Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,69

down.

We’re standing in front of Coach’s bureau, her smooth mahogany jewelry box before us.

She sets her hands on either side and lifts the top with a shushing sound.

We look at the tidily arranged bracelets woven into the soft ridges. Her tennis bracelet, a few neon sports bracelets, a delicate silver-linked one.

“It’s got to be in here,” she says, fingertip stroking the velvet. “I haven’t worn it in weeks.”

But it’s not.

I look at the box, and at her, at the way her face looks both tight and loose at the same time, veins wriggling at her temples, but her mouth slack, wounded.

“It’s here,” she says, sliding the box off her bureau, everything tumbling radiantly to the carpet.

“It’s not,” I say.

She looks at me, so helpless.

For a long time, maybe, we are both kneeling on the floor, fingers nuzzling into the carpet weave, shaking loose those filmy bracelets, tugging them from the caramel-colored loops.

That beautiful carpet with its dense pile. At least five twists per inch.

“Addy, you’ve listened to Beth, now you need to listen to me. If they found that bracelet, a girl’s bracelet like that, like one of yours,” she says, pointing to my arms, ringed with friendship flosses, neon jellies, a leather braid, “don’t you think they’d have asked you too?”

There’s nothing I can say. I watch her as she walks into the bathroom and shuts the door.

Neither of us wants to reckon openly with how deep Beth’s trickery may go and neither of us wants to reckon with why I have believed her.

I hear the shower start and know I’m meant to leave.

Being part of a pyramid, you never see the pyramid at all.

Later, watching ourselves, it never feels real. Flickering YouTube images of bumblebees swarming, assembling themselves into tall hives.

It’s nothing like it is on the floor. There, you have to bolt your gaze to the bodies in your care, the ones right above you.

Your only focus should be your girl, the one you’re responsible for, the one whose leg, hip, arm you’re bracing. The one who is counting on you.

Left spot, keep your focus on the left flank. Don’t look right.

Right spot, keep your focus on the right flank. Don’t look left.

Eyes on the Flyer’s eyes, shoulders, hips, vigilant for any sign of misalignment, instability, doubt.

This is how you stop falls.

This is how you keep everything from collapsing.

You never get to see the stunt at all.

Eyes on your girl.

And it’s only ever a partial vision, because that’s the only way to keep everyone up in the air.

On my way out, I see Matt French still roaming around the backyard. It strikes me how few times I’ve seen him without his laptop in front of him, or his headset on. He looks lost.

I stop at the kitchen window, wondering what Coach has told him. What he believes.

Matt French reaches out to a branch spoking from a tall hawthorn bush, the one Caitlin is always cutting herself on, its hooks curling under her feet.

He looks no sadder than usual, which is sad enough.

Suddenly, he looks up and it’s like he sees me, but I think I must be too far, too small behind the paned window.

But I think he sees me.

“You made it up,” I say.

I’m at Beth’s house, in her bathroom. She has her leg propped up on the toilet seat, where she’s examining it with care.

“The Asian girl did the sugar wax on me, and she is comprehensive in her approach,” she says, shaking a flame-colored bottle of Our Desire, her mother’s perfume. “Except now I reek of pop-tart. Frosted. With sprinkles.”

“You made it up,” I repeat, smacking her leg off the toilet seat. “The cops never asked her about any bracelet. You made all that up.”

“The hot fuzz called you in, eh?” she says, standing up straight, still shaking the perfume bottle, shaking it side to side like some dirty boy gesture. “They called me in too. I go right after practice today.”

“They never found any bracelet at all, did they?”

“You’d best stay right, girl,” she says, lifting her leg back up, sending a fine mist of bitter orange and ylang-ylang over it.

This I don’t like. She can’t batter at me like I’m Tacy, like I’m some JV.

“What made you finally ask her?” she says.

I knock her foot off the toilet seat again and sit down on its furred lid.

“You made it up,” I say. “If the detectives found a bracelet, they would’ve asked me about it.”

“Addy, I can’t make you believe me,” she says,