Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,59

between Beth and Coach during those hours after practice to lead to this.

R U happy now? I text back.

But there’s no reply.

It’s the dark muddle of the night when I feel the phone hissing in my hand.

Come outside.

I flick my blinds with a finger and see a car out front, Coach behind the wheel.

The cold grass crunching under my feet, I bound across the lawn.

We sit in the car, which is Matt French’s and isn’t as nice as Coach’s car. It smells like cigarettes, though I’ve never seen Matt French smoke.

The cup holder is stained with three, four coffee rings like the center of an old tree.

Something’s wreathing my ankle, maybe the hand loops of a plastic bag, or the curled edges of an old receipt, some stray Matt Frenchness left behind.

Something about how messy the car is makes me feel things, like that time I saw him, after midnight, drooped over a bowl of cereal, and understood it was his dinner, that gritty bowl of Coach’s special holistic blend of organic gravel, soot, and matches, and Matt French hunched over it by himself on the kitchen island, socked feet dangling, headphones on, tuning out all our hysteria and gum chewing.

And now. Poor Matt, in some airport or office tower in Georgia, some conference room someplace where men like Matt French go to do whatever it is they do, which is not interesting to any of us, but maybe it would be if we knew. Though I doubt it.

Except sometimes I think of him, and the soulful clutter in his eyes, which is not like Will’s eyes were because Will’s eyes always seemed about Will. And Matt French’s seem only about Coach.

“He’s still gone?” I ask.

“Gone?” she asks, looking at me quizzically.

“Matt,” I say.

She pauses. “Oh,” she says, turning her face away for a second. “Yeah.”

As if he were an afterthought.

Hands curling around the steering wheel, she says, “There’s something new, Addy.”

The bracelet, she’s going to tell me at last.

“The police,” she says. “I think they’re hearing things. They asked me what the nature of our relationship was. That’s how they put it.”

“Oh,” I say.

“I told them again that we were friends. They’re probably just trying to understand his state of mind.”

“Oh,” I repeat.

“They had a lot of new questions about the last contact I’d had with him. I think they—and the Guard—they want to understand how he might have come to this,” she says.

The words don’t feel like hers, exactly. So formal, her mouth moving slowly around them like they don’t fit.

“I’m sure it’s fine, Addy,” she says, her fingers clenching tighter. “But it seemed like I should tell you.”

“I’m glad you told me,” I say. But she hasn’t told me anything. “Is that all?”

As if sensing my disappointment, she pats me on the shoulder.

“Addy, nothing can really happen if we keep tight,” she says, resting her fingers there. I don’t remember her ever touching me like that. “Keep strong. Focus. After all, it’s just you and me who know everything.”

“Right,” I say. And I want to feel the dazey warmth of sharing things with her, but she’s not sharing, not really, and so all I feel is Beth, the way she seems now, crouched, watchful, hovering.

“So we’re good?” she asks.

Part of me wants to tell her everything, all the ways she needs to watch for Beth, knives out. But she’s telling me only what she wants to. So I don’t say any more.

“I gave it to Beth,” Coach says, reading my thoughts, like she can. Like they both can. “She’s Top Girl. She’s flying at the final game.”

Coach, I want to say, what makes you think you can stop there? You have to give her everything until we figure out what she wants. Until she does.

“First I made her captain. Now I’ve made her Top Girl,” she says, eyes on me, searching.

She didn’t make me Top Girl, I can hear Beth saying. I made me Top Girl. I made myself.

She loops her fingers around the gearshift.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she says, a slightly stunned look on her face. “Jesus, she’s just a seventeen-year-old kid. Why should I…”

There’s a pause.

“She’ll get bored with it all,” she says, as if trying to convince herself. “They always do.”

At home that night I spend an hour, forehead nearly pressed to my laptop screen, reading the news.

No Answers Yet: Guardsman Cause of Death Still Under Investigation.

What would it mean if it were murder? What does it have to do with