Dare Me

16



All Sunday long, still feeling drunk, my whole body wrung dry from it, I can’t get Beth to return my texts. All I can do from my bedroom cave is wonder if she told her parents some version of her sordid story, or worse, the police.

And hovering in and out of hangover sleep, my dreams, so wretched, Prine’s bullet head between Beth’s tangled legs, doing tangly things with teeth, like a wild animal, the Mauler.

Or picturing Beth, teasing and goading him, slithering in her hiked skirt, saying who knew what, trying to get him to be rough with her, rough enough to mark her. I wonder how far he really got, or how far she would have let it go. Or why she did it to herself, to all of us.

Coach needs to see what she’s doing to us. What does that mean, Beth?

It means nothing to me.


Sunday night, Coach calls.

“I don’t know what happened,” I say. “I can’t get any more out of her.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Coach says, her voice flat, almost motorized. “All that matters is what she says happens. And who she says it to.”

This sends a chill through me. How could it not matter? But in some deeper way, I know what she means. There’s a fog upon us and there seems no piercing through.


“They’ve been in there an hour,” Emily announces, teetering on her crutches. On the DL but she won’t ever miss a practice. “At first it was really loud.”

We’re standing recklessly close to Coach’s office, she and Beth knotted in there, the blinds pulled shut, and I’m worried they can hear us.

No one else seems to know about Beth and Prine. All they heard was she sidled off with someone, which Beth always does anyway.

“Do you think Beth wants back on the squad?” Tacy whispers, visions of glory slipping from her neon fingertips. “Do you think Coach’d let her back? What if Coach lets her be squad captain again?”

Little, battle-hardened Tacy, calculating three moves ahead. Time was, she was just Beth’s gimp, then Beth’s Benedict Arnold. Now she’s Coach’s gimp.

If Beth is captain again, Tacy will have to slink back into spotter slots, or worse. No more Awesomes or Libertys or Dirty Birds or back tuck basket tosses.

No more flying.

“Coach doesn’t believe in captains,” Emily reminds us. “Even if she changed her mind, why in the world would she let Beth be captain? Beth doesn’t even show up anymore.”

But they don’t know what I know. Beth’s new chit. Pay for play. I wonder, will that be Coach’s strategy? It would be mine.

But it doesn’t seem Coach’s way. Her way: Meet swagger with swagger.


Swinging out of the office ten minutes later, Beth and Coach unaccountably snickering together, low, nasty laughs. We all watch, keenly.

I’m the only one who sees through them.


“She’s a chicken,” Coach says to me later. “She talks a good game, but she’s just a baby chick.”

About this, I know she could not be more wrong.

“You all think she’s such a gamer,” Coach says, shaking her head. “She’s just marshmallow fluff. Like any of those JV tenderfoots. Just with bigger lungs and a better ass.”

The two of them. Like liar’s dice at summer camp. But Beth always won because she was good at math and understood odds, and because, when looking under the cup, she’d turn over the dice with her thumb.

“But that Prine guy. You said they call him the Mauler…”

Coach shrugs. “She told me she doesn’t remember him ever hurting her. He passed out. And she guesses she didn’t know what she was saying, really, she was so drunk.”

I look at Coach, and I wonder who’s lying, or if they both are.

“So she’s not going to do anything?”

“There’s nothing to do,” Coach says. “I asked her if she wanted me to take her to my doctor. She said absolutely not. What she does remember is that Prine’s a bantam rooster with nothing but squawk.”


“So, bitch,” Beth asks later that afternoon, chewing straws at the coffee place, “are you ever gonna give me my phone back?”

I picture Coach spiraling it down the toilet.

“Your phone?”

“Herr F told me you must’ve taken it Saturday night. Probably to stop me from drunk-dialing. You’re a scrub, you know that, Hanlon? You’re auxiliary.”

“I don’t have your phone, Beth,” I say.

“I guess she must be wrong,” Beth says, foam curled in the corner of her mouth. Her tongue unfurling, swiping. “Funny she would think it was you.”

“Beth,” I say, “you said you’d texted Will that night. You said you’d called or texted him a bunch of times.”

She doesn’t say anything, but her mouth twitches just slightly. Then she pulls it taut and I wonder if I ever saw it at all.

“Did I say that?” she says, her bright tan shoulders slipping into a shrug. “I don’t remember that at all.”