Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,38

eyes, a glistening there beneath her lashes. Beth always knowing me. Everything, she is saying. And you know it.

“Those Guard boys, they see what they can get away with,” she whispers. “They see what’s okay, what’s allowed.”

Flashing on me, my own thoughts, hours before, hip-rotating with RiRi on the sinking mattress…it’s okay because these are Will’s men and nothing bad could ever happen.

“Beth,” I start, trying to turn the dial to the center. “Did he…did he—” I can’t say the word.

“What does it matter,” she says.

I breathe deeply. A breath so deep it nearly pierces me.

“Addy, he might as well have,” she says, her eyes blinking open, and so very drunk and lost I want to cry. “That’s what counts.”

More than once that night I sense movement in the house, shadows dancing past me. In my drunken sleep, curled tight on the couch, it’s as if I’m in Caitlin’s room, the pink-lit lantern casting ballerina silhouettes on the walls all night long.

Near dawn there is another shadow, and I feel the faintest weight on the glossy maple floors.

Rising, I creep through the living room door to the hallway, my stomach rising, the hangover scaling me with every move.

I see Coach in the den, leaning over the back of the sofa, whispering in Beth’s ear.

Her face so hard.

Her hands clasping the sofa edge too tight.

I think I hear. I know I hear.

You’re lying. You’re a liar. All you do is lie.

Then Beth, she’s talking, but I can’t hear any of it, or can’t be sure I have. In my nightmared head, it’s this:

He held my head, he bent my legs back, he did it to me, Coach. Monkey see, monkey do. Like us with you. Didn’t I jump higher, fly higher, Coach? Didn’t I?

16

All Sunday long, still feeling drunk, my whole body wrung dry from it, I can’t get Beth to return my texts. All I can do from my bedroom cave is wonder if she told her parents some version of her sordid story, or worse, the police.

And hovering in and out of hangover sleep, my dreams, so wretched, Prine’s bullet head between Beth’s tangled legs, doing tangly things with teeth, like a wild animal, the Mauler.

Or picturing Beth, teasing and goading him, slithering in her hiked skirt, saying who knew what, trying to get him to be rough with her, rough enough to mark her. I wonder how far he really got, or how far she would have let it go. Or why she did it to herself, to all of us.

Coach needs to see what she’s doing to us. What does that mean, Beth?

It means nothing to me.

Sunday night, Coach calls.

“I don’t know what happened,” I say. “I can’t get any more out of her.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Coach says, her voice flat, almost motorized. “All that matters is what she says happens. And who she says it to.”

This sends a chill through me. How could it not matter? But in some deeper way, I know what she means. There’s a fog upon us and there seems no piercing through.

“They’ve been in there an hour,” Emily announces, teetering on her crutches. On the DL but she won’t ever miss a practice. “At first it was really loud.”

We’re standing recklessly close to Coach’s office, she and Beth knotted in there, the blinds pulled shut, and I’m worried they can hear us.

No one else seems to know about Beth and Prine. All they heard was she sidled off with someone, which Beth always does anyway.

“Do you think Beth wants back on the squad?” Tacy whispers, visions of glory slipping from her neon fingertips. “Do you think Coach’d let her back? What if Coach lets her be squad captain again?”

Little, battle-hardened Tacy, calculating three moves ahead. Time was, she was just Beth’s gimp, then Beth’s Benedict Arnold. Now she’s Coach’s gimp.

If Beth is captain again, Tacy will have to slink back into spotter slots, or worse. No more Awesomes or Libertys or Dirty Birds or back tuck basket tosses.

No more flying.

“Coach doesn’t believe in captains,” Emily reminds us. “Even if she changed her mind, why in the world would she let Beth be captain? Beth doesn’t even show up anymore.”

But they don’t know what I know. Beth’s new chit. Pay for play. I wonder, will that be Coach’s strategy? It would be mine.

But it doesn’t seem Coach’s way. Her way: Meet swagger with swagger.

Swinging out of the office ten minutes later, Beth and Coach unaccountably snickering together, low, nasty laughs. We