Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,68

for sure I’d get to you before they did.”

There’s a sheen of sweat on her face.

I don’t say anything because I want that sweat there, at least for now. She’s made me sweat enough.

“It just seemed easiest to tell them you were here that night,” she says. “If you were at my house, then I couldn’t possibly have been at Will’s.”

She looks at me, from under her extended arm, elegant muscles spun tight.

“And you couldn’t have been there either,” she adds. “So we’re both covered.”

“What about Matt?” I say, dropping my voice.

“Oh, he’s back,” she says, gesturing out the window. “He’s outside.”

In the far corner of the lawn, I spot him sitting on the brick edging of an empty flowerbed.

I can’t figure out what he’s doing, but he’s very still.

I’ve never seen him like that, or outside at all. I wonder if he feels peaceful.

“No,” I say, regaining my focus. “I mean he told the cops you were home asleep, right? Which is what he thought anyway?”

Why did you need me as your alibi, I want to say, when you had him.

“This is better, Addy,” she says, the words just tripping from her tongue. “They never believe the spouse. And he was asleep, that’s not much corroboration…”

She stops for a second, eyes fixed on something on the windowpane. A smudge I can’t see.

“I used to use newspapers,” she says. “Then Matt bought me this thing.” She touches her fingers to the duster at the end of the pole. “It’s lamb’s wool.”

I keep waiting for her to say sorry, sorry I didn’t warn you, sorry I didn’t prepare you, sorry I didn’t protect you from all of this. But she’s never been a sorry kind of person.

“Coach,” I say. “Don’t you want to know what I said to the cops?”

She looks at me.

“But I know what you said,” she says.

“How do you know?” I say, kneeling on the sofa where she stands, barefoot. “I might have blown it without even realizing it.”

“I know because you’re smart. I know because I trust you,” she says, and lifts the pole again, telescoping it higher. “I wouldn’t have gotten you into this otherwise.”

“Gotten me into what?” I say, my voice scraping up my throat. “Coach, what am I in?”

She will not look at me. She’s looking out the window.

“My mess,” she says, her voice smaller. “Don’t think I don’t know that.”

I follow her gaze.

Far back on the lawn, Matt French has turned and seems to be looking toward us. Toward me.

I can’t make out his face, but it’s as though I can.

“Coach,” I say, “why was your hair wet?”

“What,” she says, swooping the squeegee back up the window.

“When I got to Will’s apartment that night,” I say, my eyes still on Matt French in the backyard, his rounded-over shoulders. “Why was your hair wet?”

“My hair wet? What kind of…it wasn’t wet.”

“Yes it was,” I say. “It was damp.”

She sets the pole down.

“Oh,” she says, looking at me at last. “So it’s you who doesn’t trust me.”

“No, I…”

“Did the police…did they…?”

“No,” I say. “I just remembered it. I’d forgotten it and I remembered it. I’m just trying…Coach, he was wearing a towel, and your hair…”

Something is happening, that vacant, efficient expression slipping away, revealing something raw, bruised. It’s like I’ve done something powerfully cruel. “I took a bath before I went over there,” she replies. “I always did.”

“But, Coach…”

“Addy,” she says, looking down at me, the pole piercing the cushion, like a staff, or sword, “you need to stop talking to Beth.”

A burr rises up under my skin.

“Because she just wants her pretty doll back,” Coach says quietly, lifting the pole again, pressing the squeegee against the window, making it squeak.

I feel something tighten in me and have a picture suddenly of Beth’s fingers circling my wrist.

Then at last, I say it. “You never told me about the bracelet.”

“The bracelet?” she says, finally releasing the pole and descending from her perch.

“My hamsa bracelet.”

“Your what?”

“To ward off the evil eye. The one I gave you.”

She pauses a second. “Oh, that, right. What about it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me the police found it?” I say, then wait a beat before adding, “under Will’s body.”

She looks at me. “Addy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You mean they didn’t ask you about it? They found the bracelet under Will’s body.”

“They told you that?” her voice bounds.

“No,” I say. “Beth did.”

I start to feel like my feet are going to slip out from under me, even though I’m sitting