Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,35
with the nubby spreads, and the lights are pitched low and soft and there’s almost a peacefulness about it.
It’s just a place to have a party, that’s all. A little party, two adjoining rooms, the clock radio jangling softly and one PFC reaching above his hand, absentmindedly twirling the overhanging lamp, sending glades of light across the room like a mirror ball, like Caitlin’s magic lantern.
Then, bullet-headed Corporal Prine steps out of the bathroom, his thumb dug in the neck of his beer bottle.
RiRi, looking at me, shaking her head, mouthing, Hell-no.
The other ones are all decked out in ironed polo shirts and pressed everything, but Prine is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with skulls and bones and a big knife wedged in one of the skulls. The words LOVE KILLS are scrolled across it.
Nodding that big thick eraser-tip head of his, Prine beckons toward us.
Shrugging off her letter jacket, Beth, resplendent in a gold halter top, walks toward him, smiling slantily in that Beth way that feels like new trouble.
But RiRi is hip-shaking and she dips her hand in mine, and RiRi’s ease with boys is such solace and soon we are dancing, pop-pop-popping our hips and RiRi doing the robot arm.
There’s rum and diet cokes mixed special for us and all the alcopops we can drink, and the PFCs are gentlemanly and suggest we play a game called beer blow. I never do figure out what the point is except it involves a lot of us bending over the table and blowing playing cards off an empty bottle, and then drinking, and then drinking again.
I don’t care about anything, not the stain on the bedspread or the ceiling, or the way the bathroom sink drags away from the wall when you hold onto it, when you try to stay upright, not the crusted carpet under my feet, my shoes flung off as I climb up on the bed with RiRi, when we dance together, our hips knocking, and the Guardsmen all watch and cheer. I don’t care about anything at all.
I don’t care because it’s like this: the rum, and the hard lemonade, and the shot of tequila zoom and zag through me, and the spell cast so deeply.
The whole high school world of gum-stuck, locker-slamming, shoe-skidding tedium slips away and it’s all just warm and gushing perfection.
“Tell Coach to come,” RiRi is burbling. “Tell her we’re with the Guard.” She’s fumbling with my phone, trying to send a text.
Because it’s all okay because these are Will’s men and nothing bad could ever happen, one of them is pressing our heads together, wanting us to kiss.
“Always ready,” he says. “Always there.”
“We could never be girlfriends like this before,” RiRi says, hugging me close. “Until this year. You were always Beth’s girl. She never wanted to share you. Girl has such a hard-on for you. I was even scared of you. I was always scared of both of you.”
She’s looking at me, eyes wide, like she’s surprised herself.
This hot, sloshing feeling low in me, I’ve known it before, at house parties, at bonfires on the ridge with clanking kegs and plastic cups, and every boy becomes the prettiest I ever saw. But this is better somehow—the Comfort Inn on Haber Road!—better still these men, grown men, Guardsmen—Will’s men. Bearing somehow the sheen of Will.
Who am I not to curl myself under their hard, angled arms? Like Coach with Will. That could be me.
It’s late when we can’t find Beth.
At first I’m sure she’s with Prine, but then PFC Tibbs, the sweet, gingered one with the whistle in his voice, shows me Prine passed out on the bed in the adjoining room, and there’s no Beth.
Prine’s jeans are around his ankles and his boxer shorts half yanked off, leaving a view of fleshy abandon. Even though he’s alone, it feels sinister. Maybe it’s the smell, which is ripe and unwholesome.
The PFC takes me for a walk down every hallway and into every stairwell, talking about his sister and how he worries about her at State, hears tales of fraternity lap dances and early morning walks of shame.
We look for Beth for an hour or more, and I hold on to some kind of calm only because, walking under the long bands of humming fluorescents, I’m concentrating very hard and won’t miss any deodorized nook of the motel.
But each burning hallway is like the previous one, all of them yellow-bright and empty.
I’m nearly night-air-sobered by the time we find her asleep in