Dare Me: A Novel Page 4

  She has so much pride that, even if I’m weary of her, of her fighting ways, her gauntlet-tossing, I can’t say there isn’t something else that beams in me. An old ember licked to fresh fire again. Beth, the old Beth, before high school, before Ben Trammel, all the boys and self-sorrow, the divorce and the adderall and the suspensions.

  That Beth at the bike racks, third grade, her braids dangling, her chin up, fists knotted around a pair of dull scissors, peeling into Brady Carr’s tire. Brady Carr, who shoved me off the spinabout, tearing a long strip of skin from my ankle to my knee.

  Tugging the rubber from his tire, her fingernails ripped red, she looked up at me, grinning wide, front teeth gapped and wild heroic.

  How could you ever forget that?

  We all want to “take it to the next level”—that’s what we keep calling it. For us, the next level means doing a real basket toss, with three or four girls hurling a Flyer ten, fifteen, twenty feet in the air, and that Flyer flipping and twisting her way back down into their arms. And not even Beth has ever done a stunt like this, not this high, not without a mat. We were never that kind of squad, not a tourney squad. Not a serious squad.

  Once we master a basket toss, we can do real stunts, real pyramids, because they are pyramids that end with true flying, with girls loaded up and slingshot into the air. The gasp-ahh awesomeness we’ve always dreamed of.

  We have been YouTubing basket tosses all day, watching sprightly girl after sprightly girl get thrown by her huskier squadmates into the air and then try to ride it as far as she can. Arms extended, back arched, she is reaching for something, and only stops when she has to.

  Mostly, though, we watch girls fall.

  “A girl over at St. Reggie’s died doing a basket toss that high last year,” Emily says, her voice grave, like she’s giving a press conference on TV. “She landed chest down in everyone’s arms and her spleen popped like a balloon.”

  “Spleens don’t pop,” Beth says, though how she knows this is unclear.

  “But I heard she had mono,” someone says.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “It makes your spleen swell.”

  “No one here has mono.”

  “You don’t always know.”

  “They banned it in my cousin’s school,” someone says.

  “You can’t ban mono,” Beth says.

  “You’re not even allowed to do them on spring floors.”

  “Who could get their heels over their head like that?” spiral-curled RiRi wonders, lifting one of her legs off the floor.

  “You do,” Beth says. “Every Saturday night.”

  “So are you ready for it, Beth?” Emily grins.

  “Ready for what?”

  Tacy rolls her eyes. “Like it’d be anyone but you, Beth. You’re Top Girl.”

  Beth almost smiles.

  It’s a relief to see it. To see how much she wants it. When Coach gives her the spot, it’ll make everything better. Maybe, I think, high on hunger, they will even become friends.

  Of course, we all want it. (Even me, five inches taller than Beth, a tragedy of birth.) It’s the star shot, and we feel our bodies hardening, we feel our speed quickening, our blood pounding, thick and strong.

  Tosses, two-and-a-half pyramids, tabletops, thigh stands, split stands, Wolf Walls—Coach says they’re what separates you from just another ass-shaking pep squad.

  “So we’re not an ass-shaking pep squad?” Beth mutters, her voice smoke-thick, her eyes shot through with blood and boredom. “If I wanted to be an ath-lete,” she says, “I’d’ve joined the other dykes on field hockey.”

  Three-oh-seven and Coach strolls into the gym, her hair wound softly into a ponytail.

  “Let’s get started on that toss,” she says. “We need four to make the cradle underneath—two Bases, and a back and a front spot to get enough power.”

  She pauses. “But who’s going to be our Flyer?”

  Our two killer Bases, Mindy and Cori Brisky, their legs like titanium pikes, saunter over, eyeing all of us. Wondering which one of our lives will depend on the strength of their flintlock collarbones, our feet lodged there, rising high.

  I think, for a second, it might be me.

  And why shouldn’t it be me, twisting high, propelled skyward, all eyes battened to me, my body bullet-hard and glorious?

  But it has to be Beth. We all know it. Beth practically stepping forward, all five feet and ninety pounds of her, stomach tight as anyone fed solely on tar and battery acid.

  She’s our Flyer. Missed practices, insolence, but still she is our Flyer. Of course she is.

  (Except the voice inside that says, Me, me, me. It should be me.

  But, if not me, Beth.)

  “Slaussen,” Coach says, turning to Tacy, the ewe.

  I feel myself stone-sinking.

  “You ready to fly?” she asks her.

  There’s a hush to everything, and a closeness in the air.

  Not Beth.

  And Tacy?

  Tacy Slaussen, that little pink-eyed nothing, the one Beth used to call “Cottontail”?

  But then I see it. Coach is putting Tacy—Tacy of the barking phone, Tacy, Beth’s baby bitch—on the guillotine.

  In my head, I hear the ear-popping crack, head clacking against the gym floor. Spleen splattered. So many ways to go wrong, to ruin yourself. Your legs like barrettes bent back, your body matchstick-snapped.

  A pretty world of being pretty decimated in one splintering second.

  That’s what I secretly wanted, just moments ago?

  I did. I still do. Those five inches, and no one will ever ask me.

  None of us dare look at Beth, but we all watch Tacy, her flushed face. You can see her heart beating all over her skin.

  When I do sneak a look at Beth, I see she’s not even looking up, coiling the drawstrings on her hoodie into a candy cane twist.

  “Coughlin,” Coach says to Mindy, whose boulder shoulders are ringed with bruises two seasons a year. “She’ll be all yours. What do you think?”

  Pausing, Mindy appraises Tacy.

  “I could totally base her,” she replies, looking at Coach as if with a thick wagging tail.

  Coach nods. “Elevator her up and let’s see what she’s got. One-two.”

  Mindy and Cori grab wrists, make a square.

  “Three-four,” Coach counts.

  Tacy, her tendril limbs limply offering themselves, plants her foot in their wrist-weaved basket. One pancake palm on Tacy’s back, the other just below her behind. Back spotter Paige Shepherd loads her in.

  “Five-six,” and Mindy and Cori lift Tacy from waist to shoulder, Tacy fumbling frantically for their shoulders, Paige hustling to back base her.

  And up she goes.

  “Seven-eight!”

  And the girls, fingers flicking, legs rocking, toss her into the air.

  Tacy’s mouth open, struck.

  Airborne.

  Her whole body quivering like a plucked string.

  Too scared to tuck, pike, toe touch, anything.

  “Soften!” shouts Coach.

  Tacy sinking back down, all three girls scrambling, one of Tacy’s legs jamming into Mindy’s collarbone.

  But they catch her. They don’t let her hit the floor.

  Tacy, walking it off, crying like a little bitch.

  For an hour, Tacy falls and falls, over and over again.

  Foot to face. Shin to shoulder. Face to mat.

  Mindy and Cori angrier and angrier the more knocks they take, elevatoring her up with greater and greater force.

  Tacy starts sobbing a half hour in, and never stops.

  Off to her office for a phone call, Coach deputizes Beth to count in her absence.

  Beth, looking at her, her mouth a straight line, says nothing. But when Coach’s office door shuts, she starts counting.

  One-two-three-four,

  fucking ex-tend Slaussen!

  Who can deny it is a masterfu
l play? Take away the princess’s crown and give it to the lady-in-waiting. The handmaiden. The servant.

  Never, in all my lieutenant years, have I seen anyone go toe-to-toe with Beth. Never anyone who couldn’t be felled with an errant Facebook rumor, a photoshopped image (RiRi skanking it up over spring break), the pilfered text message sent to the entire school. This was different.

  Different because no one had ever taken her on, and different because no one had ever wanted to do so on our behalf. Coach did it for us.

  And her will was strong as Beth’s maybe. Maybe.

  Watching Tacy, shin red-streaked, a long bone bruise readying to bloom on her forearm, we all know what’s happened.

  We all know why, that Saturday, Tacy will be landing, at terrible and just velocity, in our meager arms—arms weary from ten hours of dieter’s tea and celery shreds—we all know why.

  Because Coach sees Beth for what she is and knows she has to overthrow her.

  And Tacy?

  A pullet-pawn.

  Two days till the game, we are practicing like Tacy’s life depends on it, since it does.

  I’m the front spotter because Coach says I have in focus what I lack in heft.

  We start with a straight ride, no twists or toe touches or kick arches. We’ve practiced all week and never once missed, our hands wrapped around each other’s locked wrists, steeling our arms so tight, bolting them in place, a safe little girl-cradle for Tacy’s quaking feet.

  Then, rubber-banding our arms to spring her shaking body up into the air, all our eyes on Tacy, making that promise to her, the birdy panic on her face as she flies, flies, flies.

  But, had we slipped, any of us, had one of our arms weakened, her leg curled the wrong way, her body twisted an inch or less, she’d have hit a spring floor.

  And when we try to get her higher, Tacy’s landings are rougher. There are incidents: elbow to the eye, index finger bent back, Tacy’s grasping hand clawing my face.

  But I focus on Tacy, and I don’t show my fear. That’s what Coach tells me. “Don’t let her see it on you, or it’ll swallow her.”

  Coach tells us you can fall from eleven feet and still land safely on a spring floor, our practice floor.

  She says that knowing that, game time, Tacy will be flying high over not a spring floor but the merciless ground of the Mohawks’ football field.

  “Slaussen,” Coach says, “you gotta want it. Don’t do it if you don’t want it.”

  And Tacy, her back straighter, her eyes clearer, her chin higher than I’ve ever seen on this meek and weak girl, replies, “I want it, Coach. I want it.”

  Tacy. Here was the head-smacking convert.

  I can feel Beth’s eyeroll without even looking.

  “I knew that one was wasting our time,” Beth says.

  But I don’t say anything. I am watching Tacy’s avid eyes.

  Friday night, when we set foot on the Mohawks’ field, the frosted ground beneath us, how can we not picture Tacy’s skull splitting daintily in two?

  And two of the Mohawk squad bitches, the rangiest with legs like spires, circle us before and start gaming us with tales of blood sport. A mix of fish tales, trash talk, and camaraderie.

  “JV year, the girl was fronting a new Flyer learning her twist,” the blonde Mohawk says, gum smacking, “and when the Flyer spun around her legs came apart and knocked out both Bases. One popped a lip and the other had to get a face cut glued shut. Coach caught it on video and replays it at all our after-parties.”

  “I was practicing my back handspring,” the scrubby redhead says, “and I kicked Heather and knocked her teeth right out of her face. It was insane. Teeth and blood were flying everywhere. I felt soooo bad.”

  There is a breathless momentum to it. I know how it goes. It’s fun when you’re doing it, like hearing a ghost story.

  Forty-five minutes from now, though, it will not be fun for Tacy, standing fifteen feet in the air, two spindly girls holding her up, ready to toss her.

  Tacy is gray, into green.

  Beth saunters over. She gives me a look, one I know from her captain days. I nod.

  “That’s enough,” I interrupt everyone. “Don’t know about you hardcore bitches, but we’d rather spend our pre-game time getting pretty.”

  But the blonde Mohawk, eyes hard on Tacy, won’t stop working her. “This one kid, she had a body just like yours. And she hit the tramp bar, hard. Her head was bleeding a lot, and she had to go to the ER. Turns out the skin on her head had split and you could see all this pink stuff underneath. She needed staples to pull it back together. We couldn’t get her to come back to cheer no matter how hard we tried. Now she’s isn’t doing anything at all.”

  “Slaussen,” Beth shouts, looming over us now. “Coach wants you.”

  Rabbit-like, Tacy skitters away.

  For a second, I think it’s done. But it’s not.

  Beth surveys the Mohawk girls.

  “Once,” Beth starts, and I know what she’s going to do, and this is why she was captain. “I was standing on this girl’s shoulders and I slipped and fell flat on my back.”

  Everyone gasps politely.

  “The crack was so loud they heard it in the parking lot,” I add.

  “My first thought,” Beth says, shaking her head, “was how am I going to tell my mom?”

  Everyone nods appreciatively.

  “I was lucky,” she says, her cool gaze on those Mohawks, shivering a little now in their long timbers. “I was only paralyzed for six weeks. They bolted this metal ring into my skull with pins to hold my head and neck in place. It’s called a halo, if you want to know.”

  We two, in such sync, like the old days, like before Coach, before last summer.

  Reaching across, I touch Beth’s hair lightly with my fingertips. “The doctors said if she’d been an inch to the right or left,” I say, “she would have died.”

  “But I didn’t,” Beth says. “And nothing would ever stop me from cheering anyway.

  “They gave me the coolest purple cast. And Coach tells me I’m the best Flyer she ever had.”

  Under the bank of stadium lights, Tacy’s face poppy pink with purpose and mania, we raise her up, her hands releasing our trembling shoulders, and she rockets herself, thrusting her legs in either direction, arms pressed against her ears and flying higher than I’ve ever seen.

  So high that a wild shake ripples through all of us, our cradled arms vibrating with awe and wonder.

  Vibrating so strongly that it runs through me, it does, and I feel my left arm slacken, ever so slightly, and a shudder bores through me, and if it weren’t for RiRi next to me, feeling my tremor, flashing me her terror, a starry span of panic before my eyes, I wouldn’t have driven that steel back into my blood, my muscles, my everything.

  Made it tight and iron-fast for Tacy, who seemed to be in the air for minutes, hours, a radiant creature with white-blond hair spread wing-like, finally sinking safely, ecstatically, into all our arms.

  It’s hours later, and we’re in Emily’s dad’s car sneaking swigs of blackberry cordial, swiped from RiRi’s garage, where her brother hides it.

  We’re waiting in the parking lot of the Electric Crayon, its neon sign radiating sex and chaos, the cordial tickling our mouths and bellies almost unbearably.

  We’ve never been on Haber Road before, except the time we went with RiRi’s sister to Modern Women’s Clinic to get ofloxacin and she told us after how she almost choked when they stuck that big swab down her throat, but it was still better than what Tim Martinson had stuck down her throat.

  We all laughed even though it didn’t really seem funny and none of us want to end up at Modern Women’s Clinic ever, the matted-down wall-to-wall, and the buzzing fluorescent lights, and the girl behind the front desk who sang softly to herself, “Boys trying to touch my junk-junk-junk. Gonna get me some crunk-crunk-crunk.”

  An hour slides by before Tacy finally comes out of the Electric Crayon, tugging her jeans down s
o we can see the Sutton Grove eagle soaring there, the envy so strong it almost makes me burst.

  Coach, she wouldn’t come with us no matter how much we begged. But she did slip Tacy forty bucks for it. Two smooth twenties, tucked in our new Flyer’s trembling hands.

  We never heard of any coach doing that, ever.

  Nudging my fingers under the sticking bandage on her lower back, I touch that red-raw eagle, making Tacy wince with pained pleasure.

  Me, me, me, it should be me.

  7

  WEEK FIVE

  “I’ve heard some things about Ms. Colette French,” Beth tells me. “I have contacts.”

  “Beth,” I say. I know this tone, I know how things start.

  “I don’t have anything to report yet,” she says, “but be ready.”

  Like bamboo slowly sliding under fingernails. She has started.

  But Beth also grows easily bored. That’s what I have to remember.

  I am glad, then, when Beth seems to have found something—someone—else to do.

  Monday morning, the recruiting table is struck in the first-floor hallway, by the language labs.

  The posters blare red, the heavy ripple of the flag insignia.

  Discover Your Path to Honor.

  Recruiters, out for fresh, disaffected-teen blood.

  “Who needs cheer?” Beth says. “I’m enlisting.”

  They came last year too, and always sent the broadest-​shouldered, bluest-eyed Guardsmen, the ones with arms like twisted oak and booming voices that echo down the corridor.

  This year, though, they have Sergeant Will, who is entirely different. Who, with his square jaw and smooth, knife-parted hair, is handsome in a way unfamiliar to us. A grown-up man, a man in real life.

  Sarge Will makes us dizzy, that mix of hard and soft, the riven-granite profile blurred by the most delicate of mouths, the creasy warmth around his eyes—eyes that seem to catch far-off things blinking in the fluorescent lights. He seems to see things we can’t, and to be thinking about them with great care.

  He is older—he may be as old as thirty-two—and he is a man in the way that none of the others, or no one else we know or ever knew, are men.