Dare Me Part 15

I breathe deeply. A breath so deep it nearly pierces me.

"Addy, he might as well have," she says, her eyes blinking open, and so very drunk and lost I want to cry. "That's what counts."

More than once that night I sense movement in the house, shadows dancing past me. In my drunken sleep, curled tight on the couch, it's as if I'm in Caitlin's room, the pink-lit lantern casting ballerina silhouettes on the walls all night long.

Near dawn there is another shadow, and I feel the faintest weight on the glossy maple floors.

Rising, I creep through the living room door to the hallway, my stomach rising, the hangover scaling me with every move.

I see Coach in the den, leaning over the back of the sofa, whispering in Beth's ear.

Her face so hard.

Her hands clasping the sofa edge too tight.

I think I hear. I know I hear.

You're lying. You're a liar. All you do is lie.

Then Beth, she's talking, but I can't hear any of it, or can't be sure I have. In my nightmared head, it's this: He held my head, he bent my legs back, he did it to me, Coach. Monkey see, monkey do. Like us with you. Didn't I jump higher, fly higher, Coach? Didn't I?

16

All Sunday long, still feeling drunk, my whole body wrung dry from it, I can't get Beth to return my texts. All I can do from my bedroom cave is wonder if she told her parents some version of her sordid story, or worse, the police. still feeling drunk, my whole body wrung dry from it, I can't get Beth to return my texts. All I can do from my bedroom cave is wonder if she told her parents some version of her sordid story, or worse, the police.

And hovering in and out of hangover sleep, my dreams, so wretched, Prine's bullet head between Beth's tangled legs, doing tangly things with teeth, like a wild animal, the Mauler.

Or picturing Beth, teasing and goading him, slithering in her hiked skirt, saying who knew what, trying to get him to be rough with her, rough enough to mark her. I wonder how far he really got, or how far she would have let it go. Or why she did it to herself, to all of us.

Coach needs to see what she's doing to us. What does that mean, Beth? What does that mean, Beth?

It means nothing to me.

Sunday night, Coach calls.

"I don't know what happened," I say. "I can't get any more out of her."

"It doesn't matter anyway," Coach says, her voice flat, almost motorized. "All that matters is what she says happens. And who she says it to."

This sends a chill through me. How could it not matter? But in some deeper way, I know what she means. There's a fog upon us and there seems no piercing through.

"They've been in there an hour," Emily announces, teetering on her crutches. On the DL but she won't ever miss a practice. "At first it was really really loud." loud."

We're standing recklessly close to Coach's office, she and Beth knotted in there, the blinds pulled shut, and I'm worried they can hear us.

No one else seems to know about Beth and Prine. All they heard was she sidled off with someone, which Beth always does anyway.

"Do you think Beth wants back on the squad?" Tacy whispers, visions of glory slipping from her neon fingertips. "Do you think Coach'd let her back? What if Coach lets her be squad captain again?"

Little, battle-hardened Tacy, calculating three moves ahead. Time was, she was just Beth's gimp, then Beth's Benedict Arnold. Now she's Coach's gimp.

If Beth is captain again, Tacy will have to slink back into spotter slots, or worse. No more Awesomes or Libertys or Dirty Birds or back tuck basket tosses.

No more flying.

"Coach doesn't believe in captains," Emily reminds us. "Even if she changed her mind, why in the world would she let Beth Beth be captain? Beth doesn't even show up anymore." be captain? Beth doesn't even show up anymore."

But they don't know what I know. Beth's new chit. Pay for play. I wonder, will that be Coach's strategy? It would be mine.

But it doesn't seem Coach's way. Her way: Meet swagger with swagger.

Swinging out of the office ten minutes later, Beth and Coach unaccountably snickering together, low, nasty laughs. We all watch, keenly.

I'm the only one who sees through them.

"She's a chicken," Coach says to me later. "She talks a good game, but she's just a baby chick."

About this, I know she could not be more wrong.

"You all think she's such a gamer," Coach says, shaking her head. "She's just marshmallow fluff. Like any of those JV tenderfoots. Just with bigger lungs and a better a.s.s."

The two of them. Like liar's dice at summer camp. But Beth always won because she was good at math and understood odds, and because, when looking under the cup, she'd turn over the dice with her thumb.

"But that Prine guy. You said they call him the Mauler..."

Coach shrugs. "She told me she doesn't remember him ever hurting her. He pa.s.sed out. And she guesses she didn't know what she was saying, really, she was so drunk."

I look at Coach, and I wonder who's lying, or if they both are.

"So she's not going to do anything?"

"There's nothing to do," Coach says. "I asked her if she wanted me to take her to my doctor. She said absolutely not. What she does remember is that Prine's a bantam rooster with nothing but squawk."

"So, b.i.t.c.h," Beth asks later that afternoon, chewing straws at the coffee place, "are you ever gonna give me my phone back?"

I picture Coach spiraling it down the toilet.

"Your phone?"

"Herr F told me you must've taken it Sat.u.r.day night. Probably to stop me from drunk-dialing. You're a scrub, you know that, Hanlon? You're auxiliary."

"I don't have your phone, Beth," I say.

"I guess she must be wrong," Beth says, foam curled in the corner of her mouth. Her tongue unfurling, swiping. "Funny she would think it was you."

"Beth," I say, "you said you'd texted Will that night. You said you'd called or texted him a bunch of times."

She doesn't say anything, but her mouth twitches just slightly. Then she pulls it taut and I wonder if I ever saw it at all.

"Did I say that?" she says, her bright tan shoulders slipping into a shrug. "I don't remember that at all."

17

The next day, Beth is back on the squad. Beth is back on the squad.

And she is captain again. Honorifically.

She gets to skip chem on Wednesday for captain-coach mentor time, and study hall means she can go to Coach's office by herself and smoke. I see her when I walk by and she waves at me, head tilted, smoke swirling in malevolent plumes around her face.

Thank you, Coach, I think. I think. Thank you. Thank you.

"Is she really Cap?" Tacy whispers, everybody whispers, but Tacy is shaking in her bright white air cheers.

Because it appears she is.

And Beth, is that contentment I see there on your tan face?

f.u.c.k me, I think, which even sounds like Beth. I think, which even sounds like Beth. Is Is this this all she wanted? all she wanted?

It's not, of course.

"It's okay," says Coach. "I don't have time for her, Addy. And you don't either. Let's see that back handspring."

And I am trying, but my legs won't come together and my body feels funny and stiff.

"Push off," she barks, temple sweat-dappled and her hair limp and slipping from its elastic.

"Lock out"-and with each shout her voice stronger, and my body tighter, harder-"stay tight, stay center, and, f.u.c.k it, Addy, smile. Smile. Smile."

The next morning, I spy Matt French pulling into the parking lot in his gray Toyota, with Coach in it.

When she gets out of the car she doesn't even glance behind her. It looks like he's saying something to her, but maybe not.

But he's watching her, waiting, I guess, to make sure she gets inside the building.

More and more, when I see his face I think maybe he is kind of handsome in his own tired way.

That's the hardest part, she said once. she said once. There's nothing bad I can say about him, nothing I can say at all. There's nothing bad I can say about him, nothing I can say at all.

Which somehow seems the cruelest thing to say, ever.

Which is maybe why I feel this, looking at him now. Matt French. I can't account for it, but his weariness amid all the bl.u.s.ter and strut of us sparkle-slitted girls-it speaks to me. Like seeing him the other night, the way he looked at me.

He's not the guy you might think he is. That's what Will told me. That's what Will told me.

But I'm not sure what he thinks I might think.

Matt French watches Coach as she walks down the center aisle of the parking lot, watches her walk through the gla.s.s doors. He watches for a long time, one arm stretched across the pa.s.senger seat, head slightly dipped.

Watching her in the way that reminds me of the way a dad might watch his daughter on the jungle gym.

She never looks back once.

"Her car's on blocks over at Schuyler's garage," Beth tells me later. "Davy saw it. There's a big punch in the front fender."

I don't know who Davy is, or how he knows what Coach's car looks like. Beth has always known people-friends of her brother, sons of her mother's exes, the nephew of the woman from Peru who used to clean her house-that no one else knows or even sees. Her reserves of information, objects, empty houses, designer handbags, driver's licenses, and prescription pads seem limitless.

I ask Coach about it later, what happened to her car anyway.

She shows me a long cut skating up her arm.

"From the seam in the steering wheel," she says, cigarette hanging from her mouth, her voice throaty and tired, almost like Beth's. "I hit a post in the lot over at the Buckingham Park playground."

I tell her I'm sorry.