Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,56

at Tacy.

“Your Flyer isn’t your key to the castle,” Coach says. “It’s about the squad. You gotta show you’re the posse straight from hell. And there’s only one way to do it. We’re going to give that scout something that will guarantee our slot. We’re going to show her a two-two-one.”

The two-two-one.

It will be our shining achievement, if we nail it.

Three stories high of golden girls, two Bottom Bases holding up two Middle Bases in shoulder stands, the Flyer tossed through the center, Bottom Bases platforming her feet, the Middle Bases’ arms lifted to hold her arms outstretched, crucifixion style. Spotters standing behind, waiting for the Flyer’s death-defying Deadman fall.

It’s illegal in competition, but not at a game.

And it’s the kind of stunt you need to nail to make it to Regionals. To a tourney.

“Cap’n,” Coach says, looking up at Beth, halfway up the bleachers again, her hovering black presence. “All yours today. Drill them hard.”

She tosses Beth the whistle.

Beth, one eyebrow raised, catches it.

In an instant, a flare of energy seems to shoot up her body, that sullen slouch uncoiling for the first time in months, since…I can’t even remember.

Coach has just handed her the Big Stick, and thank god she still seems to think it worth taking.

“Gimme some handsprings, bitches,” Beth says, making her slow, willowy way down the stands, arms dangling, snapping her fingers low.

“Don’t fuck with me, RiRi,” she says. “Loose limbs may fly for your Saturday night specials, but I need you tight as a cherry. Time-travel me back.”

So Beth wrangles us for a while, and it does feel good. And Beth is so on, so animated.

She is enthroned and magnificent.

At some point, I see Coach slink into her office.

Later, while Beth’s busy trash-talking Tacy for a weak back tuck, calling her a sad little pussy, I slip over and peer in, see Coach on the phone, her hand over her eyes.

I think: it’s the cops. It’s the cops. What now?

An hour in, we’re ready to run the two-two-one pyramid.

Because I’m not too big and not too small, I’m a Middle Base, one of the two shoulder stands in the middle.

Beneath me stands eagle-shouldered Mindy Coughlin, my feet curled around her collarbone, her body bracing.

But I think it’s worse for me, no floor beneath me, and ninety-four pounds of quaking panic above.

Once we’re up, Tacy will get rocketed between RiRi and me, and we will grab her legs and lock her body in place.

Then she’ll wow them all, flipping backwards into a Deadman, falling into the waiting embrace of the cradle-armed spotters fifteen feet below.

Everyone will gasp, grip their bleacher seats.

The Deadman, that’s our moment of shock and awe.

Despite what Coach says, it really is all about the Flyer.

We can hold her steady as she comes, but if Tacy wobbles, twists, turns the wrong way: snap, crackle, pop.

Which is probably why she looks like a doomed tail gunner waiting to be wedged into a quaking turret.

“You all need to man up for Slaussen,” Beth tells us. “Or she’ll be mat-kill. Two years ago, at the Viking game, I saw a girl jiggle just an inch up there. Her girls didn’t have her. Smack! Her neck hit the ground, skidded so hard that a piece of her blond ponytail ripped from her scalp.”

Tacy’s face goes from green to white to gray. Beth, with that power to annihilate with a single breath. Two months ago, Tacy galloped hard at Beth’s side, lackey under her mighty sway. Oh, the turns of fortune…

Eyes on Tacy’s toned legs, which look like mini-butterfingers, Beth shakes her head.

I realize she’s right. One calf is bigger than the other.

“You always were such a hoodrat,” Beth says, shaking her head. “Always quick to hoist your legs in the air for my sloppy seconds. But I guess you were only hoisting the left one.”

Beth kneels down on the mat in front of Tacy’s dainty body.

Then, she wets her finger and runs it along Tacy’s thigh and calf.

We all observe, like watching a gang recruit get jumped in.

“I thought so,” Beth says, rising and wiggling her index finger, smudged with what looks to me like Mystic Island Radiance. “All the spray tan in the world won’t give you what you don’t have. You either have muscle or you have twig. Or, in your case, Q-tip.”

“I can do it, Beth,” Tacy says, voice pitching high. “Coach knows. I’ve earned my spot.”

“Then let’s see it, meat,” she says, standing back. “Make a believer out of me.”

Stepping back, she