Dare Me Part 37

The pounding of our thirty a.s.sembled feet, pounding so it thunders all through us, as we undulate into a V.

There is Beth at the diamond tip, her face streaked indigo and, from afar, never looking more like the savage princess she is, like she might have a necklace of human tongues.

"Split the 'V,'" she shouts, and forking her fingers at her hips, "Dot the 'i,'" and sliding her finger down low, s.h.i.+mmying, legs vibrating, "Rock that C-T-O-R-Y!"

Seeing her like that. Seeing her, bright white sneaks on the gym floor, legs and arms together, chin up proud to the crowd, their howling and foot-thundering frenzy, I feel all kinds of things I can't name.

Her face is so lovely, a perfect spritely smile carved there, lightning bolt tattoo streaked across one high cheekbone.

And on her wrist, the hamsa, plucked from the shower stall floor.

Marching in formation, our heads snapping, feet thumping, four-five-six across, the diamond splitting.

"Beat those Celts, slaughter that ball.

"We will die for you above all."

"That's not how it goes," mewls Brinnie c.o.x, as if Beth has just flubbed the line.

"We will die for you above all," Beth repeats.

Those words, I know them, but I don't know how and there's no time.

RiRi, Paige, and I darting to the mat's far corners to spring across with our tumbling pa.s.ses, everyone whipping past me and the noise like an ocean in my ear.

And I land it and Beth is there and I am spotting, Mindy and Cori popping her into the air, tick-tocking one leg to the other, her feet in their hands, her arms V-ed.

And Beth is shouting, and I am looking up at her, her chin trembling, her neck pulsing.

She is crying, but only I can see that. I'm the only one who's seen it before. Her face like something precious split in two. A diamond cracked, a web spreading.

"It's Coach," comes Tacy's squealing shout. "It's Coach."

My head whipping to one side, I can't believe it, but I see her there, soft hoodie and hemp yoga pants, and her hair knotted tight on her head.

Coach.

Oh, my Coach.

And she is saying something, or she isn't saying anything at all, but we know what to do and we do our back tucks in perfect unison, symmetric soldiers all in a line, then the whistle blows and the bounding boys come and we run to her.

We run to her.

And I see Beth, and her broken face, and I can't help her at all.

I can't.

It's all a heady blur, the floorboard-pounding mayhem of the game, and Coach there, placing her hand gently on the backs of our heads, pulling, even, so un-Coach-like, on Mindy's golden braids, and by the time the halftime horn thunders, I've lost Beth entirely.

In the locker room, the air clear from the tall windows lifted open by Coach with that long iron stick.

We are not actually on our knees, but it feels that way. It feels as if we're on our knees, like prayerful Southern football players.

We are all bowing inside, to her.

Coach, you've not forsaken us.

"I'm glad to be here right now," she says, and she's speaking so low but somehow even amid the b.u.mptious din coming from the gym we can hear her, hear every beat.

"I'm lucky to be in your company," she says. "And I'm talking about all of you. You mighty women."

Something catches in my throat. Coach. Coach.

I feel a hand twist around my arm, and it's RiRi, her curls shaking, and beside her Emily, half leaning, still casted, against the lockers, and all of us standing, craning our necks, huddling toward Coach's clear eyes, clear face, clear voice.

How could the things we would laugh at out there, scoff at and eye roll and dismiss, move us so much in here? Because it is Coach.

"For all kinds of reasons," she says, her voice wobbling so slightly I feel sure only I can hear, "we're all going to remember tonight."

All of us circling forward, wanting to warm our hands, our bodies to it.

"It's the last game of the season, after all these months of sweat and blood. And, after all this, I want you to be able to speak proudly, to strip your sleeves and show your scars, and talk about what you did tonight."

Her words are vibrating through me, touching my very center.

"After the night's over," she says, her voice lifting higher, "after you graduate, and you're off to college or wherever you girls go-ten years from now, your little girl's going to pull your dusty Eagles yearbook off the shelf and ask what you were like in high school.

"You won't have to cough, look the other way, and say, 'Well, sweetie, your mom was in the French Club and sang in the choir.' You won't even have to say, 'Your mom waved pom-poms and shook her a.s.s.' Because you will know what you were, what you are forever.

"Squad, take this moment, take this moment, seal it over your heart." seal it over your heart."

The quiet among us, the devotional silence starts to break apart as we feel ourselves lifted, feelings and gasps and eager squeaks and throatier yeas and rustling and rumbling and most of all the sense of greatness rising from within us and hoisted high.

"You're going to look your girl straight in the eye and say, 'Baby, your mom rode to the rafters. Your mom lifted three girls in her hands, grinning all the way,'" she says, our voices rising to a baying now, all together.

"'Your mom built pyramids and flew high in the sky, and back in Sutton Grove, they're still talking about the wonders they saw that night, still talking about how they watched us all reach to the heavens.'

"Don't you want to be able to say that?"

Our innermost selves, in some magnificent ascent, and a clattering as some girls leap onto the benches, crying out, overtaken.

But not me-me who wants to bathe in the moment's sacredness forever.

"You may have the bodies of young girls," she says, her voice deep and holy, "but you have the hearts of warriors. Tonight, show me your warrior hearts.

"That's all."

And she turns and pushes through the locker room doors into the brightly lit hallway.

But instead of turning in to the clanging gym, its frenzy pitched to madness, she walks straight out the loading dock doors, into the starred night.

It's like when a fever breaks, and you don't know what's happened, or what all those voices in your head meant, but the Celts squad does their halftime routine and all I see are flying bodies and cries and the greater and greater sense of a battlefield of fallen enemies on which we will march.

And I realize, Beth gone again, I don't even know who Top Girl is.

"It's gotta be the JV, right?" whispers RiRi. "We're tossing her up, right?"

But there is no time, and there we are, running out on that gym floor, and I feel my body flipping into my handspring, and Brinnie c.o.x's legs spiraling next to me, and suddenly we're twenty seconds in and I can hear myself shouting: ...said shah shah shah shah booty Got that rhythm feelin' tight Let your body rock SNAP-SNAP Let your hips show some might STOMP-STOMP-STOMP shah shah shah shah booty I'm looking for the JV Flyer, but I don't see her.

We don't need no music We don't need no bands.

All we need are Eagles fans jammin in the stands!

Oh wait, stop a minute, WAIT shah shah shah shah booty I feel her before I see her.

Dark hair s.h.i.+mmering, the thunderbolt seared to her face.

Beth, in the JV's place. Lining up in the top Flyer spot for the two-two-one.

And if you could understand how time can stop, it did for me.

Mindy has her hands on my waist, my hands gripping soft shoulders, my toe slipping into the pocket of her bent knee, pus.h.i.+ng off with my right foot and lifting my other knee as high as I can, planting it on her shoulder, front-spotting Paige below, propelling up my other foot.

RiRi and I face each other, feet fixed on Mindy's and Cori's shoulders, their hands tight on our ankles.

"Who's counting?" I shout.

shah shah shah shah booty Emily, swinging her boot brace across the front row, her eyes avid, her fear gone.

"I'll do it," she cries. "I'll count. No one knows better than me. No one knows-"

We are now ten and a half feet high, my eyes fixed on RiRi's wild green ones, her face cobalt-brushed, ecstatic, mouthing, "B-E-T-H!" "B-E-T-H!"

shah shah shah shah booty "One-two, three-four," Emily's fierce counting like a pulse in my brain, like a hammer over my heart.

The whole pyramid sponging, rubber-banding as it should, the living thing, the beating heart.

Below I see Beth's black hair, and she flings her head back, her eyes squeezed shut.

I will die only for you above all.

That's what she'd said, and I remembered it now, from long ago. Age nine or ten, poring over a Time-Life book in my dad's library, an old picture of a j.a.panese pilot tying his headband, eyes determined, jaw set.

And the caption: "I will die only for you above all."

Beth loved that picture and tore the page out and pasted it in her locker with rubber cement, and at year's end, we tried to claw it free, but it came off in shreds and there was nothing she could do.

I will die only for you above all.

Six hands on her and she's propelled up between RiRi and me. Lying flat, her arms outstretched, and we pop her up so she is standing.

Blocking out Emily's dire warnings of what it's like from out there, from the stands, as they see all of us spring-loaded into the air, defying gravity, logic, the laws of physics itself, I know all I must think of is Beth's wrist in my tight-clawed- One shah shah shah shah booty and loading her forward, slingshotting her back to life, pitching her higher, locking her in place, holding her widespread arms like points on a star, Two shah shah shah shah booty I can feel, fingers to Beth's wrist, the veins pulsing, the beat slower than it should be, and I think- Three you ain't got -her pumas balancing on the gathered hands below, a pinched tightrope and she is cheering, oh, is she cheering.

Waiting for Emily to count EIGHT, then DEADMAN, DEADMAN, we drop Beth's wrists, she falls backwards, limbs outspread, into the waiting arms below...that is what she is to- we drop Beth's wrists, she falls backwards, limbs outspread, into the waiting arms below...that is what she is to- Four you ain't got it, you ain't got it, ain't got it She is so high, fifteen feet, sixteen, seventeen, a thousand-and the whole gym shaking victorious, her body still like a fierce arrow-when I feel her suddenly yank her wrist from my clasp.

My body pitches forward, but terror-eyed Mindy has hold of me, and RiRi bobbles to keep hold of Beth's other wrist.

I have my eyes on Beth, I think I am calling out to her, her name choked in my chest, but she won't turn, she couldn't or she'd- Five ...and I know and I'm not going to stop her, there is no stopping her.

This is what she wants, after all.

Six-and-and two beats too soon, she propels herself backwards with such force.

The gasp from the bleachers lashes through the air.

The power with which she thrusts her body backwards.

The force with which she twists her body, spinning it, and then kicking backwards RiRi and I teetering on our Bases, nearly falling forward toward each other- -and all our hands grabbing for her, and the will with which Beth pitches her body, legs kicking so far back, so far back.

All the way back.

The air sucked from me, the sounds gone from the world.

The way, for a second, her body seems to lift, dance to the rafters, then the way everything s.h.i.+fts, all our bodies tilting in s.p.a.ce as I feel myself falling, as I feel Beth falling.

It's like she doesn't weigh anything at all, and she might never hit the floor, until she does.

Then the sickening crack and seeing her head click backwards, like a doll's.

But you must see: She never really wanted anything but this.

The Abyss, Addy, it gazes back into you.