Dare Me Part 6

And when we try to get her higher, Tacy's landings are rougher. There are incidents: elbow to the eye, index finger bent back, Tacy's grasping hand clawing my face.

But I focus on Tacy, and I don't show my fear. That's what Coach tells me. "Don't let her see it on you, or it'll swallow her."

Coach tells us you can fall from eleven feet and still land safely on a spring floor, our practice floor.

She says that knowing that, game time, Tacy will be flying high over not a spring floor but the merciless ground of the Mohawks' football field.

"Slaussen," Coach says, "you gotta want it. Don't do it if you don't want it."

And Tacy, her back straighter, her eyes clearer, her chin higher than I've ever seen on this meek and weak girl, replies, "I want it, Coach. I want it."

Tacy. Here was the head-smacking convert.

I can feel Beth's eyeroll without even looking.

"I knew that one was wasting our time," Beth says.

But I don't say anything. I am watching Tacy's avid eyes.

Friday night, when we set foot on the Mohawks' field, the frosted ground beneath us, how can we not picture Tacy's skull splitting daintily in two?

And two of the Mohawk squad b.i.t.c.hes, the rangiest with legs like spires, circle us before and start gaming us with tales of blood sport. A mix of fish tales, trash talk, and camaraderie.

"JV year, the girl was fronting a new Flyer learning her twist," the blonde Mohawk says, gum smacking, "and when the Flyer spun around her legs came apart and knocked out both Bases. One popped a lip and the other had to get a face cut glued shut. Coach caught it on video and replays it at all our after-parties."

"I was practicing my back handspring," the scrubby redhead says, "and I kicked Heather and knocked her teeth right out of her face. It was insane. Teeth and blood were flying everywhere. I felt soooo bad."

There is a breathless momentum to it. I know how it goes. It's fun when you're doing it, like hearing a ghost story.

Forty-five minutes from now, though, it will not be fun for Tacy, standing fifteen feet in the air, two spindly girls holding her up, ready to toss her.

Tacy is gray, into green.

Beth saunters over. She gives me a look, one I know from her captain days. I nod.

"That's enough," I interrupt everyone. "Don't know about you hardcore b.i.t.c.hes, but we'd rather spend our pre-game time getting pretty."

But the blonde Mohawk, eyes hard on Tacy, won't stop working her. "This one kid, she had a body just like yours. And she hit the tramp bar, hard. Her head was bleeding a lot, lot, and she had to go to the ER. Turns out the skin on her head had split and you could see all this pink stuff underneath. She needed staples to pull it back together. We couldn't get her to come back to cheer no matter how hard we tried. Now she's isn't doing anything at all." and she had to go to the ER. Turns out the skin on her head had split and you could see all this pink stuff underneath. She needed staples to pull it back together. We couldn't get her to come back to cheer no matter how hard we tried. Now she's isn't doing anything at all."

"Slaussen," Beth shouts, looming over us now. "Coach wants you."

Rabbit-like, Tacy skitters away.

For a second, I think it's done. But it's not.

Beth surveys the Mohawk girls.

"Once," Beth starts, and I know what she's going to do, and this is why she was captain. "I was standing on this girl's shoulders and I slipped and fell flat on my back."

Everyone gasps politely.

"The crack was so loud they heard it in the parking lot," I add.

"My first thought," Beth says, shaking her head, "was how am I going to tell my mom?"

Everyone nods appreciatively.

"I was lucky," she says, her cool gaze on those Mohawks, s.h.i.+vering a little now in their long timbers. "I was only paralyzed for six weeks. They bolted this metal ring into my skull with pins to hold my head and neck in place. It's called a halo, if you want to know."

We two, in such sync, like the old days, like before Coach, before last summer.

Reaching across, I touch Beth's hair lightly with my fingertips. "The doctors said if she'd been an inch to the right or left," I say, "she would have died."

"But I didn't," Beth says. "And nothing would ever stop me from cheering anyway.

"They gave me the coolest purple cast. And Coach tells me I'm the best Flyer she ever had."

Under the bank of stadium lights, Tacy's face poppy pink with purpose and mania, we raise her up, her hands releasing our trembling shoulders, and she rockets herself, thrusting her legs in either direction, arms pressed against her ears and flying higher than I've ever seen.

So high that a wild shake ripples through all of us, our cradled arms vibrating with awe and wonder.

Vibrating so strongly that it runs through me, it does, and I feel my left arm slacken, ever so slightly, and a shudder bores through me, and if it weren't for RiRi next to me, feeling my tremor, flas.h.i.+ng me her terror, a starry span of panic before my eyes, I wouldn't have driven that steel back into my blood, my muscles, my everything.

Made it tight and iron-fast for Tacy, who seemed to be in the air for minutes, hours, a radiant creature with white-blond hair spread wing-like, finally sinking safely, ecstatically, into all our arms.

It's hours later, and we're in Emily's dad's car sneaking swigs of blackberry cordial, swiped from RiRi's garage, where her brother hides it.

We're waiting in the parking lot of the Electric Crayon, its neon sign radiating s.e.x and chaos, the cordial tickling our mouths and bellies almost unbearably.

We've never been on Haber Road before, except the time we went with RiRi's sister to Modern Women's Clinic to get ofloxacin and she told us after how she almost choked when they stuck that big swab down her throat, but it was still better than what Tim Martinson had stuck down her throat.

We all laughed even though it didn't really seem funny and none of us want to end up at Modern Women's Clinic ever, the matted-down wall-to-wall, and the buzzing fluorescent lights, and the girl behind the front desk who sang softly to herself, "Boys trying to touch my junk-junk-junk. Gonna get me some crunk-crunk-crunk." "Boys trying to touch my junk-junk-junk. Gonna get me some crunk-crunk-crunk."

An hour slides by before Tacy finally comes out of the Electric Crayon, tugging her jeans down so we can see the Sutton Grove eagle soaring there, the envy so strong it almost makes me burst.

Coach, she wouldn't come with us no matter how much we begged. But she did slip Tacy forty bucks for it. Two smooth twenties, tucked in our new Flyer's trembling hands.

We never heard of any coach doing that, ever.

Nudging my fingers under the sticking bandage on her lower back, I touch that red-raw eagle, making Tacy wince with pained pleasure.

Me, me, me, it should be me.

7

WEEK FIVE

"I've heard some things about Ms. Colette French," Beth tells me. "I have contacts." things about Ms. Colette French," Beth tells me. "I have contacts."

"Beth," I say. I know this tone, I know how things start.

"I don't have anything to report yet," she says, "but be ready."

Like bamboo slowly sliding under fingernails. She has started.

But Beth also grows easily bored. That's what I have to remember.

I am glad, then, when Beth seems to have found something-someone-else to do.

Monday morning, the recruiting table is struck in the first-floor hallway, by the language labs.

The posters blare red, the heavy ripple of the flag insignia.

Discover Your Path to Honor.

Recruiters, out for fresh, disaffected-teen blood.

"Who needs cheer?" Beth says. "I'm enlisting."

They came last year too, and always sent the broadest-shouldered, bluest-eyed Guardsmen, the ones with arms like twisted oak and booming voices that echo down the corridor.

This year, though, they have Sergeant Will, who is entirely different. Who, with his square jaw and smooth, knife-parted hair, is handsome in a way unfamiliar to us. A grown-up man, a man in real life.

Sarge Will makes us dizzy, that mix of hard and soft, the riven-granite profile blurred by the most delicate of mouths, the creasy warmth around his eyes-eyes that seem to catch far-off things blinking in the fluorescent lights. He seems to see things we can't, and to be thinking about them with great care.

He is older-he may be as old as thirty-two-and he is a man in the way that none of the others, or no one else we know or ever knew, are men.

Before practice, or during lunch, a lot of the girls like to hang around and finger the brochures. Spread Your Wings, Spread Your Wings, they say. they say.

Fresh off her latest breakup with Catholic Patrick, lovely RiRi spends pa.s.s time lingering at the table, leaning across it, arms pressed tight against either side of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, framing them V-like and drawing one foot up her other leg, like she says men like.

"Personally, I find they like it when I lift my cheer skirt over my head," Beth says, side by side with me on the floor in front of her locker. "You might try that next time."

"Maybe you need some new tricks," RiRi yawns, eyes hot on Sarge Will. "What worked with your junior high PE teach might not roll with the big bra.s.s here."

This is how it starts, Beth rising to her feet like them's fighting words, and asking RiRi if she'd care to make it interesting.

I can tell from RiRi's face that she would not care to do so at all, but it's the prairie whistle of the Old West, high noon at ole Sutton Grove High. You can hear Beth's tin star rattling against her chest.

So much better to have Beth face off with party girl RiRi than with Coach.

It's not that Beth just rolls for anybody or even most people, but when she does, it's a star turn, it's page one. Like with Ben Trammel, or the time everyone saw her and Mike LaSalle, ebony against her ivory, in the holly hedges at St. Mary's after the game. All those forked nettles studding his letterman jacket, all up and down the felted arms, and his neck bristled red.

Everyone talked about it, but I was the one who saw her after. The bright pain in her face, like she didn't know why she'd done it, the alarm in her eyes, pin struck.

We've been angling, I have. Coach, what's your place look like? Coach, we want to meet little Caitlin too, we do. Coach, what's your place look like? Coach, we want to meet little Caitlin too, we do.

Coach, show us, show us, let us in.

None of us ever think she will. We've tried for five weeks. I dream of it, driving by her house like a boy might do.

The next Sat.u.r.day at the home game, Tacy kicks out that basket toss like she's been doing it all her life, and she adds a toe touch, and we do a hanging pyramid, with Emily and Tacy swinging like trapdoors off RiRi's arms, which whips up the crowd to fierce delirium.

There is such an ease to it. In the parking lot after, we're all feeling so good, like we could annihilate an invading army, or go to Regionals or State.

Beth is hoisting between her fingers a very fine bottle of spiced rum from some boy on the Nors.e.m.e.n team. He wants to party with us, and promises big excitement at his uncle's apartment, up on the Far Ridge.

Just the kind of wild night we'd all maneuver endlessly for, trading promises and fas.h.i.+oning elaborate lies, a string of phone calls home to marshal a fleet of alibis no parent could pierce.

Beth is the dark mistress of such nights and seems always to know where the secret house party is, or the bar with the bouncer who knows her brother, or the college boy hangout by the freeway where no one ever cards anybody and the floors are sticky with beer and the college boys are so glad for girls like us, who never ask them even one question ever.

But as we conspire around Beth's car, my hand stroking the borrowed bottle, mouth clove-streaked and face rum-suffused, Coach walks past us, car keys jangling loudly.

"Going home, Coach?" Emily asks, swiveling her nutraslimmed hips madly to the music thudding from the car stereo. "Why don't you come out with us instead?"

We all look wide-eyed at Emily's pirate-boldness, Tacy's head perched merrily on Emily's shoulder, like a parrot.

Coach smiles a little, her eyes, thoughtful now, wandering past us, into the dark thicket of trees banded around the parking lot.

"Why don't you all come to my house instead?" she says, just like that. "Why don't you come over?"

"The smell of desperation," Beth says, "is appalling."

Beth does not wish to go to Coach's house.

"It's not my job," she adds, as we all look at her blankly, "to make her feel like she matters."