Dare Me Part 22

"Oh, Addy," she finally says, "let's do something, anything."

And this is how we end up in the backyard close to midnight, doing backbends in the rain. Extended triangles. Dolphin plank poses.

There's a holiness to it, the wind chimes on the deck carrying us off to the deepest Himalayan climes, or wherever the world is peaceful and clear.

We sweat even in the cold, and I catch, amid a streak of light from some pa.s.sing car out front, Coach's face looking untroubled and free.

The crying starts just after, when we're back in the house. Walking down the hallway, she bends over at the waist and sobs come hard and hurtful. I hold onto her shoulders, their tensile thew rocking in my hands.

She stops in the middle of the hall and I try to hold on and she cries for a very long time.

I sleep next to her that night, under that big dolloping duvet.

We face opposite directions and I think, this is where Matt French sleeps, and I think how big the bed is and how far away Coach is, the duvet s...o...b..nking in the middle, and if she's still crying, I wouldn't know.

It makes me feel lonely for both of them.

Sometime in the night, I hear her talking, her voice hard and strangled.

"How could you do this to me?" she snarls. "How?"

I glance over at her, and her eyes almost look open, her fists wrenching the covers.

I don't know who she's talking to.

People say all kinds of things when they're dreaming.

"I'm not doing anything," I whisper, as if she were talking to me.

22

THURSDAY: FOUR DAYS TO FINAL GAME

Turning my phone on, seven a.m., I see our squad Facebook page studded with new wall posts, from Brinnie, Mindy, RiRi: on, seven a.m., I see our squad Facebook page studded with new wall posts, from Brinnie, Mindy, RiRi: Monday=FINAL GAME!

Go Eagles!

Slaussen, you better KICK a.s.s! Our ticket to the tourney is on YOU!

I long to be a part of it. I long for it.

I find Coach in the kitchen, making toaster oven waffles for Caitlin, who chews on the bottom of her pigtail and watches the oven's orange glow, hypnotized.

"Did the phone wake you?" she asks, spoon in hand, slicing a banana over Caitlin's pearly lavender plate.

It's then that I realize it did.

"I have to go talk to them at the station again," she says, her eyes graying. "In a half hour."

"They're talking to the Guardsmen," I say quietly, as if Caitlin might understand if I spoke more loudly. "The redhead PFC. Tibbs."

The spoon, banana-slicked, slips from her grasp.

She pauses a beat, her hand still outstretched.

I go to reach for the spoon, but her hand shoots out to stop me.

"They have to talk to his men," she says. "I figured on that."

"But, Coach," I say, with as much knowingness as I can impart. "No one wants to get anyone in trouble. No one No one does." does."

She looks at me, searchingly, and I'm not sure why I'm being so mysterious-something about Beth, eyes on the back of her ponytail, something about Caitlin's blinking stare.

"There's plenty of trouble to go around," she says, holding my gaze.

"Right," I say. "I'm sure that's what everyone realizes."

"Is that what PFC Tibbs realizes?" she says.

"I think so," I say.

But Coach must see something on me, some dread gathering under my skin.

"So what might make the PFC share such details with you?" she asks, her sticky hands still lifted in front of her, her body frozen.

"He shares them with Beth," I say, after the quickest of pauses. It still feels queasy to tell her, but it would feel queasy not to.

It takes her a second for this new bit of knowledge to descend.

"It's Beth," I repeat.

"Got it," she says, those slippery hands still raised up, like a doctor ready for surgery. Ready to lay his hands upon your heart.

In the first-floor corridor, after second period, after her visit to the police station: "It's fine," Coach says, brisking by me. Her French braid is very tight, temple vein pulsing. "No problems. It's all good."

After lunch, Beth finds me in the school library, where I never go and where no one should ever have thought to look. But she looks.

"Back in my day, libraries had books," she says, as we internet surf side by side at tall terminals, "and we walked five miles in the snow to school."

"So that's how you got such thick ankles," I say, clicking aimlessly through sundry nothingness. Celebrity crotch shots, Thinspiration: Secrets to Fasting Only Anas Know.

"The PFC went in this morning," she says. "He told me his sad, sad song over malteds."

"And?" I say, twirling my finger in ballerina circles over the touch pad.

"He said they'd called Coach in."

"Yeah, she told me. It went fine." I don't look at her. I don't like the feeling that's coming, that p.r.i.c.kling in my forehead.

"Ah...," she says, and though I'm not looking, I know she's smiling, can hear the gum clicking to the corner of her grinning mouth.

It reminds me of the time Beth's mother swore to me over her morning coffee that Beth was born with sharp teeth.

Better to drink the blood of JVs, Beth had said. Beth had said.

"So," Beth says now, "what has Coach told you about the hamsa bracelet?"

"What hamsa bracelet?" I say, fingers to my forehead.

"The one they found in Will's apartment."

I click on the ad for Wu Long Vanis.h.i.+ng Tea.

"Wait a minute," she says, smacking her head. "Didn't you have one of those bracelets? The one you gave to Coach. Back in your puppy dog phase. To ward off the evil eyes of wronged husbands, I suppose." she says, smacking her head. "Didn't you have one of those bracelets? The one you gave to Coach. Back in your puppy dog phase. To ward off the evil eyes of wronged husbands, I suppose."

I look at her. I hadn't even realized Beth knew about the bracelet.

"What about it?"

"Well, I guess she must have left it at Will's, at some point," Beth says. "During some...encounter."

"Lots of people have those bracelets," I say.

She looks at me, and something pinches in my chest, a memory of something, a connection. But I can't hold on to it. She's watching me so closely, but I can't grab it.

"Do they think it's hers?" I say.

"Is it hers, Addy?" Beth asks, her left eyebrow lifting. "She must have told you they asked her about it. You two thick as thieves." it hers, Addy?" Beth asks, her left eyebrow lifting. "She must have told you they asked her about it. You two thick as thieves."

"We haven't really had a chance to talk," I say, holding tight to the edge of the terminal.

"Well, she's pretty busy," Beth says, with a slow nod. "Four days to the Big Game and all."

Turning away from the terminal, she flings one golden leg onto the nearest library tabletop.

"Look how tight I am," she says, surveying herself. "I'll grant Coach that. But you think Li'l Tacy Cottontail's up for Top Girl? The balance is all. One of her calves is bigger than the other. Did you ever notice that?"

"No."

"I bet you have. Your balance is impeccable. Four inches shorter, you would've been a perfect Top Girl."

I pause a second.

"The PFC doesn't know she has one, does he?" I ask.

"Has what?" Beth asks, maddeningly, surveying my legs now with her cold captain-appraisal gaze.

"A hamsa bracelet," I say, fighting a panicky tilt in my voice.

"Not now, Adelaide," she says. "Not yet."

I grab my books and start to walk away.

"You're going to have to forget how pretty and interested she is in you, Addy," she calls after me.

Walking out, I hear her all the way.

"Tighten that gut, Addy. Lock those legs. Smile, smile, smile!"

Everyone is looking at me, but I only look straight ahead.

"Remember what old Coach Templeton used to say, Addy!"

I push open the shuddering gla.s.s exit doors.

"A good cheerleader," she is calling out, "is not measured by the height of her jumps but by the span of her spirit."

23

THURSDAY: AFTER SCHOOL