Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,79

then Coach found out. About Beth. About Sarge and Beth.”

I’m leaning against the padded gym wall and Tacy’s still on the floor, legs tucked tight, looking up at me, and talking, talking, talking.

She isn’t what you think, and neither was he. That’s what Beth said. He was just a guy, like all of them.

But Will, Will and Beth? I just can’t make my head believe it.

“This was right when he first started coming to the school,” she says. I’m relieved for that. Before Coach, before all that. Lost, wandering, wondering Will. “And they had that bet, her and RiRi. She wanted to beat RiRi. She said RiRi was all tits and eyeliner and she would eat her heart whole.

“So one day after school she was waiting by his truck for him. You know how he’d park in the back, behind the school lot, on Ness Street?”

I used to walk Coach there. Coach, whose face would flush at the sight of his SUV shadowed under the oak tree, its leathery leaves hovering, the shadows of them across her face as she turned to look at me, to say, Here he is, Addy, here is my man.

“My job was to wait by the tree with my phone,” Tacy is saying, “so I could take a picture to prove she’d done it.”

I don’t know what’s coming, but I feel a churning in my gut.

“So she’s out there, waiting for him in her miniskirt,” Tacy says, her fingers carelessly grazing my ankle as I stand above her. “Well, Beth, she’s a hot bitch, and Sarge was a guy, right?”

He’s a guy, right.

“But he couldn’t go through with it,” she sighs, resting her fingers on my ankle bone. “Just kid stuff. And I only got one half-decent shot, but you couldn’t see much.”

I don’t say anything.

“But here was the thing,” Tacy says, shaking one of her fingers. “Beth never did show it to RiRi. Maybe she knew it wouldn’t be good enough to win the bet. Finally I asked her about it and she had me text it to her. She said she was saving it. She just kept it on her phone. She loved to flash it at me.”

This seems like Beth and I wonder why she never flashed it at me. But I guess I know. Once we found out about Coach and Will, she couldn’t be sure where I’d stand. She couldn’t be sure I’d play for her side. She was right.

“Then all of a sudden she tells me something happened to her phone,” Tacy says, “and she lost the picture and she needed me to send it again.”

The memory comes to me: Coach torpedoing Beth’s twizzler-red phone down the toilet.

“So I say, tell me what you need it for first,” Tacy says, looking up at me, her smile coming and going as she tries to read me, read how I’m taking this, and if I want to play with her, to relish all this just a little.

“So she had to tell me,” she, rocking in her seat, so eager to recount it, to relive the moment. “And that’s when she said she was going to use it so Coach would stop giving her such a hard time.”

I rest my back against the wall, not looking down at Tacy, sliding away from her, her hot breath on my legs.

“So that’s when she told me about Coach and Will,” she says. “She had to.”

I look down at her, that lapin face squinting with conspiratorial pleasure, and I say nothing.

“So, after three years of hustling for that queen bitch, now I had something Beth wanted,” Tacy says, her voice sharpening in a way that’s almost impressive. “Beth had lost the goods. She didn’t even e-mail the picture to herself or save it on her computer. She thinks she’s so goddamned smart. How smart is that? But it was me. I saved the picture. And now she needed something from me.”

That’s a feeling I know so well it’s like she’s stuck her fingernail to my own beating heart. But it doesn’t warm me to her.

You and me, Tacy? We share nothing.

“By then, I was Flyer, I was Top Girl,” Tacy says. “But Beth warned me I’d better do what she said, or she’d make it bad for me.”

Tacy’s voice goes baleful, the panic spiraling back through her eyes.

“She said I’d better not make her unhappy because I oughta know that she’s never unhappy alone.”

No, she’s not, is she.

“So I gave in,” Tacy says, sighing. “But