Dare Me: A Novel

  “A hamsa bracelet,” I say, fighting a panicky tilt in my voice.

  “Not now, Adelaide,” she says. “Not yet.”

  I grab my books and start to walk away.

  “You’re going to have to forget how pretty and interested she is in you, Addy,” she calls after me.

  Walking out, I hear her all the way.

  “Tighten that gut, Addy. Lock those legs. Smile, smile, smile!”

  Everyone is looking at me, but I only look straight ahead.

  “Remember what old Coach Templeton used to say, Addy!”

  I push open the shuddering glass exit doors.

  “A good cheerleader,” she is calling out, “is not measured by the height of her jumps but by the span of her spirit.”

  23

  THURSDAY: AFTER SCHOOL

  “Four days, bitches!!” shouts Mindy.

  RiRi is doing waist bends, flashing her panties, this time lined with sparkles.

  The JV is clicking through YouTube on her laptop for the Celts squad’s stunts.

  Paige Shepherd is twanging—“Ima go for the gold, heart is in control, I’m a go, I’m a go I’m a go getta”—lifting one long leg into a Bow ’n’ Arrow.

  Cori Brisky shushes her hair up into her trademark extra-long white-blond pony whip, famous across three school districts.

  Everything is as it ever was.

  Still ground-bound since her spectacular fall, gimpy Emily is passing around the temporary tattoos she ordered for the squad. She has one on the apple of either cheek and she’s dotted her knee brace with them. Which all seems sad to me, like she’s our mascot. No one respects a mascot.

  We all feel sorry for her. She can’t even hall-stalk with us, can’t keep up with that club boot, and has already become a recruiting target of lacrosse players and the golf team, which could not be sadder, and of the predatory courtship of the field hockey furies, promising to get her knees skinned.

  I remember, sort of, being friends with her. Holding her hair back while she gagged herself pea-shoot thin. Even calling her at night instead of Beth, confiding things. But now I don’t know what we’d talk about.

  At three twenty Coach, chin high, strolls through the doors to the gym.

  Beth, standing in front of the mirror, doesn’t even look up, too busy oil-slicking her lashes with a mascara brush, no cares furrowing her face.

  “I have some news, guys,” she says.

  I reach out to hold onto my locker door.

  “I heard from my source at State Quals. There’s gonna be a scout at Monday’s game. We rock them, we’re rocking Regionals next year.”

  Everyone whoops and woo-hoos, jumping on the bleachers, grabbing each other around the necks like the ball-ers do.

  Poor boot-braced Emily bursts into tears.

  “By next year you’ll be flying again,” RiRi says, hand to her shoulder.

  “But not on Monday,” she whimpers. “That won’t be mine.”

  “Let’s focus,” Coach says, clapping her hands sharply.

  We snap front.

  Looking at her, I can’t fathom it. I’d never guess anything else was going on at all. She is ready to ride us. She is sweatless and bolt-straight.

  “We need to think about the Celts,” Mindy says.

  The Celts squad has serious game, famous for their facial expressions, head bobs and tongues stuck out and dropped jaws and wide eyes when their Flyers hit, when they spring back, the crowd gasping ah, ah, ah.

  “They do two-girl Awesomes,” Brinnie Cox says with a sigh, which is how she says everything. “A girl my size can catch both the Flyer’s feet in one palm.”

  “Their facials are hot,” RiRi admits.

  “I don’t care about their wiggling tongues or bouncing ponytails,” says Coach. “I don’t care about the Celts at all. All I care about is that Regionals scout. The scout’s gotta see our star power.”

  We all look uneasily at Tacy.

  “Your Flyer isn’t your key to the castle,” Coach says. “It’s about the squad. You gotta show you’re the posse straight from hell. And there’s only one way to do it. We’re going to give that scout something that will guarantee our slot. We’re going to show her a two-two-one.”

  The two-two-one.

  It will be our shining achievement, if we nail it.

  Three stories high of golden girls, two Bottom Bases holding up two Middle Bases in shoulder stands, the Flyer tossed through the center, Bottom Bases platforming her feet, the Middle Bases’ arms lifted to hold her arms outstretched, crucifixion style. Spotters standing behind, waiting for the Flyer’s death-defying Deadman fall.

  It’s illegal in competition, but not at a game.

  And it’s the kind of stunt you need to nail to make it to Regionals. To a tourney.

  “Cap’n,” Coach says, looking up at Beth, halfway up the bleachers again, her hovering black presence. “All yours today. Drill them hard.”

  She tosses Beth the whistle.

  Beth, one eyebrow raised, catches it.

  In an instant, a flare of energy seems to shoot up her body, that sullen slouch uncoiling for the first time in months, since…I can’t even remember.

  Coach has just handed her the Big Stick, and thank god she still seems to think it worth taking.

  “Gimme some handsprings, bitches,” Beth says, making her slow, willowy way down the stands, arms dangling, snapping her fingers low.

  “Don’t fuck with me, RiRi,” she says. “Loose limbs may fly for your Saturday night specials, but I need you tight as a cherry. Time-travel me back.”

  So Beth wrangles us for a while, and it does feel good. And Beth is so on, so animated.

  She is enthroned and magnificent.

  At some point, I see Coach slink into her office.

  Later, while Beth’s busy trash-talking Tacy for a weak back tuck, calling her a sad little pussy, I slip over and peer in, see Coach on the phone, her hand over her eyes.

  I think: it’s the cops. It’s the cops. What now?

  An hour in, we’re ready to run the two-two-one pyramid.

  Because I’m not too big and not too small, I’m a Middle Base, one of the two shoulder stands in the middle.

  Beneath me stands eagle-shouldered Mindy Coughlin, my feet curled around her collarbone, her body bracing.

  But I think it’s worse for me, no floor beneath me, and ninety-four pounds of quaking panic above.

  Once we’re up, Tacy will get rocketed between RiRi and me, and we will grab her legs and lock her body in place.

  Then she’ll wow them all, flipping backwards into a Deadman, falling into the waiting embrace of the cradle-armed spotters fifteen feet below.

  Everyone will gasp, grip their bleacher seats.

  The Deadman, that’s our moment of shock and awe.

  Despite what Coach says, it really is all about the Flyer.

  We can hold her steady as she comes, but if Tacy wobbles, twists, turns the wrong way: snap, crackle, pop.

  Which is probably why she looks like a doomed tail gunner waiting to be wedged into a quaking turret.

  “You all need to man up for Slaussen,” Beth tells us. “Or she’ll be mat-kill. Two years ago, at the Viking game, I saw a girl jiggle just an inch up there. Her girls didn’t have her. Smack! Her neck hit the ground, skidded so hard that a piece of her blond ponytail ripped from her scalp.”

  Tacy’s face goes from green to white to gray. Beth, with that power to annihilate with a single breath. Two months ago, Tacy galloped hard at Beth’s side, lackey under her mighty sway. Oh, the turns of fortune…

  Eyes on Tacy’s toned legs, which look like mini-butterfingers, Beth shakes her head.

  I realize she’s right. One calf is bigger than the other.

  “You always were such a hoodrat,” Beth says, shaking her head. “Always quick to hoist your legs in the air for my sloppy seconds. But I guess you were only hoisting the left one.”

  Beth kneels down on the mat in front of Tac
y’s dainty body.

  Then, she wets her finger and runs it along Tacy’s thigh and calf.

  We all observe, like watching a gang recruit get jumped in.

  “I thought so,” Beth says, rising and wiggling her index finger, smudged with what looks to me like Mystic Island Radiance. “All the spray tan in the world won’t give you what you don’t have. You either have muscle or you have twig. Or, in your case, Q-tip.”

  “I can do it, Beth,” Tacy says, voice pitching high. “Coach knows. I’ve earned my spot.”

  “Then let’s see it, meat,” she says, standing back. “Make a believer out of me.”

  Stepping back, she turns the speakers up and our game music, bawdy pop with baby-doll vocals cut through with a molasses-throated rap, “Get down, girl, go ’head get down.”

  I swing up to Middle Base, above Mindy’s ramming shoulder, her hand foisting up, palm spreading over my bottom.

  At that moment, Coach walks back into the gym.

  “You got it, Slaussen,” Coach nods, strolling past Beth to the back of the pyramid. Hearing her, such a relief. “You nailed it once, you’ll nail it again.”

  Coach inexplicably becoming the good cop in this strange new world.

  But RiRi, the other Middle Base, and I feel a joint twinge, our eyes on Tacy’s legs, like little cinnamon sticks that might snap.

  When we raise her up, air-puff light, she is shaking like a bobblehead doll, like Emily was. I can feel her try to make herself tight, can feel it radiating through me, but the cartoon terror eyes put a chill in me.

  “Ride that bitch,” Beth’s voice booms at us. “Ride it.”

  Our arms shaking, we’ve got to lock it in place, but it’s not locking. It’s like trying to make a pair of gummy worms stand straight.

  We bring her back down for a second.

  “She can’t do it,” Beth pronounces. “Either no two-two-one or we need a new Flyer.”

  We are all quiet.

  Suddenly, RiRi’s voice rises from behind me. “What about Addy?”

  I turn around and look at her, my heart speeding up. She smiles and winks.

  “What if Addy were Top Girl?”

  Coach looks over at me, eyebrows raised. I feel Beth’s gaze on me too.

  “Addy doesn’t like to be on top,” Beth says, poker-faced.

  “Hey!” Tacy cries. “I’ve been flying all season.”

  Coach nods. “It’s something to think about, long haul,” she says. “But for now we need Addy right where she is, in the middle. She’s our spine.”

  I don’t like all the eyes on me. I wish RiRi had never said anything.

  It doesn’t matter anyway because, a second later, everyone is just looking at Tacy again.

  “She can’t, Coach,” says Beth, as simply as she’s ever said anything.

  My hands fresh off Tacy’s kindling hipbone, I feel certain Beth is right.

  “Look at her,” Beth scoffs. “She’s not trained up.”

  These are fighting words and we all know it. It’s spit in the eye to any coach.

  “She just wants my spot, Coach,” Tacy nearly whimpers. “I can do it. Elevator me up again.”

  “Slaussen?” Coach looks over at Tacy. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes!”

  Beth sighs loudly. “What happens,” she practically sings, “when a pretty young coach takes a ragtag team of misfits and feebs under her wing? Why, they fly, fly, fly.”

  Coach looks at her.

  “We just needed someone to believe in us,” Beth finishes.

  “Stop gaming her, Cassidy,” Coach says, staring her down, duel-at-dawn, but her tone still flat, toneless, “or I’m gonna ground-bound you instead.”

  “Look at her leg,” Beth says, “like a wishbone twanging.”

  “Cassidy,” Coach says, like she’s forgotten the caution she’s supposed to use with Beth, or she’s just stopped caring. “When you start showing me you can do more than flash your tits and treat your mouth like a sewer, then maybe we’ll have something to talk about.”

  Don’t, Coach, I think. Don’t.

  “You heard the coach,“ Beth says, turning to us with a smile. “Load her up and let her fall.”

  The music thumping again, Beth counting off, Mindy and Cori line up, Bottom Bases. Spotters Paige and a JV stand behind them and load up the second level, RiRi and me, our bodies springing up to shoulder stands, their palms cradling our calves.

  Facing each other, we lift Tacy between us, throwing her above us into a stand, our arms lifted high, hands tight on her wrists. Her arms outstretched, Jesus-style, her left leg knee-bent in front of her, the girls beneath grasping her right foot to hold her in place.

  For a second, she is solid.

  Seven, eight, Beth counting off until the Deadman and it is time. Time for us to drop her backwards into a stiff-spined horizontal fall. Ready for Paige, the JV, all her spotters to catch her down below.

  We let go.

  Her eyes wild, Tacy drops, but her body seems to rubberize, limbs like spaghetti. As her hand grapples for me, I feel myself sliding down with her, Paige and Cori, on the ground, shouting, “Slaus, here, here, here. Hold it!”

  But she plunges, our hands empty.

  The sickly sound as Tacy, still half in Paige’s sloping arms, hits the mat, face first.

  RiRi and I still on high, I think my knees might give, but I hear Coach’s voice, iron smooth, “Hanlon, slow down that dismount,” as RiRi and I sink down.

  I feel something clamping on me, and Beth is right there, her hand gripping my arm all the way down. Depositing me safely on the mat, feet first.

  Coach is on the floor with Tacy, strewn from the spotters’ tangled arms, her feet still in their grip even as her head, neck tilted, her chin split wide open, swabs the mat.

  “At least she can fall well,” RiRi mutters.

  Her mouth opening in a strangled sob, Tacy’s teeth blare bright red.

  “You come at the king,” Beth says, “you best not miss.”

  RiRi and I take Tacy to Nurse Vance, who slaps on the butterfly bandages and tells me to take Tacy to the hospital for stitches, which sends her into a new round of sobs.

  “Your modeling career is over,” I say.

  Walking to her locker, Tacy is purple-lipped and cotton-tufted, crying about the Game and the scouts and how she’s got to do the two-two-one, she’s the only one light enough, which isn’t even true, and Coach damn well better let her cheer, no matter what she looks like.

  Then, a new sob choking in her, she takes a deep breath.

  “But it should be Beth anyway,” she whispers, dramatically. “Beth’s Top Girl.”

  For a second, I hear RiRi. What about Addy? What if Addy were Top Girl?

  But it never has been me, has it? I never wanted it to. I was never a stunter, I was a spotter, a hoister. That’s what I am.

  And Top Girls were different from the rest of us.

  I think of Beth last year, after the Norsemen game, all of us drinking with the players up on the ridge, and Brian Brun thrusting her above his head, hands gripping around her ankles, her feet tucked in his palms, then one leg flung behind her, rendering her celebrated Bow ’n’ Arrow, as she spun and lifted her right leg straight in the air, slipping it behind her glossy head, making one beautiful line of Bethness, all of us gasping.

  It’s all we could talk about, dream about, for days, weeks.

  “It’s always been Beth,” she slurs, grazing her temple with the back of her wrist. “And the squad is what counts. Cheer, I never knew it mattered so much. Not until Coach picked me. She changed my life. Now it’s all I can think about, Addy. I hear the counts in my sleep. Don’t you? I don’t ever want them to end.”

  I tell her to stop talking.

  “Don’t you see, Addy?” she says, words tumbling in her mouth, eyes shiny and crazed. “When we go out there Monday night, we need to show them what we can do. What we are. We need to make them know it. We need to give them m
ore than awesomeness.

  “We need to give them greatness.”

  It hurts to turn the steering wheel. I can still feel Tacy’s grasping fingers, the fear my arm socket might pop. The sound of Beth saying, “Ride that bitch…ride her.”

  And Beth, the way her hand fastened on me, stopping my fall.

  And after, Coach saying, as I walked the limping Tacy across the gym, “Next time, Hanlon, when you let her go, keep those arms to the side. Don’t let her see your hands are there. If she does, she’ll grab for them. Wouldn’t you?”

  Wouldn’t you? I want to ask.

  I think of injured Emily again, withering up in the stands. And I remember how, last week, she posted on my Facebook wall: “U never call me anymore. None of U.” And I decided it was a joke, one of Emily’s endless LOLs.

  I couldn’t be bothered.

  At the games she sits, just barely separated from the bleacher crowd—in the borderland, the nowhere zone between our bronzed glory and the gray blur of everything, everyone else in this sad world.

  At home later:

  U put a hex on Slaus, I text Beth.

  U shoulda given *her* the hamsa, she replies.

  Like at a hypnotist’s cue, my head floods with the image of my bracelet in Will’s apartment. A crimson ring on his carpet.

  But I keep hearing Beth’s words in my head:…Coach must’ve told you they asked her about the bracelet. You two thick as thieves.

  Why hasn’t Coach told me?

  I think I should just call her and ask her about it. But I don’t.

  I want her to tell me.

  It doesn’t mean anything if I have to ask her.

  A blipping text message comes hours later, but it’s from Beth: Guess who’s flying Mon nite?

  Tacy’s out, Beth’s in. A peculiar mix of terror and relief floods through me—and then the taunting mystery of what kind of conversation transpired between Beth and Coach during those hours after practice to lead to this.

  R U happy now? I text back.

  But there’s no reply.

  It’s the dark muddle of the night when I feel the phone hissing in my hand.