Dare Me

18



MONDAY: ONE WEEK TO FINAL GAME

Coach spends most of practice in her office, on the phone, her face hidden behind her hand.

When she comes out, the phone rings again, and she is gone.

In her place, Beth brandishes the scepter, or pretends to. We have a sloppy practice and Mindy wearies me, complaining about the red grooves and pocks studding her shoulder, the imprint of Tacy’s kaepa toss shoe. Chicken-boned Brinnie Cox only wants to talk about her lemon detox tea.

My head bobbing helplessly, I look up into the stands and spot Emily, a white pipe cleaner propped lonely there.

I keep forgetting about Emily. Ground-bound, it’s like she dropped into the black hole of the rest of the school.

God, it must be terrible not to be on cheer. How would you know what to do?

Her head darting left and right, she’s watching us from the cave of her letter jacket, her ponderous orthopedic moon boot nearly tipping her to one side.

Emily, who I’ve known for three years, borrowed tampons from, held her hair back over every toilet bowl in school.

“Skinny be-yotch,” Beth calls out to her, as if reading my mind. “How we rate to your bony ass?”

Emily shudders to life. “Tight,” she calls out, eagerly.

“Tight as JV p-ssy?” Beth shouts.

“Tighter!” Emily laughs, and I remember this Beth, Captain Beth when Beth was feeling most captainy, most interested in wielding her formidable powers, me at her side.

Thank you, Beth, for reminding me. Thank you.


Teddy saw Coach @ Statlers last week, Beth’s text reads. Drinking, talking on cell all nite, crying @ jukebox.

So? I text back, nearing one a.m.

I want to turn off the phone. I want to be done with Beth for the night, done with her chatter about Coach, and her car, or even the things she used to talk about: Tacy’s runty legs and the antidepressants she eyed in Mindy’s book bag, and the sex toy she found under her mother’s pillow and how it looks like a pink boomerang made by Mattel, and maybe that’s what happened to her Barbie surfboard, mysteriously lost a decade ago.

Like some polluted Little Red Riding Hood, Beth always creeping through everyone’s lives.

So? I text again.

There’s a long pause, and I can picture Beth pecking away her reply.

Sometimes, though, I think that how long she takes, these epic multipart texts, is all on purpose, making the dread mount each time: What is Beth up to? What is she doing now?

ZZzt, the phone screen flashes at me at last:

Said she ran outside + hit post in parking lot, peeled off

So…? I text back.

So why lie to us, to u? she texts. Plus, crying abt what?

I roll over in bed, let the phone slip to the carpet, its screen winking at me.

In the half dream that comes, the screen is a mouth, teeth gnashing.