Part 5 (1/2)

That's when we know: we're paying for Beth's sins.

The jump drill comes, and then the high kicks and then floor crunches and then running the gym track until RiRi throws up in the corner, a slos.h.i.+ng mix of slim-fast and sugar-free powdered donuts.

Beth, though, she sacks up. I'll give her that. At least she doesn't make it any worse for any of us. Sweat glittering on her, dappling her eyelashes, she kills it.

She will not sit down after, when we all collapse on the mats, our sweaty limbs crisscrossing. She will not sit down, will not let the steel slip from between her shoulders.

She has so much pride that, even if I'm weary of her, of her fighting ways, her gauntlet-tossing, I can't say there isn't something else that beams in me. An old ember licked to fresh fire again. Beth, the old Beth, before high school, before Ben Trammel, all the boys and self-sorrow, the divorce and the adderall and the suspensions.

That Beth at the bike racks, third grade, her braids dangling, her chin up, fists knotted around a pair of dull scissors, peeling into Brady Carr's tire. Brady Carr, who shoved me off the spinabout, tearing a long strip of skin from my ankle to my knee.

Tugging the rubber from his tire, her fingernails ripped red, she looked up at me, grinning wide, front teeth gapped and wild heroic.

How could you ever forget that?

We all want to ”take it to the next level”-that's what we keep calling it. For us, the next level means doing a real basket toss, with three or four girls hurling a Flyer ten, fifteen, twenty feet in the air, and that Flyer flipping and twisting her way back down into their arms. And not even Beth has ever done a stunt like this, not this high, not without a mat. We were never that kind of squad, not a tourney squad. Not a serious squad.

Once we master a basket toss, we can do real stunts, real pyramids, because they are pyramids that end with true flying, with girls loaded up and slingshot into the air. The gasp-ahh awesomeness we've always dreamed of.

We have been YouTubing basket tosses all day, watching sprightly girl after sprightly girl get thrown by her huskier squadmates into the air and then try to ride it as far as she can. Arms extended, back arched, she is reaching for something, and only stops when she has to.

Mostly, though, we watch girls fall.

”A girl over at St. Reggie's died doing a basket toss that high last year,” Emily says, her voice grave, like she's giving a press conference on TV. ”She landed chest down in everyone's arms and her spleen popped like a balloon.”

”Spleens don't pop,” Beth says, though how she knows this is unclear.

”But I heard she had mono,” someone says.

”What's that got to do with it?”

”It makes your spleen swell.”

”No one here has mono.”

”You don't always know.”

”They banned it in my cousin's school,” someone says.

”You can't ban mono,” Beth says.

”You're not even allowed to do them on spring floors.”

”Who could get their heels over their head like that?” spiral-curled RiRi wonders, lifting one of her legs off the floor.

”You do,” Beth says. ”Every Sat.u.r.day night.”

”So are you ready for it, Beth?” Emily grins.

”Ready for what?”

Tacy rolls her eyes. ”Like it'd be anyone but you, Beth. You're Top Girl.”

Beth almost smiles.

It's a relief to see it. To see how much she wants it. When Coach gives her the spot, it'll make everything better. Maybe, Maybe, I think, high on hunger, I think, high on hunger, they will even become friends. they will even become friends.

Of course, we all want it. (Even me, five inches taller than Beth, a tragedy of birth.) It's the star shot, and we feel our bodies hardening, we feel our speed quickening, our blood pounding, thick and strong.

Tosses, two-and-a-half pyramids, tabletops, thigh stands, split stands, Wolf Walls-Coach says they're what separates you from just another a.s.s-shaking pep squad.

”So we're not an a.s.s-shaking pep squad?” Beth mutters, her voice smoke-thick, her eyes shot through with blood and boredom. ”If I wanted to be an ath-lete,” she says, ”I'd've joined the other d.y.k.es on field hockey.”

Three-oh-seven and Coach strolls into the gym, her hair wound softly into a ponytail.

”Let's get started on that toss,” she says. ”We need four to make the cradle underneath-two Bases, and a back and a front spot to get enough power.”

She pauses. ”But who's going to be our Flyer?”

Our two killer Bases, Mindy and Cori Brisky, their legs like t.i.tanium pikes, saunter over, eyeing all of us. Wondering which one of our lives will depend on the strength of their flintlock collarbones, our feet lodged there, rising high.

I think, for a second, it might be me.

And why shouldn't it be me, twisting high, propelled skyward, all eyes battened to me, my body bullet-hard and glorious?

But it has to be Beth. We all know it. Beth practically stepping forward, all five feet and ninety pounds of her, stomach tight as anyone fed solely on tar and battery acid.

She's our Flyer. Missed practices, insolence, but still she is our Flyer. Of course she is.

(Except the voice inside that says, Me, me, me. It should be me.

But, if not me, Beth.) ”Slaussen,” Coach says, turning to Tacy, the ewe.

I feel myself stone-sinking.

”You ready to fly?” she asks her.

There's a hush to everything, and a closeness in the air.

Not Beth.

And Tacy? Tacy?

Tacy Slaussen, that little pink-eyed nothing, the one Beth used to call ”Cottontail”?