Dare Me Part 34

I see the ice blue hatchback in the parking lot, and pull in next to it.

The gym backdoor is propped open with a rubber-banded wedge of dry erasers, like we do when we want a place to drink Malibu before a party. And now some of us use it to practice weekends, off-hours, or we have since Coach drove our bodies to perfection, elevated our squad into sublimity.

I hear her first, her wheezy grunts and the soft push of pumas on airy mats.

Cheek still puffed from Thursday's fall, she's running tumbles. Throwing roundoff back handsprings, one after another. She should have a spotter because her technique, as ever, is p.u.s.s.y-weak.

"Stop throwing head," I shout. "Arms against your ears."

She stutters to a stop, nearly cras.h.i.+ng into the padded wall at the far end.

"Fire, form, control, perfection," I count off, like Coach always did.

"Who cares," moans Tacy, breathlessly. "I'm ground-bound anyway. With Beth back, my life is practically over."

She slides down the wall and collapses onto the floor, pulling cotton wisps from her glossed mouth. G.o.d love Tacy, full makeup on a Sunday morning, by herself, in the school gym.

"It's only one game," I say, even as I know it's the Big Game, the Biggest Ever, and who cares about cheering spring baseball?

"Besides," I add, "how long do you really think Beth can possibly last as captain?"

"I don't know," Tacy says, now picking cotton from under her grape-lacquered fingernails. "I think she might be captain forever."

"Why would you think that?"

"Because of what's happening," she says. "Coach French was the only one who could ever stop her. And now Coach is gone."

"She's not gone, she just-"

"She's not coming back. Face it, Addy, it's all over for Coach." She looks at me, that swollen face of hers, lapin-jowled. "Which sucks because Coach was the only one who ever saw it in me. My potential, potential, my my promise. promise."

"Slaus, the only reason Coach put you up there is because you're ninety-four pounds and you're Beth's pigeon," I say, wanting to wring her little-girl neck. "If you care so G.o.dd.a.m.ned much about Coach, why do you keep helping Beth?"

She looks startled but too dumb to be startled enough.

"I'm not helping Beth. Not anymore."

"But you were."

She takes a deep breath.

"Well, you don't know what's happened, Addy. Coach maybe did something really bad," she says, shaking her head. "It's Beth's fault, sort of. But that's no excuse. My dad says we're an excuse society now."

"Tacy," I say, my voice grinding, "tell me what you mean. Tell me what you know."

I press my foot against her bendy-straw leg, press it hard.

She looks at me, rabbit scared, and I know I need to slather some honey but keep that foot pressed too. That's what she loves. Both those things at once.

"Tacy, I'm the only one who can help you now," I say. "I'm the only one who can help."

Her tears come and I fight off the urge to slap those swollen dewlaps of hers. I fight it off because she's about to give me gold, and she doesn't even know it. She thinks her gossip, her petty grievances are significant, but they are tiny pinholes. The things around them, though, the fabric of Beth's lies and fictions, they are the gold.

"Coach was sleeping with the Sarge," she says, eyes saucering up at me. "And she loved him. And then Coach found out. About Beth. About Sarge and Beth."

I'm leaning against the padded gym wall and Tacy's still on the floor, legs tucked tight, looking up at me, and talking, talking, talking.

She isn't what you think, and neither was he. That's what Beth said. That's what Beth said. He was just a guy, like all of them. He was just a guy, like all of them.

But Will, Will and Beth? I just can't make my head believe it.

"This was right when he first started coming to the school," she says. I'm relieved for that. Before Coach, before all that. Lost, wandering, wondering Will. "And they had that bet, her and RiRi. She wanted to beat RiRi. She said RiRi was all t.i.ts and eyeliner and she would eat her heart whole.

"So one day after school she was waiting by his truck for him. You know how he'd park in the back, behind the school lot, on Ness Street?"

I used to walk Coach there. Coach, whose face would flush at the sight of his SUV shadowed under the oak tree, its leathery leaves hovering, the shadows of them across her face as she turned to look at me, to say, Here he is, Addy, here is my man. Here he is, Addy, here is my man.

"My job was to wait by the tree with my phone," Tacy is saying, "so I could take a picture to prove she'd done it."

I don't know what's coming, but I feel a churning in my gut.

"So she's out there, waiting for him in her miniskirt," Tacy says, her fingers carelessly grazing my ankle as I stand above her. "Well, Beth, she's a hot b.i.t.c.h, and Sarge was a guy, right?"

He's a guy, right.

"But he couldn't go through with it," she sighs, resting her fingers on my ankle bone. "Just kid stuff. And I only got one half-decent shot, but you couldn't see much."

I don't say anything.

"But here was the thing," Tacy says, shaking one of her fingers. "Beth never did show it to RiRi. Maybe she knew it wouldn't be good enough to win the bet. Finally I asked her about it and she had me text it to her. She said she was saving it. She just kept it on her phone. She loved to flash it at me."

This seems like Beth and I wonder why she never flashed it at me. But I guess I know. Once we found out about Coach and Will, she couldn't be sure where I'd stand. She couldn't be sure I'd play for her side. She was right.

"Then all of a sudden she tells me something happened to her phone," Tacy says, "and she lost the picture and she needed me to send it again."

The memory comes to me: Coach torpedoing Beth's twizzler-red phone down the toilet.

"So I say, tell me what you need it for first," Tacy says, looking up at me, her smile coming and going as she tries to read me, read how I'm taking this, and if I want to play with her, to relish all this just a little.

"So she had had to tell me," she, rocking in her seat, so eager to recount it, to relive the moment. "And that's when she said she was going to use it so Coach would stop giving her such a hard time." to tell me," she, rocking in her seat, so eager to recount it, to relive the moment. "And that's when she said she was going to use it so Coach would stop giving her such a hard time."

I rest my back against the wall, not looking down at Tacy, sliding away from her, her hot breath on my legs.

"So that's when she told me about Coach and Will," she says. "She had to."

I look down at her, that lapin face squinting with conspiratorial pleasure, and I say nothing.

"So, after three years of hustling for that queen b.i.t.c.h, now I had something Beth wanted," Tacy says, her voice sharpening in a way that's almost impressive. "Beth had lost the goods. She didn't even e-mail the picture to herself or save it on her computer. She thinks she's so G.o.dd.a.m.ned smart. How smart is that? But it was me. me. I saved the picture. And now she needed something from me." I saved the picture. And now she needed something from me."

That's a feeling I know so well it's like she's stuck her fingernail to my own beating heart. But it doesn't warm me to her.

You and me, Tacy? We share nothing.

"By then, I was Flyer, I was Top Girl," Tacy says. "But Beth warned me I'd better do what she said, or she'd make it bad for me."

Tacy's voice goes baleful, the panic spiraling back through her eyes.

"She said I'd better not make her unhappy because I oughta know that she's never unhappy alone."

No, she's not, is she.

"So I gave in," Tacy says, sighing. "But I felt sorry for Coach. And then when the Sarge died, I felt rotten. I thought maybe Beth used that picture in some evil way. And that Sarge killed himself on account of it. Is that what happened, Addy?"

"I don't know what happened," I say, finally.

She stares up at me, gla.s.sy-eyed.

"Tacy," I say, "you better show me that picture."

"I deleted it," she says, too quickly.

"You did not," I say.

Sighing again, she reaches into the pocket of her yoga pants and pulls out her tiny phone, a searing purple.

The image on the screen looks like it was shot through a fuzzed screen door.

You can see Will's uniform, the green suit coat, the gold b.u.t.tons s.h.i.+mmering, the braid on the lifted sleeve, and part of his face, the rest concealed by the back of a female head, a swamp of dark hair and bare shoulderblades.

For a second, I think it's Coach. It looks so much like Coach.

But then I recognize Beth's green hoodie, the one slipping down, his palm spread across her back.

The look on Will's face, how could I really name it, everything so pixilated into blurred nothingnesss.

His face, though, seems to me the saddest I've ever seen.

Both stricken and despairing.

Like the pictures you see of people standing in front of their burning houses, like one I saw once of a dad holding his nightgowned little girl in his arms, trying to put on her shoe, watching his house burn to the ground.

And I know, just like that, if Tacy had been standing on the other side of the truck, if her camera lens captured Beth's eyes instead, it would show the same thing.

The picture, I can't stop looking at it. Because it seems to me suddenly filled with truth. Because it seems so beautiful.

"I never wanted to get anyone into trouble," Tacy says. "But Beth, she scares me. I mean, she's always been scary. But since all this, it's been different. It's like she's gone up three levels of scary."

I stop looking at the photo and look at Tacy instead.

Things begin to s.h.i.+mmer into view.

"So you just gave Beth the photo and that was it?"

"That's what I said," Tacy says, flipping over, lying back on the mat beneath her. "Isn't it?"

Resting on elbows, she stretches her skinny little toothpick legs, observing them, admiring herself.

Looking down at her, all I can think of is the time she's cost me, these collusions, her weakness. The fact that this little tinkerbell got to be Top Girl.

Something in that puffball face of hers and I can't stop myself, my foot pressing against her face. Pus.h.i.+ng into her blighted chin, still vein-mottled from her fall. I push it hard, harder than I meant to, its softness giving way.

"Addy," Tacy moans, scratching at me with her fingers. "Addy, what are you-"

"You sent that picture to Mr. French, didn't you?" I say, my voice husky and surprising.

Hands flinging up, she tries to shove my leg away, but she can't.

"Yes, yes," she whimpers, tears coming in long syrupy strands.

I drop my foot back to the floor. And she tells me the rest.

How Beth got Matt French's number from Coach's phone and made Tacy send it, claiming she didn't have a new phone yet.

And that Beth wrote the text herself: Look at the kind of woman you're married to. Look at the trash she opens her legs for. Look at the kind of woman you're married to. Look at the trash she opens her legs for.

Beth was always good with words. And knowing the times when simplest was best.

"But the picture didn't mean anything," Tacy insists. "A dumb prank. I guess Beth probably thought Mr. French would make her quit, or Coach would get fired. But wouldn't it have made more sense to send it to Princ.i.p.al Sheehan?"

I shake my head at this stupid girl.

Heels of hands to her mascaraed eyes, she whispers, "Do you think that blurry little picture could have had something to do with all this? With Sarge and everything?"

I'm thinking of Matt French reading the text and looking at that picture. I'm guessing what he really thought: Not, There's some man with one of my wife's cheerleaders. There's some man with one of my wife's cheerleaders.

No, instead, There's some man with my my wife. wife.

"And now Beth won't back off," she says, her hand back on my ankle, holding on to it, but eyes fixed straight ahead, at the locker room doors. "She keeps saying I better not tell anyone what we did. At practice the other day, when I fell, it was like she was showing me what she could do to me."

Her gaze locked on the doors, fiercely vibrating from the school furnace's blast, she doesn't even see me click a b.u.t.ton on her phone and text the picture to myself.

"She showed me all right," Tacy says. "But I still told you, didn't I? I told Addy Hanlon. I guess I'm not such a cottontail. I guess I'm not the little p.u.s.s.y she says I am."

Her head dipping, as if from the weight of her ponytail slinging forward, she lets her body go lax.