Part 18 (1/2)

”What is that? Who's calling?”

”No one's calling,” I say, her hot fingers clamping at me, like when she pushes your body to make that jump, support that weight, the weight of five girls, effortlessly.

In an instant, it's like I'm not in Will's apartment but at practice, and in trouble.

”A text,” I say. ”I get texts all the time.”

”In the middle of the night?” She jerks my wrist from my pocket and the phone rattles to the floor.

Mercifully, the battery flies out.

”Pick it up,” she says. ”G.o.ddammit, Addy.”

I start to bend down.

”Don't touch anything,” she snaps, and I see one of my hands is almost resting on the s.h.i.+ny black lacquer of the table.

Rising, I look down at the tabletop and see my smudgy face reflected in it, black depthless eyes.

There's nothing there, really.

”Addy, we have to go, we have to go,” Coach says, her voice grinding into me. ”Get me out of here.”

Moments later, we dart across the parking lot, my sapphire Acura like a beacon.

We're driving, the night vacant and starless, and the whole world is softly asleep, with furnaces purring and windows shut tight and the safety of people tucked inside with the warming knowledge of a tomorrow and a tomorrow after that of just such humming sameness.

The car windows down, the crystally cool on me, I imagine myself in that world, the one I know. I imagine myself curled in just such comforts, comforts so tight they could choke you. So tight they choke me always.

Oh, was there no happiness to be had the world over? There or here?

Here in this bleach-fogged car, she beside me, still holding her sneakers between her legs. Her fingers keep running around the tongue, her eyes thoughtfully, almost dreamily on the road.

I can't fathom what she's thinking.

Finally, as we're turning down her street, Coach asks me to pull over two doors from her house.

”Roll the windows up,” she says. I do.

”Addy, it's going to be fine,” she says. ”Just forget about all this.”

I nod, my chin shaking from the cold, from the wretched loneliness of that drive, fifteen, twenty minutes in the car. She never said a word, seemed lost in some kind of moody reverie.

”You just need to go home and pretend it never happened,” she says. ”Okay?”

When she gets out of the car, the waft of bleach from her shoes smacks me.

Unable to turn the ignition, I sit there.

Were I thinking straight, were I feeling the world made any sense at all, I might be driving to the police station, calling 911. Were I that kind of person.

Instead, I look at my cell. I need to text Beth back.

Fell asleep, be-yotch, I type. I type. Some of us sleep. Some of us sleep.

Still sitting, I wait a minute for her reply. But my phone just lies there.

No Beth.

It should make me feel better-Beth has finally dervished herself into exhausted slumber, her reign of terror over, for now-but it does not.

Instead, I have a sickly feeling I know will sit with me all night, that will join the larger sickness, the sense of nightmare and menace that feels like it will be mine forever.

I roll down all the windows and breathe.

Then I start the car and inch past Coach's house, just to see if there are any lights on.

Suddenly, I see something moving, fast, like an arrow, down her driveway and to my car.

Almost before I can take a breath, Coach's palms are slapping my winds.h.i.+eld, my heart spurring to terrible life.

”I was just leaving, I was,” I nearly yelp, shutting off the ignition as she leans in through the pa.s.senger window. ”No one saw-”

”You're my friend,” she blurts, an ache in her voice. ”The only friend I ever had.”

Before I can say anything, she's whippeting back across her lawn, slipping soundlessly into the dark house.

I sit a long time, my hands resting in my lap, my face warm.

I don't want to start the car, move, do anything.

I never gave anything to anyone before. Not like this.

I never was anything to anyone before.

Not like this.

I never was, before.