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.”
Standing in the front hallway, we wait while Coach sends off the babysitter, an older woman named Barbara in a peach chenille sweater that hangs to her knees.
She lets us poke our heads in and see little Caitlin fast asleep. The room is blushing pink with one of those rotating lanterns that wobble pretty ballerinas all over the walls.
Caitlin, strawberry blonde, nestles under rosy gingham with a doilied edge through which she hooks one pink thumb.
Her breath is light and fast and we can hear it even huddled in the doorway, Emily and me, we’re the ones who want to see. We look at her, the soft ringleted hair and the peace on her flushed face, and wonder what that peace is like and if we ever had it.
We sit out on the back deck—me and RiRi and Emily and the newly brave Tacy, the li’l cottontail whom we once ignored but whom we now gird to our chests proudly, our newly branded recruit, our soaring rocket.
Our cold arms buried inside our varsity jackets, at first so formal, we sit legs crossed tight, backs straight, speaking in light hushy tones, asking questions about the house, about Caitlin, about Coach’s husband, Matt.
We sit in the chilling air, on long benches flanking two sides of the deck. And there’s Coach, on a lounger, slowly sinking back, hands tucked in her jacket pockets, her hair spreading across the teak slats, her face slowly, slowly releasing itself from its school day tethers, its rigor and purpose.
The night feels important even as it’s happening.
Once, Beth and I had a night like this, the night before we started high school. Kiddie-like, we’d hooked her brother’s Swiss Army into our palms and pressed them tight against each other, and later Beth said she could feel my heart beating in my hand, her hand. She swore she could. We knew that meant something. Something had passed between us and would endure. We don’t talk about it anymore and it was a century ago, wars won and lost since then.
And, Beth, you’re not even here now.
On Coach’s deck, we all talk in the echoey night, first shyly, awkwardly, of nothing things—the Mohawks’ forward with the bowlegs, the way Principal Sheehan spins on one heel like a lady when he turns in the hallway, the doughy chocolate chip cookies in the cafeteria, the tang of the raw eggs and baking soda churning in your stomach, making you sick.
Slowly, slowly, though, we feel the dark night opening among us, between us, and RiRi talks about her dad, who moved out last month and cries on the phone whenever they talk, and Emily shows us the very first ballet step she ever learned, and Tacy says she never felt so perfect as when she was flying in the air.
Would a boy ever make her feel that way? she asks. Would a man?
We all look at Coach, who’s smiling and nearly laughing even, leaning back on the lounger and flinging one leg over the other.
“Girly,” she says, lively and light, like you rarely hear, “you have no idea the wonderful things men will make you feel.”
Tacy smiles, we all do.
“And terrible things too,” Coach adds, her voice tinier now. “But the terrible things are…are kind of wonderful too, I guess.”
Tacy props her feet up on the foot of Coach’s lounger. “How can something terrible ever be wonderful?” she asks, and I cringe a little. I know how, I want to say.