Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,19

you’re not supposed to wear boots like that at all.

As for RiRi, her cheer skirt tugged heavenward, waistband high enough to show what her mama gave her. The two of them, they’re dangerous.

Sarge, though, is above all this. All the girls are hurling themselves at him, but he never blinks, not once. He smiles, but his smile doesn’t really seem like a smile but the kind of thing you do with your mouth when you know everyone is watching.

Sometimes it’s like each hip swivel is a burden he strains under. So, he just smoothly shifts such attentions over to the corporal, the private, whoever the hard-jawed thug next to him is, the one we never look at, that brush of acne on his chin, that angry look on him, like the boys who get into fights after one beer, who shove their girlfriends at parties and knock their shoulder blades loose, who pop their collarbones like buttons. We never look at them. Or I don’t.

The worst is Corporal Prine, the one with the barrelhouse shoulders and the broad head like an eraser stub. A few weeks ago, I spotted him standing in front of the door of my English class. He seemed to be staring right at me, his razor-burned cheeks studded red. I tried not to pay attention, but then he did something with his tongue and hand that could not be ignored.

But Sarge, he can do anything. Yet the more we try, the less interested he seems. Most days, he seems to be some other place entirely, some place in which girls like us have no place at all.

Even Beth at her tartiest can’t provoke him.

I don’t see it, but I hear about it—the flash of her skirt, the star-spangled panties—and I don’t believe it. I didn’t flash anything, she tells me later. Just crooked her index finger, made him lean close, and asked him if she could feel his weapon.

But Sarge didn’t bat a downy eyelash.

Oh, the daily frustration on RiRi’s candy-mouthed face, and worse still Beth’s glower, which she wears like a black veil all day.

Between Coach and Sarge, she has much to be unhappy about.

But instead of wrath and plots, she is quiet, brooding.

There’s a witchiness to it, and it worries me.

It’s during those weeks that I see Coach’s husband for the first time, through the half-open study door. He’s reading a sheaf of paper while slowly pulling off his necktie. I can’t even tell you what he looks like except there’s nothing to notice at all.

The next time, and the time after, it’s always like this presence. Matt’s here. Oh, that’s just Matt, finally home. That’s the pizza guy for Matt. And sometimes just “he.” There he is, oh, we can’t turn on the stereo, he’s here. Oh, you know him, he’s working. He never, ever stops.

He is always on his cell phone and he always looks tired. Once or twice we see him in the backyard, talking into his bluetooth, pacing around. We see him sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, spreadsheets spread across the table, his laptop swiveling, screen glowing green on him.

He works very hard, and he’s not interesting at all.

Or maybe he is, but Coach never seems interested. And when he’s there, it feels weirdly like Dad’s home. A nice enough Dad, and not a buzzkill Dad except, I guess, for Coach, who seems to sink inside a little. Once he tried to ask about how we planned our pyramids because he studied real pyramids in college engineering and wondered if it was similar. But no one knew what to say and there was a long pause until Coach, her eyes shifting away, said that we were just tired because we’d been working on sequences all night.

“Man fears time,” he said, as he walked off into his study, smiling at us all and kind of saluting good night, “yet time fears the pyramids.”

Once, I’m passing the door to his study and I see him there, and the computer screen flickering, reflected on the window behind him. And I see he’s playing Scrabble online. And something about it makes me crashingly sad.

“Beth, just come, will you? Just once, come with us.”

We have been trying for the last three weeks. But when Beth does concede, I don’t like how easy it is.

“Let’s see what all of you have going on over there,” she says, eyes flashing. “I’d like to see for myself.”

Three Saturdays in a row, we’ve lounged, grown-up like,