Dare Me Part 16

"I was pulling in and had to swerve really fast. A little girl ran in front of the car," she says, her eyes losing focus. "She looked just like Caitlin."

"But you were both okay?" I ask, which seems like something you should ask.

"That's the funny part," she says, shaking her head. "Caitlin wasn't with me. I'd forgotten her. Left her at home, in her room, playing Chutes and Ladders. Or tipping over bleach, eating poison from the cabinet under the sink, starting fires in the backyard. Who knew?"

She laughs a little, shaking her head. Shaking her head a long time, flipping her Bic in her hand.

Then she stops.

"I must be the worst mother in the world," she says, eyes gla.s.sy and confused.

I look at her, all the blurry fear on her.

And I say, "Mos def."

Which always makes her laugh, and makes her laugh now, and it's unguarded, beautiful.

"She was trying to avoid hitting some kid at the playground," I say. "She hit a post."

"I don't believe it," Beth says.

"Why would she lie?"

"Plenty of reasons," she says. "I've been right before, other times. You believe people, just like cheer camp, with that St. Regina Flyer. That compulsive liar, Casey Jaye. And you licked it all up."

Beth, always sifting ancient history, scattering ashes at me. Always going back to last summer. It was our only fight and it wasn't a fight really. Just stupid girl stuff.

I never thought you'd be friends again after that, RiRi said afterward. But we were. No one understands. They never have. RiRi said afterward. But we were. No one understands. They never have.

"Beth, can't you leave all this alone?" I say now, surprised at the strain in my voice. "You got what you wanted. You're captain again and you can do whatever you want. So stop."

"It's not my choice," she says. "Something gets started, you have to see it through."

"See what through? What, Beth? What, Captain-My-Captain?"

She pauses, clicking her teeth, an old habit from the days we both slid retainers around in our hanging-jaw girl mouths.

"You don't understand it, do you? All that's happened. It's all her."

She leans back, spreading her long ponytail across her face, her mouth.

Then she says something and I think it's, "She has your heart."

"What?" I say, feeling something ping in my stomach, my hand fisting over it.

"She has her part, part," she says, brus.h.i.+ng her ponytail from her face, "in all this."

But I can't believe I misheard her. Did I?

"It's not just me," she says again, teeth latching and unlatching. "She has her part."

I misheard.

18

MONDAY: ONE WEEK TO FINAL GAME

Coach spends most of practice in her office, on the phone, her face hidden behind her hand. of practice in her office, on the phone, her face hidden behind her hand.

When she comes out, the phone rings again, and she is gone.

In her place, Beth brandishes the scepter, or pretends to. We have a sloppy practice and Mindy wearies me, complaining about the red grooves and pocks studding her shoulder, the imprint of Tacy's kaepa toss shoe. Chicken-boned Brinnie c.o.x only wants to talk about her lemon detox tea.

My head bobbing helplessly, I look up into the stands and spot Emily, a white pipe cleaner propped lonely there.

I keep forgetting about Emily. Ground-bound, it's like she dropped into the black hole of the rest of the school.

G.o.d, it must be terrible not to be on cheer. How would you know what to do?

Her head darting left and right, she's watching us from the cave of her letter jacket, her ponderous orthopedic moon boot nearly tipping her to one side.

Emily, who I've known for three years, borrowed tampons from, held her hair back over every toilet bowl in school.

"Skinny be-yotch," Beth calls out to her, as if reading my mind. "How we rate to your bony a.s.s?"

Emily shudders to life. "Tight," she calls out, eagerly.

"Tight as JV p.u.s.s.y?" Beth shouts.

"Tighter!" Emily laughs, and I remember this Beth, Captain Beth when Beth was feeling most captainy, most interested in wielding her formidable powers, me at her side.

Thank you, Beth, for reminding me. Thank you.

Teddy saw Coach @ Statlers last week, Beth's text reads. Beth's text reads. Drinking, talking on cell all nite, crying @ jukebox. Drinking, talking on cell all nite, crying @ jukebox.

So? I text back, nearing one a.m. I text back, nearing one a.m.

I want to turn off the phone. I want to be done with Beth for the night, done with her chatter about Coach, and her car, or even the things she used to talk about: Tacy's runty legs and the antidepressants she eyed in Mindy's book bag, and the s.e.x toy she found under her mother's pillow and how it looks like a pink boomerang made by Mattel, and maybe that's what happened to her Barbie surfboard, mysteriously lost a decade ago.

Like some polluted Little Red Riding Hood, Beth always creeping through everyone's lives.

So? I text again. I text again.

There's a long pause, and I can picture Beth pecking away her reply.

Sometimes, though, I think that how long she takes, these epic multipart texts, is all on purpose, making the dread mount each time: What is Beth up to? What is she doing now? What is Beth up to? What is she doing now?

ZZzt, the phone screen flashes at me at last: Said she ran outside + hit post in parking lot, peeled off So...? I text back. I text back.

So why lie to us, to u? she texts. she texts. Plus, crying abt what? Plus, crying abt what?

I roll over in bed, let the phone slip to the carpet, its screen winking at me.

In the half dream that comes, the screen is a mouth, teeth gnas.h.i.+ng.

19

MONDAY NIGHT

I'm deep into toes-curled sleep when I hear it. toes-curled sleep when I hear it.

My cell, squawking from the floor.

I feel it hum under my grappling fingers.

Please not Beth.

Incoming call: Coach, the screen reads, and my favorite snapshot, from the night after the Cougars' defeat, Coach sitting on the hood of my car, sated and exultant. the screen reads, and my favorite snapshot, from the night after the Cougars' defeat, Coach sitting on the hood of my car, sated and exultant.

"Addy," the whisper comes. "Addy, I slipped on the floor. I saw him and I slipped on something and I didn't know what it was."

"Coach? What's going on?" Words sticky in my sleeping mouth.

"I kept looking at my sneaker and wondered what was on it. What the dark stain was."

I think I'm dreaming.

"Coach," I say, rolling over, trying to blink myself awake. "Where are you? What's going on?"

"Something happened, Addy. That's what I think. But my head..."

Her voice so peculiar, thin and wasted.

"Coach-Colette. Colette, where are you? Colette, where are you?"

A pause, a creaking sound from her throat. "You better come, Addy. You better come here."

I'm sure I'll be heard, but if I am, no one does anything about it, not even when the garage door s.h.i.+mmies open, when the car leaps to life. Sometimes I don't even try to be quiet. Sometimes I turn on all the lights, leave a trail blazing from my bedroom through the garage until my dawn return, and no one has ever said a word.

But tonight, I don't.

I try not to look at my phone, which is spasming with texts that must have come in while I slept-all from vampiric Beth, who sometimes seems never to sleep at all and tonight seems especially wired with speculations and grim fancy.

I can't stop to read them now.

Nearly to Wick Park, I see The Towers, a colossal apartment complex, the only one in Sutton Grove, though it doesn't even feel like Sutton Grove but like the tenuous landing strip for a steel box dropped from high above.

I've been there once before, to pick up Coach and take her back to her car, which she'd left at school.

One of the new developments perched high on Sutton Ridge, it floats perilously over the edge, and still half empty because no one wants to live by the roaring interstate.

It's so great, Addy, Coach said. Coach said. Like a deserted castle. You can scream and shout and no one could- Like a deserted castle. You can scream and shout and no one could- I remember when I'd pulled up Will had waved from the lobby's gla.s.s doors, his face and neck flushed, like hers. His hair wet and seal-slick. And Coach, still slipping on her left shoe as she ran to my car.

The sharp smell on her when she opened my car door, so thick it seemed to hover in the air around her.

Her face bright, her right leg still shaking.

I couldn't take my eyes off it.

But that was weeks ago, in the middle of the day, and nothing looks familiar at all now. It takes me three circuits of the complex to find the right building, and then find Will's name on the big lighted board out front.

All the while I'm thinking of Coach's voice on the phone.

"Is he there now," I'd asked, a sick feeling in my stomach. "Is Will with you?"

"Yes," she said. "He's here."

"Is he okay?"

"I can't look," she said. "Don't make me look."