Dare Me (18 page)

Everyone whispered that it was about Casey, but it wasn’t. It was an accident. Beth and her big door-knocker earrings. It just happened.

Sometimes now, when she’s not looking, I stare at her earlobe and want to touch it, to understand something.

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

“I stood with her when they stitched up her ear,” RiRi says now. “I never saw her cry before. I never knew she had tear ducts. Hell, I never knew she had blood in her.”

“It was just a fight,” I say, remembering the two of us tangled up, someone screaming.

“I thought,” RiRi says, “‘Addy’s finally manning up to Beth.’ None of us ever had the guts.”

“A stupid fight, like girls do,” I say.

“And, for what it’s worth, Beth talked all kinds of trash about Casey,” RiRi says, “but I never believed it.”

I had, though. And I stripped my bunk of sheets and walked down to the end of the cabin, to the bunk Beth had already vacated for me. And I never talked to Casey again.

“Addy, you could still do it,” RiRi says now. “You could be captain, anything.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I say.

RiRi brushes back, like I’ve hit her.

“That was a long time ago,” I add, setting my arms up for another tuck. “That was last summer.”

A half hour passes, everyone doing lazy tuck jumps and stretches, before we hear the sound.

Coach Templeton’s ancient boom box sliding across the gym floor, blasting bratty girl rap:
“Take me low, where my girlies go, where we hit it till they’re kneeling, till there’s glitter on the ceiling…”

All our heads turn, and there is Beth, white-socked and whistle swinging.

“Bitches,” Beth hollahs, ringingly. “Front and center and show me your badass selves. I’m self-deputized.”

“What do you mean?” demands Tacy. “Where’s Coach?” Our now perpetual lament.

“Didn’t you hear?” Beth says, turning the music up louder, the rattle in it sending a few girls to their feet, bouncily. “She got hauled in by the po-po.”

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“She’s at the station house. The cops picked her up in the squad car. Her ball-and-chain went with her.”

I don’t let her catch my eye.

“How do you know?” RiRi says, cocking an eyebrow.

“I went over there to see if Coach needed a ride. Barbara-the-Babysitter told me. She looked scared pantless. She said the cops came in with trash bags. Started hauling off stuff.”

Everyone exchanges wide-eyed glances.

“But I’m not here for idle gossip,” she says. “Show me you got something other than chicken hearts behind those padded bras.”

Everyone starts forming their lines, I can’t even believe how quickly.

Clapping tight and shaking their legs out and faces tomato-bursting.

Like they’re eager for it.

Like anyone will do, if they’re hard enough.

“And no more tantric chants and bullshit,” Beth says. “I want to see blood on the floor. And remember what old Coach Temp used to say…”

She steps back as everyone but me assembles for their back tucks.

“Cheer, cheer, have no fear!” they all chant. Some of them are even smiling.

Grinning, Beth gives the response: “When you’re flying high, look to the sky, and scream Eagles, Eagles, Eagles!”

An hour later, we hit the two-two-one, Beth our Flyer.

Tossed up between RiRi and me, already six feet up, our legs braced by Mindy and Cori beneath us. Tossed up, our ponytailed apex.

My arms lifted above, I have her right side, her right wrist, her arm like a batten, hard and motionless, and RiRi her left.

She, spine so straight, the line of her neck, her body still, tight, perfect.

I have her, we have her, and Beth is higher than I’ve ever seen anyone.

After everyone has scattered to the locker room, I spot a lone figure watching practice from high up in the stands.

No tan for her, no nothing, but thinner than ever, a bobby pin, and she seems to be saying something to me.

That mammoth brace on her knee and her mouth open, a big O, straining to rise.

It’s Emily. And she’s saying something.

“What?” I call up. “What do you want, Royce?”

Slowly, she gimps her way down the stands, each step meaning a wide swing of her leg.

It never occurs to me to climb up and meet her.

“Addy,” she is saying, breathless. “I never saw it before.”

“Saw what?”

“I never saw the stunts. From back there,” she says. “I never saw us.”

“What do you mean?” I say, a slight ripple in my chest.

“Did you ever really think about it? About what we’re doing?” she says, holding tight to the railing.

She starts talking, breathless and high, about the way we are stacked, like toothpicks, like pixy stix, our bodies like feathers, light and tensile. Our minds focused, unnourished, possessed. The entire structure bounding to life by our elastic bodies vaulting into each other, sticking, and then…

A pyramid isn’t a stationary object. It’s a living thing.…The only moment it’s still is when you make it still, all your bodies one body, until…we blow it all apart.

“I had to cover my eyes,” she says. “I couldn’t look. I never knew what we were doing before. I never knew because I was doing it. Now I see.”

I am not listening at all, her voice getting more shrill, but I can’t hear. A month on the DL, a month stateside, this is what happens.

I just look hard into her baby blue eyes.

“Standing back,” she says, mouth hanging in horror, “it’s like you’re trying to kill each other and yourself.”

I look at her, folding my arms.

“You were never one of us,” I say.

SATURDAY EVENING

I drive by
the police station and see Matt French’s car. An hour later, it’s still there.

Prine heard Coach there that night. Which means Coach lied, which means Coach was there when whatever happened to Will…

These words still hang, sentence unfinished. I just can’t finish the sentence.

I remind myself that, hard as she is, I have seen her grief blast apart her stony self. At least once I did, holding her by the waist in her bedroom hallway Wednesday night. Feeling the bed shake with it while we slept. How is that a killing soul?

But does anyone ever seem like a killer?
I can hear Beth’s voice squirming in my head.

To Beth, of course, everyone does.

I believe both of them and neither of them. All their stories poured in my ear, maybe it’s time to start finding out on my own.

At ten o’clock, I drive by Statler’s. I’m remembering Beth’s texts.

The shaggy guy at the door won’t let me in with my premium Tiffany Rue, age twenty-three, driver’s license, but I don’t need to go inside.

Instead, I walk from parking lot post to post, hands on the peeling silver paint.

On the farthest one from the door of the bar, I spot the chewy dent, paint glittering the asphalt.

“What happened here?” I call over to the door guy.

He squints at me.

“Life is hard,” he says, “and you’re too young for the parking lot too, little miss.”

“Who did it?” I ask, walking toward him. “Who hit the post?”

“A woman wronged,” he says, shrugging.

“Was she late twenties, brown hair, ponytail?”

“I don’t know,” he says, pointing with one long delicate finger at the Eagles patch on my arm. “But she had a coat just like yours.”

I sit and tally the lies, but there are so many and they don’t quite line up.

Why would Coach tell me she hit a post in Buckingham Park instead of Statler’s? One small lie, but there’ve been so many. Add them all together and they seem to teeter five miles above me.

It’s eleven when I drive by Coach’s house again.

At last, the car is there.

I find her on the deck, smoking clove cigarettes. One knee hunched up, her chin resting on it, she seems to hear me before I’ve even made a sound.

“Hanlon,” she says. “How’d practice go?”

Have you lost your mind?
I want to say.
Have you?

“Awesome,” I say, teeth gritted. “We’re tight in the fight. You should’ve seen us rock the two-two-one.”

“Make sure you don’t lean down to pull your Flyer up,” she says. “Bend your legs to reach her, otherwise you could pull the whole stunt down.”

“I’ve never done that once,” I say, wincing. “You weren’t there.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” she says, moving her ashtray from the deck chair beside her.

If it weren’t for the slight tremble to her hands this might be any other night at all.

“Well, you had a pretty good excuse.” I sit down, our matching twin letter jackets zipped tight up over our chins.

“I’m guessing my captain ran the show?” she asks. “Or maybe you don’t want to talk about that.”

All the cold and loneliness of the night sinking into me, all I want is to hammer through that stony perfection. Hand heel to chisel, that’s all I want.

“You were there,” I say. “You were at Will’s that night.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“You didn’t hit a post in Buckingham Park,” I say. “You had a fight with him. You ran into a post at Statler’s. Everything was falling apart with you two, or something. He was breaking up with you, he was done with you.”

She remains statue-still.

“And you didn’t find Will’s body,” I say, throwing myself into it, hammer, hammer, hammer. “You were with him. You were in his bed. You’re a liar. You’ve lied about everything.”

Jumping forward in my chair, I’m nearly shouting in her ear. “You’re a liar. So what else are you?”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t even turn her head to face me.

A moment passes, my heart suspended.

“Yes,” she says, finally. “I was at Will’s earlier than I said. And I did hit a post at Buckingham. And I hit another post at Statler’s. I’ve hit posts, curbs, streetlamps all over town. I’ve forgotten to feed my daughter dinner. I’ve forgotten to brush my hair. I’ve lost eleven pounds and haven’t slept, really
slept,
in weeks. I’ve lost my daughter in stores, and slapped her little face. I’ve been a bad influence and a bad wife. I’ve haven’t known my mind in months.

“What’s the difference, Addy? The thing that matters is this. Will’s dead and everything’s over.”

She turns and looks at me, the porch light catching her for the first time. Her face swollen, soft.

“Is that what you wanted?” she asks. “Does that help you, Addy? Because making you feel better is what matters, right?”

I flinch at that. The rest is too painful to look at.

“You,” I say, my voice rising, “
you
called me that night. You dragged me into this.”

“I did, Addy,” she says. “But don’t you know I’d tell you more if I could?”

“Why can’t you?”

“Addy, I called you that night because I knew you’d help me. You understood how it was with Will and me. You were a part of it.”

I was. I was.

“So, yes, I was at Will’s that whole night, Addy,” she says. “But I didn’t do anything. I was with him, but I found him too. It’s all true. Everything is.”

I think about this a second, this riddle. But I can’t decipher it, not with everything else happening, not with the hammer and chisel still trembling in my hand.

“So why can’t you tell me?” I say, a pleading in my voice I can’t stop. “I’m trying to help you. I am.”

Suddenly, a band of light streams from the kitchen. I hear Caitlin’s fretful weep.

Coach turns her head, glancing through the patio doors.

“You better go home,” she says, rising, her cigarette dangling from her fingertips.

“Not yet,” I say. “Why can’t you tell me? I need to know more than this. I need…”

Caitlin’s weep squalls up into a sob, something about bad dreams. What about my bad dreams?

“But Coach,” I say, my mind scattering madly. “Beth says she’s going to the cops tomorrow.”

She stops at the patio door, one hand on the handle. “To say what?”

“To say all this. The parts she’s figured out. The parts she’s guessing at.”

She takes one last drag on her cigarette, staring out into the black murk of the back lawn.

“She thinks you did it,” I say. “She thinks you killed Will.”

The first time such words come from my mouth, and they sound more monstrous than anything ever.

“Well, I didn’t,” she says, dropping her cigarette to the deck, letting one foot tap it out, with infinite grace.

In bed, late, I’m whispering into my phone, to Beth.

“You didn’t go today? To the cops?”

“You’re a freaking broken record, Addy Hanlon,” she says.

“If you’re so sure you know everything,” I say, squinting my eyes tight, trying to figure my way into her, “why haven’t you gone already?”

“I’m still collecting the final pieces,” she says. I swear I can hear her tongue churning in her mouth like a vampire. “I’m working on my deployments and flanking maneuvers.”

I picture her, on the other end of the phone, plucking her marked lobe, the crescent scar, but then I realize it’s me, fingers gnarled around my own ear.

“Beth, I have to ask you something,” I say, my tone gliding elsewhere.

“I’m waiting,” she says.

“Beth,” I say. Without even planning on it, my voice slips into something from our past, the Addy who needs things from Beth—her skinny stretch jeans, the ephedra tea you have to mail order, the questions for the chem exam, someone to tell her what to do to make it all bearable.

The voice, it’s not an act, it isn’t, it never was, and it’s like a message to her, to both of us, to remember things, because she needs to remember too. I need to make her step back and see.

“Beth, I could get in trouble here,” I say. “I helped her. Can you give me one more day? Just one more day to see what I can find out. To see if you’re right.”

“You mean one more day for her to save her own skin.”

“One more day, Beth,” I say. “Wait until Tuesday. Monday’s the game. Tomorrow you’re Top Girl.”

There’s a pause.

“One more day, Beth,” I say, softly. “For me.”

There’s another pause and its quiet feels dangerous.

“Sure,” she says. “You take your day.”