadly. "But you know what? He's right. It really isn't fair that he gets to know that."

Her smile turning grim. "Because that doesn't help me."

We sit quietly for a long time.

"Coach," I say, my voice surprising me. Then I ask something because I have the feeling it's my last chance to ever ask it. "I never knew why you love it. Cheer. How you came to love it."

She runs a finger along her upper lip. "I never loved it," she says, shaking her head. "It was just a thing. I never cared about it at all."

I don't believe her.

"What happens now?" I say.

She looks at me and laughs.

A few days later, I'm watching the news, my new habit, when I see the latest report.

"The break came when a witness identified Matthew French as the man he had spotted running from The Towers apartment building the night of the murder. Sources say the witness reported that, under the parking lot lights, it looked like French's clothes were covered in blood."

You can't keep secrets long, and it's RiRi who tells me who the witness was.

Jordy Brennan, crooked nose and high-tops.

One of his late-night runs, he made it nearly all the way to Wick Park. Spotting the bright lights of The Towers parking lot, he stopped to look for just the right song for the run home.

I wonder what it must have been like to see Matt French tearing through those front doors. If Jordy was really close enough to see any blood. If he was close enough to see the expression on Matt French's face. Sometimes I feel like I can.

Jordy Brennan. I picture him up there, taking long, dragging breaths in the frosted air, during the moments before he saw Matt French. Just a few hundred yards from the spot where he once kissed me messily for a half hour or more, those vacant eyes of his shut tight. Believing something was beginning. I picture him up there, taking long, dragging breaths in the frosted air, during the moments before he saw Matt French. Just a few hundred yards from the spot where he once kissed me messily for a half hour or more, those vacant eyes of his shut tight. Believing something was beginning.

Those moments when he stood up there, catching his breath, looking for his song, I wonder if he thought about me.

I visit Beth in the hospital once. It's very late and past visiting hours, but I don't want to see her mom again or all the squad girls teeming there, at first as if on deathwatch and then as if on a healing prayer vigil. Oh, to see them and to watch their paroxysms, like Salem witches tearing their hair out, lolling their tongues.

Then, when the Reaper no longer lurked and there was no more talk of intracranial bleeding and cognitive impairment, they turned to epic poems on the We Miss You Beth! Facebook page, where everyone wishes their and and get well soon, sistuhs! get well soon, sistuhs! and to hourly deliveries, cookie bouquets, pluming gift baskets stuffed with smiley-face cupcakes, teddy bears donning nurse's hats. Everything Beth would just love. and to hourly deliveries, cookie bouquets, pluming gift baskets stuffed with smiley-face cupcakes, teddy bears donning nurse's hats. Everything Beth would just love.

So I come late, the hospital blue and lonesome.

I stand at her bed, my hands on the side rails.

There's a start in my chest when I see she's awake, her eyes bright in the moonlight, as if waiting for me.

She tells me she didn't think I'd come, that everyone has come but me.

"Even my dad," she says, smiling faintly. "He wants to talk about a lawsuit. Can you figure?"

I tell her Coach has left town, has taken Caitlin to her mother's, will only come back for the trial.

But she doesn't say anything and it's a while before she talks again.

When she does, she starts in the dreamy middle of something, her words caught in her lips.

"I'll never forget seeing it. How she came in one day and I saw her wearing it," she says, her voice wool-thick and plaintive. "I couldn't believe it when I saw it. It was the worst part, worse than anything."

I don't know what she means, and wonder about the things happening in her brain.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "You gave it to her, the very same one, the very same."

She keeps looking at me, a barely banked fire there, hovering behind her eyes.

"How could you give her that bracelet, Addy?" she asks.

The bracelet. I can't believe we're back on the hamsa bracelet after everything that's happened. The fluid pressing on Beth's skull, that's what it is, like when it happened, the black blood pooling in her ear.

I shake my head. "It was just a bracelet, Beth. I don't even remember where I got it-"

"I mean, that was the worst part," she says. "It really was."

That's when I remember.

A present for you, Beth had said when she gave it to me a year ago, or more. Beth had said when she gave it to me a year ago, or more. Wear it forever. Wear it forever. Which I think is the same thing I'd hoped for Coach. Which I think is the same thing I'd hoped for Coach.

"I forgot," I say. Which must be a lie, but it's one of the pieces I don't look at. Like Beth says, I choose what to look at. I choose what to remember. Beth is my memory, remembering for me.

"You've given me lots of bracelets. We all do that," I say. "It's what we do."

It's a terrible thing to say, but I'm ashamed.

"I shouldn't have kept it," she says. "I should have thrown it down the gorge. Down at the bottom of the gorge with the Apache maidens."

"I can't believe I forgot," I say, softer now.

Her eyes gla.s.sing, she turns away.

"It was you and me, Addy," she says.

Something plucks inside of me, something deep and near forgotten.

"Addy, are we going to pretend forever? I know you remember," she says, her back to me.

But of course I remember. I know precisely what she is holding tight.

A year ago, early spring, drunken sky-searching at midnight up on the ridge, cold enough to see our breath, but Beth, stripped to streaky-white, and the way I leaped after her, foot sliding in wet leaves, and my hand on her back, hot to the touch.

Collapsing to mossy soil, our backs sinking into it, our faces pitched up to the sky. Just back from two weeks with her mother in Baja, she has something for me, and asks me to lay my hand across her belly and close my eyes. The feeling of the soft leather on my wrist, the cold amulet, the Hand of Fatima charm.

And she told me the story of Fatima, how she was stirring a pot when her husband came home with a new wife. Brokenhearted, she let the ladle slip from her fingers and kept stirring with her own hand, not noticing the pain.

"The hand protects you," she said. "Nothing can hurt it now. Nothing can touch us now."

We raised our arms in the air and let our wrists touch, the beam from its mirrored hand, its promise of protection.

Wearing it, it made me feel strong and safe. Powerful. It made me feel like her.

Lying there, our shorts riding up, we compared the plummy bruises that marked both our right hips, matching thumbprints from where Mindy, Cori, and other girls would press hard to spin into their stunts.

She pushed at mine and I poked hers, and, wincing, we kept pushing on each other's, the pain mysterious and soothing and strange.

How did it happen, us tangled upon each other?

My breath on her neck, my mouth on her ear. I started it, but I don't even remember why or how. We never tugged our shorts all the way off, and we never did what things we might do, but if I let myself, I can still feel my cheek on her knee bone, still feel the pressure of her hands on my thighs. My mouth on her mouth, her laughing.

We never talked about it, and things were maybe different after. Maybe I felt different.

Then the season ended and there was a boy or another boy, and cheer camp, and I bunked with Casey Jaye and wore the love knot Casey gave me, and things got bad and were never the same again. And when she saw Casey and me, legs swinging from the upper bunk, laughing-the look on her face, and the look on mine. I can guess what mine looked like.

No, I don't think about it ever, that night with Beth up high on the ridge.

There was a wonder in it, and who needs to talk of such wonders? We nestle them away, deep in the fury at the center of us, where things can be held tightly, protected, and secretly cherished as a special notion we once held, then had to stow away.

"You never could look at yourself, Addy," she says. "What you wanted, what you'd do to get it. But here you are."

Here I am.

"You wanted it. It's yours now," she says. "It was always you."

33

AUGUST CHEERLEADER TRYOUTS

"The one shining thing about high school for me has been cheer." thing about high school for me has been cheer."

Pacing in front of the fifteen soon-to-be JV girls in the epically hot gym, first day of summer cheer camp, that's me, offering it up. The words, true and real.

"There are people who say it isn't cool," I say, "who make fun of it, but I've never cared. I know they don't have what I have."

Sitting on the long mats, their fluffy faces, eyes cartoon-wide, they gaze up at me as though I were pa.s.sing along all the wisdom of the world, which I am.

"Cheer has given me a purpose. It has given me a hard body and a strong mind. And I've made friends for life."

RiRi at my side, I walk the length of the mat, back straight, chin high.

"Don't you want to be able to say that?" I say. "If you do, you have to hang tight and tough with your girls."

They all nod, soundless.

"If you don't trust each other," I say, "this mat becomes your gangplank."

The hush falls even greater now. I'm swinging my whistle and all you can hear is the faint scratch of it as it brushes against my sweats.

Emily marches up beside me, her wounded leg back in fighting form, her mind swept clean of her Ca.s.sandra-like horrors. She is finished with all that. I know. I showed her how.

Lifting her elbow, she rests it on my shoulder, jaw up. She and RiRi, my deputies, my bad lieutenants.

"We've got five weeks before the new coach begins," I say, "but I choose not to waste those weeks. Do you?"

Clicking jaws, flipping ponytails, rocking in their Indian-style poses, their jelly legs waiting to be molded. Rescued from mediocrity. Saved.

"I choose to excel, not compete-do you?

"I choose to make changes, not excuses-do you?