Part 12 (2/2)

New girls get tossed hard first time out. Initiate-style. And we like to rock them side to side.

”Mat kill,” mutters Tacy, newly hard, suddenly a senior statesman of the squad.

No one asks about Beth. She's barely been in school these past three days, and Coach seems very calm in her victory.

It's after midnight when my phone hisses, rattling my bedside tabletop.

Can u pick me up? Cnr Hutch & 15.

Beth. The first text in five days. The longest stretch since she went to horse camp in the mountains after seventh grade, returning with a ringlet of hickeys from a counselor and fresh revelations about the world.

Creeping through the house, I unhitch the car keys from the kitchen door hook. Anyone could hear the car shaking to life in the garage, but if they do, they ignore it. My father nuzzled close to my stepmother, she muzzled by her nightly dose of sleep aids.

Beth is standing on the corner, and her face when the headlights. .h.i.t is a surprise. It's Beth bare-faced, which is scarier than her hooded eyes, her teengirl snarl.

Her face splayed open, like it almost never is, and mascara-spattered eyes blinking relentlessly, staring straight into the center of me.

With the headlights in her face, she can't really see me, but it feels like she can. She knows I'm there.

It's a thing to see, her face so bare. I almost want to turn away. I don't want to feel for her.

By the time she's in the car, her face is shuttered tight once more. She doesn't give me much of anything, not even a h.e.l.lo, and sets about punching text messages.

”Where were you?” I ask.

”Guard duty,” she mutters, thumbs flying on her little keyboard.

”What?” I say.

Thump-thump-thump that thumb of hers, thumping.

”What?” I say again. ”What did you say?”

”Sarge Stud...,” she says, and I hold my breath, ”...ain't the only stars and stripes in town.”

She sets her phone down and glances at me, sly smile playing there.

”Which one?” I ask. All those rawboned soldiers who stood at that table with Will, rawboned and callow, steel-wool scrubbed.

”Bullet head,” Beth says. ”Prine. Corporal Gregory Prine. Gregorius, let's call him. You know the one.”

I picture him, tongue waggling at me, fingers forked there, that acne-studded brow and sense of frat menace.

”Well,” I say, feeling sick. ”Bad Girls' Club for you, eh?”

”h.e.l.ls-yeah,” she says, a rattle laugh.

But I look at her hands, which are shaking. She clasps her phone to try to stop them. When I see it, something in me turns.

”Beth.” I feel all the blood rus.h.i.+ng from my face. I can't quite name it, but it's a sense of abandon. ”Why?”

”Why not?” she replies, and her voice husky, her hair falling across her face. ”Why not, Addy? Why not?”

I think she might cry. In her way, she is.

14

Little Caitlin, her doughy face with that cherry-stem mouth, baby-soft hair sticking to her bulbed forehead. doughy face with that cherry-stem mouth, baby-soft hair sticking to her bulbed forehead.

Sitting on Coach's sofa, I watch her amble around her strewn toys, the pink plastic and the yellow fluff of girlhood, everything glitter-silted. She steps with such care through the detritus of purple-maned ponies, gauzy-winged tutus, and all the big-eyed dolls-dolls nearly as empty-eyed as Caitlin, who reminds me of one of those stiff-limbed walking ones the richest girls always had, and we'd knock them over with the backs of our hands, or walk them into swimming pools or down bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. Like stacking them up in pyramids just to watch them fall.

”I know, I know. Please, will you, will you...listen to me, baby. Listen close.”

In the dark dining room, Coach is on the phone, fingers hooked around the bottom of the low-hanging chandelier, turning it, twisting it in circles until I hear a sickly creak.

For hours she's been hand-wringing, jabbing her thumb into the center of her palm, molding it there, her teeth nearly grinding, her eyes straying constantly to her cell phone. Ten times in ten minutes, a phantom vibration. Picking it up, nearly shaking it. Begging it to come to life. We can't finish a conversation, sure can't practice dive rolls in the yard. Any of the things she promised me.

Finally, her surrender, slipping into the other room and her voice high and rushed. Will? Will? But you...but Will... Will? Will? But you...but Will...

Now, Caitlin's play-doh feet stomp over mine, her gummy hands on my knees as she pushes by me, and I want out. It's all so sticky and unfun and I feel the air clog in my throat. For the first time since Coach let me into her home, I wish I'd gone instead with RiRi to her new boyfriend's place, where they were drinking ginger-and-Jack in the backyard and smas.h.i.+ng croquet b.a.l.l.s up and down the long slope of the lawn.

But then Coach, phone raised high in hand like a trophy, tears into the living room, her face suddenly shooting nervy energy.

She is transformed.

”Addy, can you do me a favor?” she says, fingering the hamsa bracelet, its amulet flaring at me. ”Just this once?”

She kneels down before me, her arms resting on my knees. It's like a proposal.

Her face so soft and eager, I feel like she must feel when she looks at me.

”Yes,” I say, smiling. ”Sure, yes. Yes.” Always. Always.

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