Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,77

feels powerful. It’s the day of readying.

Standing in front of the mirror, toothbrush frothing, I feel certain things will happen and this time maybe I will be ready for them.

I try to find a way to reach PFC Tibbs. I think he might share more with me, reveal something, as Prine did. But I can’t find a number for him, and there’s no answer at the regional Guard office, so I have no way to reach him without Beth.

I drive to the police station, park in the back. Wait for an hour, door-watching.

I think about going inside, but I’m afraid the detectives will see me.

I was there, but I didn’t do anything. I was with him, but I found him too. It’s all true.

Beth or Coach, who do I believe when one never tells the truth and one gives me nothing but riddles?

Something about it reminds me of pre-calc. Permutations and combinations. Consider any situation in which there are exactly two possibilities: Succeed or Fail. Yes or No. In or Out. Boy or Girl.

Left or right. You’re the Left Base, you know your only job is to strut that left side of the pyramid, hold that weight and keep your girl up.

But am I on the right side, or the left?

Watching the back door of the police station, I ponder a third way. I imagine going inside, telling them everything, letting them sort it all out.

But it’s not the soldier heart in me.

I’m just about to start my car when my phone rings.

I don’t recognize the number, but I answer.

“Addy?” A man says.

“Yes?”

“This is Mr. French,” he says. “Matt French.”

I turn off my car.

“Hey, Mr. French, how are you?” I say, on babysitter autopilot, like during those long three-minute rides home with the fathers wanting to know all about cheerleading and what it does to our bodies.

Except it’s not one of our dads, it’s Matt French and he’s calling me and I’ve been a party to his family’s ruin.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he says.

“How did you…?” I say. “So you got my number from Coach? You…”

“This isn’t weird, okay?” he says quickly. “It’s not.”

“No, I know,” I say, but how is this not weird?

Matt French. I picture him standing in his yard, this forlorn figure. I picture him always like he’s looking at us through glass—windshields, sliding patio doors. I don’t know if I could even picture his face if I tried, but the sight of that sad slump in his shoulders is with me now.

“Can I ask you a question, Addy?” his voice muffled, like his mouth is pressed close to the phone.

“Yes.”

“I’m trying to figure something out. If I tell you a phone number off my call log, do you think you could tell me if you recognize it?”

“Yes,” I say before I can even think.

“Okay,” he says, and he reads off a phone number. I type it in and a name comes up.

Tacy.

I say her name out loud.

“Tacy,” he repeats. “Tacy who? Is she your friend?”

“Tacy Slaussen. She’s on the squad,” I say. “She’s our Flyer. Was our Flyer.”

There’s a pause, a heavy one. I get the feeling something monumental is occurring. At first I think he’s processing what I’m saying, but then I realize he’s the one waiting for me to process something.

He wants me to remember something, mark something, know something.

It’s like he’s the one giving something to me.

I just don’t know what.

“I was glad it wasn’t your phone number,” he says. “I was glad it wasn’t you.”

“What wasn’t me?” I ask. “Mr. French, I—”

“Good-bye, Addy,” he says, soft and toneless. And there’s a click.

The phone call knifes its way through my head.

Matt French has found out something, or everything. It’s all blown apart and he’s going through her e-mails, her phone calls, everything. He’s amassing all the pieces, pieces that will damn us all, will damn us both.

Adulteress, Murderer, and Accessory to.

But that doesn’t fit with the call. With what he asked and what he didn’t. And there’s the way he sounded too. Unsteady but reserved, troubled but strangely calm.

I tap Tacy’s number. I almost never call her, maybe I never have, but we all have each other’s numbers in our phone. And Coach has them all in hers. Squad rules.

Which is how Matt French might have Tacy’s number.

Except I don’t think he was looking at Coach’s phone when he read off the number. If he were looking at Coach’s phone, it would say “Tacy” or “Slaussen.” It would say something.

My call log,