Dare Me

15



Party tonite, flashes Beth’s text.

Rebs, I type back. Away game.

After, she says. Comfort Inn Haber.

Nu uh.

Uh huh.

That prickle behind my ear. The Comfort Inn. Older brothers and sisters are always talking about how it used to be called the Maid Marian, with a second-floor walkway slung so low it looked like the hookers—real live hookers like in the movies, only with worse skin—would slide right off into the courtyard. You’d only drive by when you had to go downtown, like a class trip to the museum and the teachers so embarrassed that you’d be passing Maid Marian, with all those maids all in a row.

When it became the Comfort Inn, they tore out the walkway and you couldn’t see the hookers anymore, but the whole place still quivered with a sense of dirty deeds.

And Beth, and her dirty deeds. I want to say no, but I want to say yes. I want to say yes to keep my eyes on Beth and want to say yes because it’s a party at the Comfort Inn on Haber Road.

So I say yes.


“Whose party?” RiRi asks, reaching under her shirt, plucking first her right breast higher, then her left, so they crest out the top. “Your dealer’s?”

“My dealer could buy Haber Road tip to tail,” Beth says. Beth doesn’t have a dealer, but there is a guy over on Hillcrest who graduated Sutton Grove ten years ago and he sells her adderall, which she sometimes shares and which feels like oxygen blasting through my brain, blowing everything away and leaving only immense joy that shakes tic tac–like in my chest and then sinks away so fast it takes everything from me and my sad life.

“So whose party?” I ask.

She grins.


I didn’t believe her at first, but there it is. There’s five or six of them, all from the Guard.

All Will’s men.

They’re wearing regular clothes, but their haircuts and close shaves give them away, and the way they stand, feet planted apart, chests puffed out. One of them even has his at-ease hands behind his back, which makes it hard to hold his beer.

I recognize the PFC with the red brush cut who walks Sarge Will to his car every day and the other one, with the ham-hock hands and the bowlegs.

There’s a little bar set up on the long plywood dresser and they’re huddled around it, and no one’s on the drooping beds with the nubby spreads, and the lights are pitched low and soft and there’s almost a peacefulness about it.

It’s just a place to have a party, that’s all. A little party, two adjoining rooms, the clock radio jangling softly and one PFC reaching above his hand, absentmindedly twirling the overhanging lamp, sending glades of light across the room like a mirror ball, like Caitlin’s magic lantern.

Then, bullet-headed Corporal Prine steps out of the bathroom, his thumb dug in the neck of his beer bottle.

RiRi, looking at me, shaking her head, mouthing, Hell-no.

The other ones are all decked out in ironed polo shirts and pressed everything, but Prine is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with skulls and bones and a big knife wedged in one of the skulls. The words LOVE KILLS are scrolled across it.

Nodding that big thick eraser-tip head of his, Prine beckons toward us.

Shrugging off her letter jacket, Beth, resplendent in a gold halter top, walks toward him, smiling slantily in that Beth way that feels like new trouble.

But RiRi is hip-shaking and she dips her hand in mine, and RiRi’s ease with boys is such solace and soon we are dancing, pop-pop-popping our hips and RiRi doing the robot arm.

There’s rum and diet cokes mixed special for us and all the alcopops we can drink, and the PFCs are gentlemanly and suggest we play a game called beer blow. I never do figure out what the point is except it involves a lot of us bending over the table and blowing playing cards off an empty bottle, and then drinking, and then drinking again.

I don’t care about anything, not the stain on the bedspread or the ceiling, or the way the bathroom sink drags away from the wall when you hold onto it, when you try to stay upright, not the crusted carpet under my feet, my shoes flung off as I climb up on the bed with RiRi, when we dance together, our hips knocking, and the Guardsmen all watch and cheer. I don’t care about anything at all.

I don’t care because it’s like this: the rum, and the hard lemonade, and the shot of tequila zoom and zag through me, and the spell cast so deeply.

The whole high school world of gum-stuck, locker-slamming, shoe-skidding tedium slips away and it’s all just warm and gushing perfection.

“Tell Coach to come,” RiRi is burbling. “Tell her we’re with the Guard.” She’s fumbling with my phone, trying to send a text.

Because it’s all okay because these are Will’s men and nothing bad could ever happen, one of them is pressing our heads together, wanting us to kiss.

“Always ready,” he says. “Always there.”

“We could never be girlfriends like this before,” RiRi says, hugging me close. “Until this year. You were always Beth’s girl. She never wanted to share you. Girl has such a hard-on for you. I was even scared of you. I was always scared of both of you.”

She’s looking at me, eyes wide, like she’s surprised herself.


This hot, sloshing feeling low in me, I’ve known it before, at house parties, at bonfires on the ridge with clanking kegs and plastic cups, and every boy becomes the prettiest I ever saw. But this is better somehow—the Comfort Inn on Haber Road!—better still these men, grown men, Guardsmen—Will’s men. Bearing somehow the sheen of Will.

Who am I not to curl myself under their hard, angled arms? Like Coach with Will. That could be me.


It’s late when we can’t find Beth.

At first I’m sure she’s with Prine, but then PFC Tibbs, the sweet, gingered one with the whistle in his voice, shows me Prine passed out on the bed in the adjoining room, and there’s no Beth.

Prine’s jeans are around his ankles and his boxer shorts half yanked off, leaving a view of fleshy abandon. Even though he’s alone, it feels sinister. Maybe it’s the smell, which is ripe and unwholesome.

The PFC takes me for a walk down every hallway and into every stairwell, talking about his sister and how he worries about her at State, hears tales of fraternity lap dances and early morning walks of shame.

We look for Beth for an hour or more, and I hold on to some kind of calm only because, walking under the long bands of humming fluorescents, I’m concentrating very hard and won’t miss any deodorized nook of the motel.

But each burning hallway is like the previous one, all of them yellow-bright and empty.

I’m nearly night-air-sobered by the time we find her asleep in my car, face slack and childlike, except she has no shoes and, far as I can tell, her skirt riding up, no underwear.

When she jolts awake, she says dark and woolly things about Prine.

How he took her to the adjoining room and tore off her underpants and pulled his pants down and all kinds of things are slipping from her drunken mouth.

He put his hands there, pushed down on my shoulders, my jaw, it hurts.

You’re always supposed to believe these things. That’s what they tell you in Health Class, the woman from Planned Parenthood, the nose-pierced college student from Girls, Inc. Females never lie about these important things. You must never doubt them. You must always believe them.

But Beth isn’t like the girls they’re talking about. Beth isn’t like a girl at all. The squall in her, you can’t ever peer through all that, can you?

It’s impossible to puzzle through someone like Beth who always knows more about you than you know about yourself. She always beats you to the punch.


“I better call someone,” says the PFC, standing back from us, far from my ministrations, farther still from Beth’s sprawl, a seat belt twisted around her bare ankle, her feet gravel-pocked.

I try to untangle her, and Beth’s left leg drops to one side and we both see the flaring red mark on the inside, the shape of a thumbprint. And a matching one on her other thigh.

“I better call the Sarge,” he says, his voice strangled.

Suddenly, Beth jerks, her elbow jagging out at me, her eyes sharp and focused on the poor private.

“Call Sarge,” she says. “Go ahead and call him. It’s on him. I’ve called him five times. I’ve called him for hours. It’s on him.”

Why would Beth call Will?

I look back at the PFC. I’m shaking my head. I’m giving him a look like oh-crazy-drunk-girl.

Beth is a liar. This is a lie, the only thing between Beth and Will is her failed campaign. This is just Beth blowing buckshot everywhere.

“I’ve got it,” I say. “I’ve got her. You can go.”

Standing back, the PFC lifts his hands up.

The relief on his face is astounding.


“You cannot bring her here, Addy,” Coach is saying, my phone clutched to my ear. “Take her home. Take her to your house.”

I’m looking at Beth, corkscrewed into the crook of my front seat, her eyes nearly closed but with a discomforting glistening there.

“I can’t,” I whisper, my varsity jacket sleeve snagging in the steering wheel, sober up, sober up. “She’s saying things. About that Prine guy.”

My eyes catch Beth’s purse on the car floor, half unzipped.

That’s how I see her neon-lime panties inside.

Folded neatly, like a handkerchief.

You cannot judge how women will behave after an assault, the pamphlets always say. But.

“Prine?” Coach’s voice turns spiky. “Corporal Prine? What are you talking about?”

I tell her about the party, the words tripping fast, my head spongy and confused. Just let us come over, Coach, just let us.

I don’t tell her that I’m already driving to Fairhurst, to her house.

“Coach, she wanted us to call Sarge,” I say, fast as a bullet. “She says she called him a bunch of times.”

A pause, then her voice like a needle in my ear:

“Get the bitch over here now.”

Like this, the car floating, the streetlamps like spotlights coning in on us. And Coach’s voice pounding. Why would you go to that party, Addy? Is she saying Prine hurt her? He’s no high school QB. They call him the Mauler. Addy, I thought you were smarter than this.


Climbing up Coach’s front porch, I’m holding Beth up, her bare feet scraping on the cement.

She said not to knock, so I just send a text. Seconds later, Coach appears at the door, an oversized T-shirt with AURIT FINANCIAL SERVICES written on it, and a logo that looks like a winding road leading up to the sky.

The stony glare as she looks at Beth brings me straight to sober, sends my spine to full erectness. I even want to comb my hair.

“For god’s sake, Hanlon,” she says. Hanlon now. “I expected more from you.”

I can’t pretend it doesn’t sting.


We are all hard whispers and shoving arms, hustling Beth to the den.

Just as Coach shakes the vellux blanket over Beth, hair streaked across her face, we hear Matt French coming down the stairs.

It all feels very bad.

He looks tired, his face rubbed to redness, brow knotted.

“Colette,” he says, his eyes taking it all in. “What’s going on here?”

But Coach doesn’t flinch.

“Now you see what I put up with all week,” she says, almost like she’s annoyed with him, which is a great technique. “And now Saturday night too. These girls are nothing but boxed wine and havoc.”

They both turn and look at me. I don’t know what to say, but I have never drunk boxed wine.

“Colette,” he says, “can you come talk to me for a second?”

They walk into the next room for a minute and I can hear his voice rise a little, can make out a few words—responsibilities and what if and young girls.

“What do you want me to do? These girls’ parents just don’t care,” she says, which feels funny to hear.

A few seconds go by and then they both reappear.

“Matt, go back to bed,” she says, trying for an aggrieved smile, one hand on his back. “You’re exhausted. I’ll take care of it.”

Matt French looks over at Beth, buried on the sofa, and then away.

For a second, his gaze rests on me. His sleep-smeared face, the worry on it, and his bloodshot eyes on me.

“Good night, Addy,” he says, and I honestly never knew he knew my name.

I watch him duck his head under the archway then ascend the carpeted steps.

Good night, Matt French.


Pulling me into the bathroom, Coach sits me down on the tub ledge, the questions coming so fast and the pink lights flaming.

“I don’t know what happened,” I say, but Beth’s words keep caroming back: hand on the back of my head and shoved it down there and kept saying, “Do me, cheerleader. Do me.”

Coach makes me repeat everything five, ten times, or so it seems. I’m getting head spins. At some point I start to slide against the shower curtain, but she yanks me up again and makes me drink four cups of water back-to-back.

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “You saw her legs, the red marks?”

But then, my hand to my own leg, I think of the dusky violet bruise I have in the very same spot from Mindy’s gouging thumb, lifting me to a thigh stand.

And there’s the matter of those lime panties, folded tidily in Beth’s purse.

But Coach isn’t listening, isn’t even looking at me.

She has Beth’s phone in her hand. I never even saw her take it.

She’s scrolling through call history. Outgoing calls and texts to “Sarge Will,” six, seven, eight of them.

Suddenly, she flinches.

A text, Come on by, Sarge Stud, we’re all waiting. There’s a picture attached that looks to be Beth’s zebra-print bra, breasts pressed tightly together.

Clattering the phone against the wall, she catapults it down the toilet.

As if it mattered.

Who knew, really, what digital obscenities swam around in that phone of Beth’s, what electronic blight she’d hoarded in its deepest pockets.

My drunken head and all I can think is, Oh, Coach, she’s got you in her sights. Fair or not, she’s got you. Please get smarter, fast.


Later that night, I creep from the rolled-arm living room sofa to the den. I see Beth, blanket twisted between her legs, her whole body twisting on itself like a snake.

“Beth,” I whisper, tucking the throw blanket tighter around her. “Is it true? Is it true Prine did things to you? Made you do things?”

Her eyes don’t open, but I know she knows I’m there. I feel like I’ve tunneled my way into her dream, and that she’ll answer me there.

“I made him make me,” she murmurs. “And he did. Can you believe he did?”

Made him make me. Oh, Beth, what does that even mean? I picture her taunting him. Doing her witchy Beth things.

“Made him make you do what?” I try.

“I didn’t care,” she says. “It was worth it.”

“Beth,” I say. “Worth what?”

“She needs to see what she’s doing to us,” Beth says. “I will make her see.”

This is the way Beth can talk. Her Big Talk, her campfire spook story talk, her steel-toed captain talk. It’s meant to put a shake on me, and it always works.

“She didn’t even know we were at the party,” I say.

“She thinks she can go about her sluttish ways and do whatever she wants. We’re just girls and we were there, and anything could have happened to us.”

“We wanted to go,” I say, my voice hardening, “so we went.”

“Because of her,” she says, her hand lifting, coiling around her throat. Her hand, it’s shaking. “We went because of her.”

“Not me,” I say, my voice a bark. “That’s not why I went. What did it have to do with her?”

She looks at me through half-shut eyes, a glistening there beneath her lashes. Beth always knowing me. Everything, she is saying. And you know it.

“Those Guard boys, they see what they can get away with,” she whispers. “They see what’s okay, what’s allowed.”

Flashing on me, my own thoughts, hours before, hip-rotating with RiRi on the sinking mattress…it’s okay because these are Will’s men and nothing bad could ever happen.

“Beth,” I start, trying to turn the dial to the center. “Did he…did he—” I can’t say the word.

“What does it matter,” she says.

I breathe deeply. A breath so deep it nearly pierces me.

“Addy, he might as well have,” she says, her eyes blinking open, and so very drunk and lost I want to cry. “That’s what counts.”


More than once that night I sense movement in the house, shadows dancing past me. In my drunken sleep, curled tight on the couch, it’s as if I’m in Caitlin’s room, the pink-lit lantern casting ballerina silhouettes on the walls all night long.

Near dawn there is another shadow, and I feel the faintest weight on the glossy maple floors.

Rising, I creep through the living room door to the hallway, my stomach rising, the hangover scaling me with every move.

I see Coach in the den, leaning over the back of the sofa, whispering in Beth’s ear.

Her face so hard.

Her hands clasping the sofa edge too tight.

I think I hear. I know I hear.

You’re lying. You’re a liar. All you do is lie.

Then Beth, she’s talking, but I can’t hear any of it, or can’t be sure I have. In my nightmared head, it’s this:

He held my head, he bent my legs back, he did it to me, Coach. Monkey see, monkey do. Like us with you. Didn’t I jump higher, fly higher, Coach? Didn’t I?