Dare Me: A Novel

by Megan Abbott

  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.
r />   “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?

  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 underst
ood 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.”

  17

  The next day, Beth is back on the squad.

  And she is captain again. Honorifically.

  She gets to skip chem on Wednesday for captain-coach mentor time, and study hall means she can go to Coach’s office by herself and smoke. I see her when I walk by and she waves at me, head tilted, smoke swirling in malevolent plumes around her face.