Dare Me Part 9

But it's always complicated with Beth and me, where her desire ends and mine begins. Because when we first hear the sound, I realize it's me who wants it more. Wants something to happen.

And then it does.

A yard or two from the door to the teachers' lounge, we hear something.

The rough rhythmic sound of a chair skidding, lurchingly, across the floor behind the teachers' lounge door. It seems, suddenly, to be just for me.

Sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe.

Beth's eyes nearly pop with pleasure.

We're standing outside the door, listening.

I'm shaking my head back and forth and whispering soundlessly don't, don't, don't don't, don't, don't as Beth, bouncing on her toes, leaning against the teachers' lounge door, dancing her fingers along it and mouthing things to me. as Beth, bouncing on her toes, leaning against the teachers' lounge door, dancing her fingers along it and mouthing things to me. I'm opening it, I am, yes, yes, I sure am, Addy. I'm opening it, I am, yes, yes, I sure am, Addy.

I put my hand on the door too, which vibrates with all that clamor inside, that squeaking and thudding. My ear against the humming door, I can hear the breathless pant. It sounds so pained, I think. It sounds like the worst hurt in the world ever.

Like after RiRi lost it to Dean Grady at that party on Windmere and bled for hours in the bathroom and we kept pulling toilet paper from the roll in long, sloping drifts, like she was gonna die. Like she was gonna- Just like that, Beth pushes her hip against the teachers' lounge door, and it swings open, and we see it all.

Every bit of it.

There, seated on one of the old swivel chairs, is Sarge Will, National Guardsman Will, and Coach spanning his lap, her legs bare and looped around him like a pale ribbon, feet dangling high, and his dress blue blazer asunder, wrapped around her snowy nakedness, his hands pressed against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his face red and helpless. Her thighs are shuddering whitely and his hand curves around the back of her head, buried in her dark hair, sweat-stuck and triumphant.

Her face, though, that's what you can't take your eyes off of.

The dreamy look, her pinkening cheeks, all elation and mischief and wonder, like I never saw in her, like she's never been with us, so strict and exacting and distant, like a cool machine.

It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

I feel myself jostled backwards into Beth the instant Coach's eyes meet mine, alarm and dread there. I feel myself hurling both Beth and me out the door, Beth's laughter clanging through the corridor, my hand dragging the door shut, closing my eyes to it. Wondering if I even saw what I saw.

But looking at Beth's gleeful, mocking face, I know I have. I've seen it.

Later, I think about it. It wasn't like in the movies, soft-lit bodies writhing creamily under satin sheets.

It lasted only a second, so how could it pierce me with such th.o.r.n.y beauty-but it does.

Coach's face that long, hectic second before she saw me.

Like someone climbing her way out of the darkest tunnel, her mouth wide and gasping for air.

And his eyes shut so tight, face locking itself into place, as if to let go would destroy everything, would bury her again, and he only wants to save her, to breathe that hot life into her.

And she, gasping for air.

By the time Coach finds us in the locker room, Beth and me jackrabbity with t.i.tillation, everything that had opened, gloriously, is shut again.

She is once more that iron ingot, hard and feverless, walking with purpose but without hurry, with no wilt or lilt in her step, no hair out of place from that shiny crest of hers.

In her office, she pulls the blinds down on the door then shakes out a handful of cigarettes on the desk.

This has never happened before, this offering.

Beth and I each take one, and I know what it means for me, to me.

And I know what it means to Beth, high on her new power perch, nuzzling her new wisdom close to her freckled chest.

But this, the extent of this, I can't think about yet.

Coach lights mine and when she does I look in her eyes and that's when I see she hasn't put on all the calm she wants. Those flat gray eyes are jumping.

Beth, leaning back in Coach's seat, kicks her legs up and props her feet against the front of the desk. Scuffing its laminated edge.

She is very pleased.

As Coach walks past me to the window, I catch the scent, just barely. Sharp and fleshy and stinging my nose and making me think of Drew Calhoun's bedsheets that time, the smell on them, even though we didn't, but he did. making me think of Drew Calhoun's bedsheets that time, the smell on them, even though we didn't, but he did.

"I need you to understand what Will-what the Sergeant and I have is a real thing," she lets her gaze flit over us quickly. "A true thing."

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Beth piano-keying her fingers along her chin.

"I never thought it would happen," Coach says, and I think she means cheating on her husband. But then she says, "I never thought I'd feel like this."

I look at her, her hands pulling at the wand of the window blinds, lacing around it and tugging like a little girl with her whole hand wrapped around her father's index finger.

Feel like what, I want to ask, but don't.

"Do you guys understand?" she asks, tilting her head, a strand of that perfect hair slipping across her face, grazing her mouth.

I do not look at Beth.

"I waited my whole life for it," Coach says, and I feel a buzzing in my chest. "I never thought it would happen. And then it did."

She looks at us.

"Wait until it happens to you," she says, breathing hard and her body twisting with it. With these magic words.

"Wait until it's you."

Don't tell anyone.

That night, fingers plucking the b.u.t.tons on my duvet cover, thumbs on my phone, Beth's texts blipping under my fingers. Agreed. This is just us. We keep quiet 4 now. Agreed. This is just us. We keep quiet 4 now.

I shut off my phone.

Wriggling there, thinking it all through, I start to see, for the first time, how it might be for Coach, young and pretty and strong. Why should she be stuck all day rousting chickens like us, or at least like some of us, on the sh.e.l.lacked floors of the Sutton Grove High School gym, our hapless ponytails flying, smarting off, being lazy, spitting gum on the floor, whining about periods and boys? She spends all her days like this and then home to her kid, pucker-mouthed and red-faced, a day of sugar and agitation in preschool, and her husband at work until the nightly news sometimes.

I start to think of it differently, as a home filled not with ease and liberty but with irritation and woe. Who wouldn't need the ministrations of the likes of Sergeant Will, and what he might give her? I wonder what he gives her and why we aren't enough.

10

"I knew, knew," Beth says, before practice the next day, lifting her leg into a heel stretch. "I knew there was something wrong with her. What a fake, what a liar." says, before practice the next day, lifting her leg into a heel stretch. "I knew there was something wrong with her. What a fake, what a liar."

"Beth," I say. But the warning flare in her eyes says I better tread lightly.

"Beth," I say, "can you show me how you get your foot behind your head like that? Can you help?"

We are in Coach's backyard after practice, just the two of us. She has invited me. Just me.

We haven't spoken about Sarge Will, not yet.

Coach is trying to help me with my standing back tuck, which is weak at best. It's really just a tight backflip from a standing position and is one of those stunts all real cheerleaders can do in their sleep. RiRi says college cheerleaders do them at parties-"Tuck check!"-to test each other's drunkenness.

One of her hands on my waist, Coach uses the other to pull my knees up, flipping me hard as soon as I'm off the ground, her arms like a propeller.

She is in that focus mode where she doesn't even look me in the eye but treats my body like a new machine with parts not yet broken in. Which is what it is.

"If you can't back tuck," she says, "you can't land most tumbling stunts." What she doesn't say: since I don't fly or do Bottom Base, I need to be able to tumble.

I need to nail it.

"The pull is just as important as the set," she is saying, her breath fogging in near dusk. I can feel it on my face as she knocks her hip against mine. "You can have the best set in the world but if you don't pull your legs around after it, you're still going to land short."

Over and over, I start strong, arms up brace-tight, only to land on my hands, my knees, the tips of my toes.

It's a head thing. I feel certain I will fall. And then I do, my foot twisting beneath me.

"You think too much," Beth used to tell me.

She's right. Because if you think about it, you realize you can't possibly jump into the air and rotate yourself 360 degrees. No one can do that.

Beth, of course, does a flawless standing back tuck, and it's something to see.

It is incredibly high and perfect.

But Beth grabs from behind the thighs, not the shins like Coach likes.

"I don't want that sloppy stuff from you," Coach says. "Don't waste my time with that."

Again and again, my shins gra.s.s-streaked and the sky heavy with dusk.

"Chest up," she shouts, every time I land, to keep me from falling forward.

Finally, I'm getting cleaner and she stops flipping me. And I start falling. She lets me fall every time.

"It's a blind landing, Hanlon," she says. "You're trying to find the ground. You gotta know it's not there."

I try to pretend I'm her. Try to feel tight like she does, so tight nothing can touch her. I think of squeezing my whole body into a tight ball.

"Ride that jump longer," her voice out there somewhere, vibrating in my ear, her hands there but not.

And then releasing.

"Open your body," she keeps saying, and it's shuddering through my whole head. "Open it."

And I feel myself doing just that, an explosion from the center of me to my toes, my fingertips.

It is just after dark, the timered deck lamps leaping to life, when I start landing it.

The feeling is breathtaking, and I know I can do anything.

I feel like I could rotate myself forever and land every time, arms upraised, chest high, body both shattered then restored. Immaculate.

The night outside her front picture window is blue-shivery, but we are curled on her sofa, our legs folded under ourselves, our bodies loose and victorious.

"Addy, I know how it probably looks," Coach is saying to me, leaning close, cigarettes and tall plastic cups of matcha green tea as my back tuck reward. "But you have to understand how things are. With Will and me."

She runs her finger around and around the rim of her cup. Her eyes are ringed darkly and it's like I always hoped it would be. I'm the one she's telling. She chooses me.

"And Matt, Addy..." She sighs and arches her back, looking vaguely to the ceiling. "Maybe you think when you're as old as I am, you couldn't want things anymore. When I was your age, twenty-seven might as well be a hundred."

"You don't seem old at all," I say.

We sit for a while, and she talks. She tells me how it started with Will.

Seeing her in the parking lot after the college fair, he told her she looked sad and wondered if she would like to sit with him in his car, parked on Ness Street, and listen to music. "Sometimes it makes me feel better," he said, and maybe it would make her feel better too.

She hadn't known she looked sad.