Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,76

did, Addy,” she says. “But don’t you know I’d tell you more if I could?”

“Why can’t you?”

“Addy, I called you that night because I knew you’d help me. You understood how it was with Will and me. You were a part of it.”

I was. I was.

“So, yes, I was at Will’s that whole night, Addy,” she says. “But I didn’t do anything. I was with him, but I found him too. It’s all true. Everything is.”

I think about this a second, this riddle. But I can’t decipher it, not with everything else happening, not with the hammer and chisel still trembling in my hand.

“So why can’t you tell me?” I say, a pleading in my voice I can’t stop. “I’m trying to help you. I am.”

Suddenly, a band of light streams from the kitchen. I hear Caitlin’s fretful weep.

Coach turns her head, glancing through the patio doors.

“You better go home,” she says, rising, her cigarette dangling from her fingertips.

“Not yet,” I say. “Why can’t you tell me? I need to know more than this. I need…”

Caitlin’s weep squalls up into a sob, something about bad dreams. What about my bad dreams?

“But Coach,” I say, my mind scattering madly. “Beth says she’s going to the cops tomorrow.”

She stops at the patio door, one hand on the handle. “To say what?”

“To say all this. The parts she’s figured out. The parts she’s guessing at.”

She takes one last drag on her cigarette, staring out into the black murk of the back lawn.

“She thinks you did it,” I say. “She thinks you killed Will.”

The first time such words come from my mouth, and they sound more monstrous than anything ever.

“Well, I didn’t,” she says, dropping her cigarette to the deck, letting one foot tap it out, with infinite grace.

In bed, late, I’m whispering into my phone, to Beth.

“You didn’t go today? To the cops?”

“You’re a freaking broken record, Addy Hanlon,” she says.

“If you’re so sure you know everything,” I say, squinting my eyes tight, trying to figure my way into her, “why haven’t you gone already?”

“I’m still collecting the final pieces,” she says. I swear I can hear her tongue churning in her mouth like a vampire. “I’m working on my deployments and flanking maneuvers.”

I picture her, on the other end of the phone, plucking her marked lobe, the crescent scar, but then I realize it’s me, fingers gnarled around my own ear.

“Beth, I have to ask you something,” I say, my tone gliding elsewhere.

“I’m waiting,” she says.

“Beth,” I say. Without even planning on it, my voice slips into something from our past, the Addy who needs things from Beth—her skinny stretch jeans, the ephedra tea you have to mail order, the questions for the chem exam, someone to tell her what to do to make it all bearable.

The voice, it’s not an act, it isn’t, it never was, and it’s like a message to her, to both of us, to remember things, because she needs to remember too. I need to make her step back and see.

“Beth, I could get in trouble here,” I say. “I helped her. Can you give me one more day? Just one more day to see what I can find out. To see if you’re right.”

“You mean one more day for her to save her own skin.”

“One more day, Beth,” I say. “Wait until Tuesday. Monday’s the game. Tomorrow you’re Top Girl.”

There’s a pause.

“One more day, Beth,” I say, softly. “For me.”

There’s another pause and its quiet feels dangerous.

“Sure,” she says. “You take your day.”

29

SUNDAY: ONE DAY TO FINAL GAME

She’s given me one day and I have no plan for it, no idea.

All the voices from recent days, all the threats and calamity, and I can’t think my way through any of it, least of all those words from Coach: I was there, Addy, but I didn’t do anything. I was with him, but I found him too.

It’s all true.

Everything is.

Crawling under the covers Sunday morning, three a.m., I take more codeine-dosed Tylenol, and the dreams that come are muddled and grotesque.

Finally twisting myself into a trembling sleep, I dream of Will.

He comes to me, his arm outstretched, palm closed. When he opens it, it’s filled with shark teeth, the kind they show you in science class.

“Those are Beth’s,” I say, and he smiles, his mouth black as a hole.

“No,” he says, “they’re yours.”

When I wake up, there’s a newfound energy in me that boosts me from bed, that feels like the day before a Big Game. That