Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,23

Windmere and bled for hours in the bathroom and we kept pulling toilet paper from the roll in long, sloping drifts, like she was gonna die. Like she was gonna—

Just like that, Beth pushes her hip against the teachers’ lounge door, and it swings open, and we see it all.

Every bit of it.

There, seated on one of the old swivel chairs, is Sarge Will, National Guardsman Will, and Coach spanning his lap, her legs bare and looped around him like a pale ribbon, feet dangling high, and his dress blue blazer asunder, wrapped around her snowy nakedness, his hands pressed against her breasts, his face red and helpless. Her thighs are shuddering whitely and his hand curves around the back of her head, buried in her dark hair, sweat-stuck and triumphant.

Her face, though, that’s what you can’t take your eyes off of.

The dreamy look, her pinkening cheeks, all elation and mischief and wonder, like I never saw in her, like she’s never been with us, so strict and exacting and distant, like a cool machine.

It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I feel myself jostled backwards into Beth the instant Coach’s eyes meet mine, alarm and dread there. I feel myself hurling both Beth and me out the door, Beth’s laughter clanging through the corridor, my hand dragging the door shut, closing my eyes to it. Wondering if I even saw what I saw.

But looking at Beth’s gleeful, mocking face, I know I have. I’ve seen it.

Later, I think about it. It wasn’t like in the movies, soft-lit bodies writhing creamily under satin sheets.

It lasted only a second, so how could it pierce me with such thorny beauty—but it does.

Coach’s face that long, hectic second before she saw me.

Like someone climbing her way out of the darkest tunnel, her mouth wide and gasping for air.

And his eyes shut so tight, face locking itself into place, as if to let go would destroy everything, would bury her again, and he only wants to save her, to breathe that hot life into her.

And she, gasping for air.

By the time Coach finds us in the locker room, Beth and me jackrabbity with titillation, everything that had opened, gloriously, is shut again.

She is once more that iron ingot, hard and feverless, walking with purpose but without hurry, with no wilt or lilt in her step, no hair out of place from that shiny crest of hers.

In her office, she pulls the blinds down on the door then shakes out a handful of cigarettes on the desk.

This has never happened before, this offering.

Beth and I each take one, and I know what it means for me, to me.

And I know what it means to Beth, high on her new power perch, nuzzling her new wisdom close to her freckled chest.

But this, the extent of this, I can’t think about yet.

Coach lights mine and when she does I look in her eyes and that’s when I see she hasn’t put on all the calm she wants. Those flat gray eyes are jumping.

Beth, leaning back in Coach’s seat, kicks her legs up and props her feet against the front of the desk. Scuffing its laminated edge.

She is very pleased.

As Coach walks past me to the window, I catch the scent, just barely. Sharp and fleshy and stinging my nose and making me think of Drew Calhoun’s bedsheets that time, the smell on them, even though we didn’t, but he did.

“I need you to understand what Will—what the Sergeant and I have is a real thing,” she lets her gaze flit over us quickly. “A true thing.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Beth piano-keying her fingers along her chin.

“I never thought it would happen,” Coach says, and I think she means cheating on her husband. But then she says, “I never thought I’d feel like this.”

I look at her, her hands pulling at the wand of the window blinds, lacing around it and tugging like a little girl with her whole hand wrapped around her father’s index finger.

Feel like what, I want to ask, but don’t.

“Do you guys understand?” she asks, tilting her head, a strand of that perfect hair slipping across her face, grazing her mouth.

I do not look at Beth.

“I waited my whole life for it,” Coach says, and I feel a buzzing in my chest. “I never thought it would happen. And then it did.”

She looks at us.

“Wait until it happens to you,” she says, breathing hard and her body twisting with