Dare Me - By Megan Abbott Page 0,86

wrist, the hamsa, plucked from the shower stall floor.

Marching in formation, our heads snapping, feet thumping, four-five-six across, the diamond splitting.

“Beat those Celts, slaughter that ball.

“We will die for you above all.”

“That’s not how it goes,” mewls Brinnie Cox, as if Beth has just flubbed the line.

“We will die for you above all,” Beth repeats.

Those words, I know them, but I don’t know how and there’s no time.

RiRi, Paige, and I darting to the mat’s far corners to spring across with our tumbling passes, everyone whipping past me and the noise like an ocean in my ear.

And I land it and Beth is there and I am spotting, Mindy and Cori popping her into the air, tick-tocking one leg to the other, her feet in their hands, her arms V-ed.

And Beth is shouting, and I am looking up at her, her chin trembling, her neck pulsing.

She is crying, but only I can see that. I’m the only one who’s seen it before. Her face like something precious split in two. A diamond cracked, a web spreading.

“It’s Coach,” comes Tacy’s squealing shout. “It’s Coach.”

My head whipping to one side, I can’t believe it, but I see her there, soft hoodie and hemp yoga pants, and her hair knotted tight on her head.

Coach.

Oh, my Coach.

And she is saying something, or she isn’t saying anything at all, but we know what to do and we do our back tucks in perfect unison, symmetric soldiers all in a line, then the whistle blows and the bounding boys come and we run to her.

We run to her.

And I see Beth, and her broken face, and I can’t help her at all.

I can’t.

It’s all a heady blur, the floorboard-pounding mayhem of the game, and Coach there, placing her hand gently on the backs of our heads, pulling, even, so un-Coach-like, on Mindy’s golden braids, and by the time the halftime horn thunders, I’ve lost Beth entirely.

In the locker room, the air clear from the tall windows lifted open by Coach with that long iron stick.

We are not actually on our knees, but it feels that way. It feels as if we’re on our knees, like prayerful Southern football players.

We are all bowing inside, to her.

Coach, you’ve not forsaken us.

“I’m glad to be here right now,” she says, and she’s speaking so low but somehow even amid the bumptious din coming from the gym we can hear her, hear every beat.

“I’m lucky to be in your company,” she says. “And I’m talking about all of you. You mighty women.”

Something catches in my throat. Coach.

I feel a hand twist around my arm, and it’s RiRi, her curls shaking, and beside her Emily, half leaning, still casted, against the lockers, and all of us standing, craning our necks, huddling toward Coach’s clear eyes, clear face, clear voice.

How could the things we would laugh at out there, scoff at and eye roll and dismiss, move us so much in here? Because it is Coach.

“For all kinds of reasons,” she says, her voice wobbling so slightly I feel sure only I can hear, “we’re all going to remember tonight.”

All of us circling forward, wanting to warm our hands, our bodies to it.

“It’s the last game of the season, after all these months of sweat and blood. And, after all this, I want you to be able to speak proudly, to strip your sleeves and show your scars, and talk about what you did tonight.”

Her words are vibrating through me, touching my very center.

“After the night’s over,” she says, her voice lifting higher, “after you graduate, and you’re off to college or wherever you girls go—ten years from now, your little girl’s going to pull your dusty Eagles yearbook off the shelf and ask what you were like in high school.

“You won’t have to cough, look the other way, and say, ‘Well, sweetie, your mom was in the French Club and sang in the choir.’ You won’t even have to say, ‘Your mom waved pom-poms and shook her ass.’ Because you will know what you were, what you are forever.

“Squad, take this moment, seal it over your heart.”

The quiet among us, the devotional silence starts to break apart as we feel ourselves lifted, feelings and gasps and eager squeaks and throatier yeas and rustling and rumbling and most of all the sense of greatness rising from within us and hoisted high.

“You’re going to look your girl straight in the eye and say, ‘Baby, your mom rode to the rafters. Your mom lifted