Part 36 (1/2)

”Girlie, you've been a chick long enough. I need you to show me that egg tooth,” she says, slipping her fingers under JV's tank top, heaving her up on the bench with her. ”Tonight's the night, you're gonna pip through the sh.e.l.l.”

Beth tugs the girl under her own bronzed arm, stares her down and nearly laps her face. ”So stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. We've come to bury them. We've come to plow their bones by the final bell.”

She pounds her pumas until that bench rattles, our bodies shake.

”It's harvest day, girlies,” she says, her voice like crackling lightning. ”Get busy when the corn is ripe.”

I almost fall for it, for Beth's hoodoo grandiosity.

Our captain, like Beth from before, our n.o.ble, proud, heart-strong Beth, and this Beth too, a warrior nearly vanquished but not quite, never quite.

We few, we happy few, she might say, she might say, we band of sistuhs, for she today that sheds her blood with me, shall be my sistuh always. we band of sistuhs, for she today that sheds her blood with me, shall be my sistuh always.

Couldn't I just let that be enough for these two hours?

But then Tacy sputters in, late, her face still bruise-dappled and her eyes lightless, d.a.m.ned.

And I'm reminded of everything.

Including the feel of my foot pressed against her face, what she made me do.

This feeling, this high, it's not real. It's that Jesus-love flooding through me, by which I mean the adderall and the pro clinical hydroxy-hot with green tea extract and the eating-nothing-but-hoodia-lollipops-all-day.

And most of all the high that comes from Beth's dark supply.

I don't want it.

Ten minutes to game time, and no Coach to stop the squad, everyone's breaking rules and whirring through the back bleachers, scout-spotting.

Back in the locker room, I sit, trying to get my game head on.

SCOUT! 3 row frm top, lft - lady w. cap + mirror shades! RiRi texts. RiRi texts.

I hear a rustling one row over and there's Beth, hands in her locker, tugging off her rows of friends.h.i.+p bracelets, tightening her pin-straight ponytail. Eyes on herself in her stick-on mirror, face blue and frightening.

Were it not for the angle of her locker door, the way the parking lot lights slant through the high windows, I might never have seen it.

But I did.

The hot glow of an evil eye, lurking between a pile of hair ties and toe socks.

A hamsa bracelet. Coach's hamsa bracelet. My hamsa bracelet.

Hands to her slick shea-b.u.t.tered arms, I catch her by surprise, flipping her around.

”What, did you think I wouldn't show?” she says, and her blood all up in her cheeks and temples. ”I'd never let the squad down.”

My chest lurching, I grab the bracelet with one hand and, with the other, shove her into the shower stalls.

”You did it. You took it. You lied about all of it,” I shout raggedly, my voice echoing to the slimy ceiling of the showers. ”It was never in Will's apartment, was it?”

”No,” she says, with an odd stuttering laugh, ”of course not.”

”Why did you tell me the police found it?”

”I wanted you to see,” she says. ”She was hiding everything from you. She never cared about you.”

”But you stole it. You were going to try to plant it, something,” I say, squeezing her so hard I feel one of my nails start to give. ”My G.o.d, Beth.”

”Oh, Addy,” she says, still laughing, her head shaking back and forth. ”I took it a long time ago. That time we slept at her house.”

I think of it now. That long-ago night of the Comfort Inn party. Beth, the wounded kitty. Those hours I'd abandoned her to Coach's sofa, left her free to prowl the house, her viper's crawl. Shadows flitting by all night.

”But that was before everything,” I say. ”Why?”

”She didn't deserve it,” Beth says, her voice rising, throaty, the laughing gone. ”She'd tossed it on the kitchen window ledge, like an old sponge. She didn't deserve it.”

Wrestling away from me, she shoves hard, her face a blue smear.

”And now her time is up,” she says, husky-voiced and deadly grave. ”Now she'll see what I can do.”

Face so close, painted shooting stars slas.h.i.+ng up her temples, she's heated up on her own words. But I can smell something dank and musky on her, like she has been clawing hard through loamy earth. Like she has very little left.

Which means it's my time.

”You're not going to the cops,” I say, voice as cold and hard as I can manage. ”You never were. You don't want them to find out what you did.”

Maybe I thought I'd never see surprise on her face again, but there it is. It almost frightens me.

”What I I did?” she says. ”I gave you your G.o.dd.a.m.ned day, and you used it to let her spit more venom in your ear. When I think of the yogi hold that cheer b.i.t.c.h has over you, I wanna puke.” did?” she says. ”I gave you your G.o.dd.a.m.ned day, and you used it to let her spit more venom in your ear. When I think of the yogi hold that cheer b.i.t.c.h has over you, I wanna puke.”

”Beth, I know it all now,” I say, pus.h.i.+ng myself close to her, towering over her. ”You used Tacy to send that picture of you and Will to Coach's husband. Tacy told me everything.”

A st.i.tch of panic rises over that high brow, her back rustling against the vinyl curtain, and here I am, I suddenly realize, five inches taller than the little shrub, the little Napoleon. I just never felt it before.

”Slaussen. I should've guessed it,” she says, grinning wryly. ”I never saw a fox eat a rabbit before. I'd like to. How did she taste?”

”Did you hope Matt French would look at the picture and think you were Coach?”

”I didn't care what he thought,” she says, chin jutting high, graveling her voice. ”All I cared about was getting her out. Someone had to get us out-”