Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,46

second-floor landing and broke her neck. In the dream, her aunt came to breakfast and announced she had a new talent. Then, taking one forearm to her neck, she showed them how she could turn her head 360 degrees.

Or, when we were ten and Beth came to school one day and said she dreamt she found Sandy Hayles from soccer camp behind the equipment shed, a sheet pulled tight across her face. That Saturday, our soccer coach told us Sandy had a blood disease and wasn’t coming back to camp, ever.

“What was the dream?” I ask, fighting off the nerves spiking up my neck, tickling my temples.

“We were doing toe touch jumps high on one of the overlooks, like that one time, remember?” she says. “But then we heard a noise, like something falling a long, long way. I walked over to the edge of the gorge to look down, but I couldn’t see anything at all. I could feel it, though, because it was vibrating, like your throat when you scream.”

And I’m thinking, yes, like when all of us scream at the game, with our throats vibrating and our feet pounding, and the bleachers shaking, everything. I can hear it all in my head now.

“Then I looked back up at you. It was so dark up there and you were so white, but your eyes were black, like one of those ash rocks in geology class.”

Shoulders clustered, a preying black bird, she leans closer.

Suddenly it feels like I’m the one who’s dreaming, who’s still stuck in that nightmare of sinking carpets and bloody footprints and an aquarium pump glub-glubbing, opening and closing like the valves of a heart.

“But, Addy, the bottom part of your face was gone,” she whispers, her fingers wandering to her chin, her lips. “And your mouth was just this white smear.”

My breath catches.

“I started to slip,” she continues. “You grabbed my wrist and were trying to pull me up, but it hurt and I looked down and something was cutting into me, something on your hand.”

“And you lifted your other hand, and there was a mouth there, right in the center of your palm—and you were talking through it, and you were saying something very important.”

I look down at my palm.

“What was I saying?” I ask, staring at the whiteness of my open hand.

“I don’t know.” Beth sighs, leaning back, shaking her head. “But then you did it.”

“Did what?”

“You let go,” she says. “Just like before you learned how to spot.”

Grab for the body, not the limb.

“You had my wrist, and then you didn’t anymore. You let go. Like always.”

My head hot, my stomach bucking, I press my napkin to my face. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything and I almost wish I’d really eaten that muffin. Almost.

“That’s not a special dream,” I say. “Nothing even happened.”

“Everything happened,” she says again, plucking lip gloss from her jeans pocket. “You know how it works. All will be revealed.”

I try to roll my eyes, and that’s when my stomach turns hard, and I have to reach for the napkin. The gagging is embarrassing, but nothing really comes up other than chocolate residue, a muddy slick dripping down my wrist.

“Lovergirl,” Beth says. “We gotta get you your gunstones back. You’re going feather soft. Now that I’m captain again, I’ll get you tight. I’ll get you good and tight.”

“Yeah,” I say, watching Beth swizzling that gloss wand like a magician. “How come I’m always the one doing bad things in your dreams?” I say.

She hands me the wand.

“Guilty conscience.”

After world civ, I see Beth again. She’s waiting for me outside the door.

“Splitsville,” she says. “I knew it. I knew something was gonna blow. Coach and Will, c’est fini.”

“Huh?”

“He’s not at the recruiting table today,” she says. “It’s just that redhead PFC.”

So fast, I think. So fast.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I say, turning. But she grabs me by the belt loop. Part of me is glad her morning spookiness is gone, and she’s just regular badass Beth, but another part of me doesn’t like all the jump and spark on her.

“I’ve done recon,” she whispers, so close I can see the dent in her tongue where her stud used to be before she decided tongue rings were JV. “Bitty PFC says they don’t know where the Sarge is. And he’s not answering his phone.”

I don’t say anything, just spin-dial my locker combination.

“So get this: PFC says sometimes Sarge just AWOLs. And they don’t bother him about it,