Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,55

I say.

“Is it hers, Addy?” Beth asks, her left eyebrow lifting. “She must have told you they asked her about it. You two thick as thieves.”

“We haven’t really had a chance to talk,” I say, holding tight to the edge of the terminal.

“Well, she’s pretty busy,” Beth says, with a slow nod. “Four days to the Big Game and all.”

Turning away from the terminal, she flings one golden leg onto the nearest library tabletop.

“Look how tight I am,” she says, surveying herself. “I’ll grant Coach that. But you think Li’l Tacy Cottontail’s up for Top Girl? The balance is all. One of her calves is bigger than the other. Did you ever notice that?”

“No.”

“I bet you have. Your balance is impeccable. Four inches shorter, you would’ve been a perfect Top Girl.”

I pause a second.

“The PFC doesn’t know she has one, does he?” I ask.

“Has what?” Beth asks, maddeningly, surveying my legs now with her cold captain-appraisal gaze.

“A hamsa bracelet,” I say, fighting a panicky tilt in my voice.

“Not now, Adelaide,” she says. “Not yet.”

I grab my books and start to walk away.

“You’re going to have to forget how pretty and interested she is in you, Addy,” she calls after me.

Walking out, I hear her all the way.

“Tighten that gut, Addy. Lock those legs. Smile, smile, smile!”

Everyone is looking at me, but I only look straight ahead.

“Remember what old Coach Templeton used to say, Addy!”

I push open the shuddering glass exit doors.

“A good cheerleader,” she is calling out, “is not measured by the height of her jumps but by the span of her spirit.”

23

THURSDAY: AFTER SCHOOL

“Four days, bitches!!” shouts Mindy.

RiRi is doing waist bends, flashing her panties, this time lined with sparkles.

The JV is clicking through YouTube on her laptop for the Celts squad’s stunts.

Paige Shepherd is twanging—“Ima go for the gold, heart is in control, I’m a go, I’m a go I’m a go getta”—lifting one long leg into a Bow ’n’ Arrow.

Cori Brisky shushes her hair up into her trademark extra-long white-blond pony whip, famous across three school districts.

Everything is as it ever was.

Still ground-bound since her spectacular fall, gimpy Emily is passing around the temporary tattoos she ordered for the squad. She has one on the apple of either cheek and she’s dotted her knee brace with them. Which all seems sad to me, like she’s our mascot. No one respects a mascot.

We all feel sorry for her. She can’t even hall-stalk with us, can’t keep up with that club boot, and has already become a recruiting target of lacrosse players and the golf team, which could not be sadder, and of the predatory courtship of the field hockey furies, promising to get her knees skinned.

I remember, sort of, being friends with her. Holding her hair back while she gagged herself pea-shoot thin. Even calling her at night instead of Beth, confiding things. But now I don’t know what we’d talk about.

At three twenty Coach, chin high, strolls through the doors to the gym.

Beth, standing in front of the mirror, doesn’t even look up, too busy oil-slicking her lashes with a mascara brush, no cares furrowing her face.

“I have some news, guys,” she says.

I reach out to hold onto my locker door.

“I heard from my source at State Quals. There’s gonna be a scout at Monday’s game. We rock them, we’re rocking Regionals next year.”

Everyone whoops and woo-hoos, jumping on the bleachers, grabbing each other around the necks like the ball-ers do.

Poor boot-braced Emily bursts into tears.

“By next year you’ll be flying again,” RiRi says, hand to her shoulder.

“But not on Monday,” she whimpers. “That won’t be mine.”

“Let’s focus,” Coach says, clapping her hands sharply.

We snap front.

Looking at her, I can’t fathom it. I’d never guess anything else was going on at all. She is ready to ride us. She is sweatless and bolt-straight.

“We need to think about the Celts,” Mindy says.

The Celts squad has serious game, famous for their facial expressions, head bobs and tongues stuck out and dropped jaws and wide eyes when their Flyers hit, when they spring back, the crowd gasping ah, ah, ah.

“They do two-girl Awesomes,” Brinnie Cox says with a sigh, which is how she says everything. “A girl my size can catch both the Flyer’s feet in one palm.”

“Their facials are hot,” RiRi admits.

“I don’t care about their wiggling tongues or bouncing ponytails,” says Coach. “I don’t care about the Celts at all. All I care about is that Regionals scout. The scout’s gotta see our star power.”

We all look uneasily