Part 26 (1/2)

I nod.

Something creaks open in her, a place she does not want to go.

”We saw him, Addy,” she says, her fingertips to her mouth, her face sheeting white. ”We saw what he did.”

I want to hold tight to her hand and say soft things.

”Addy,” she says feverishly, her fingers fisting. ”You have to understand. People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into not wanting things you can't help wanting. You can't be afraid.”

”Three days left!” shouts Mindy. ”I hear scouts always always sit high left in the bleachers. We gotta work toward that corner.” sit high left in the bleachers. We gotta work toward that corner.”

My chest lifts. Our weird little universe where a word from Mindy Coughlin, her face red and brutish, can suddenly make me care again about the Big Game. Our qualifying shot.

But Coach is nowhere to be found.

”Why does she keep going away?” Tacy asks, mouth m.u.f.fled with bandages. She's standing next to Cori, who's rotating her left wrist anxiously, taped tight where wavering Tacy's foot lodged.

And Emily. Gimpy Emily, still boot-braced, near forgotten.

This array of casualties, and I wonder how I'm still standing.

We happy few, we band of b.i.t.c.hes, Beth used to say. Don't you forget it.

As if on cue, Beth strolls in front of us, hip-slinging gangsta.

”Let's get started, kitties,” Beth says. ”The Celts wait for no sad-a.s.s chicken hearts.”

This, I think, is good for her. I think, Yes. Yes, Beth. Take it and let it feed you. Feed off this for a while, please. Yes. Yes, Beth. Take it and let it feed you. Feed off this for a while, please.

”The way to win is to sell it,” Beth shouts, her voice rising high and thrumming in all our ears.

”Whip your heads,” she says, and we do.

”Make your claps sharp,” she says, and we do.

”Make your faces like you're wired for pleasure,” she says, and we gleam ecstatic.

”Give 'em the best blow-job smiles you got,” she says, and if she had a bullwhip, she'd be slapping it against our thighs. ”Turn it on, on, on.”

We ride rough and work hard for her. We have three days until the final game and we have to call up another JV whippoorwill and we will work hard for Beth because we want to show our hot stuff, our epic impudence, our unholy awesomeness in front of the sneering Celts ma.s.ses on Monday night.

But most of all, we work hard because it raises a din, a rabid, high-pitched din that can nearly drown out the sound of the current and coming chaos. The sense that everything is changing in ways we can't guess and that nothing can stop it.

Or maybe that's not it at all. Maybe all we're trying to drown out is the terrifying quiet, the sense that all there is to hear is our own thin echoes. Our sense that Coach is slipping from our clasping hands, that maybe she is already gone. That there is no center anymore and maybe there never was.

All we have is Beth. But that is something, her thunder filling up all the silence.

In the locker room, the din dissolving, girls scattered and then gone, I find myself alone, or nearly so.

With no Coach, everyone leaves a mess. This is how it was under Beth before. Flair strewn about, rolling empties of zero-carb rockstar and sugar-free monster, tampon wrappers and crushed goji berries. Even one cobwebby thong.

Bobby pins crunching under my feet, I walk through, surveying the damaged girlness.

My heart still hammering from the practice, I'm thinking of how hardcore Beth was out there today, like I haven't seen her since soph.o.m.ore year, when it still beat in her so hard. When she hadn't gotten distracted by petty grievances and her own miseries of life, her own creeping boredom.

Maybe she has never been this good, cared so much.

This is what Coach has done for her, I think. I think. She helps us all. She helps us all.

Then, lurking in the open doorway of Coach's office, she is there. The shadow she throws seems so large that her five feet swallow the office hall. Beth.

”Cap,” I say, wanting to help sate her, ”you bled us today.”

Her back to me, I can't see her face.

I walk closer.

I'm hoping, praying for elation.

I mean, isn't she the Coach Itself now, for the moment at least?

”Beth,” I say again. ”Return of the King.”

The sunfall flooding everything, her whole body lit darkly gold, I stop a few feet from her ambered back.

”Beth,” I say, ”you got everything.”

Finally, slowly, a half turn of her head. A whisper of her profile, darkened by her shudder of black hair.

That's when I see that nothing's been had at all, nothing's been saved. She thought this would be it, and it wasn't.

”The sun's down and the moon's pretty,” she says, her voice hushed. ”It's time to ramble.”

And I say yes. Of course I say yes.

25

FRIDAY NIGHT

Sprawled on the hood of my car, we are high up on the south face of the ridge, right where it drops a thousand miles or more, into the deepest part of the earth. hood of my car, we are high up on the south face of the ridge, right where it drops a thousand miles or more, into the deepest part of the earth.