choreomania (dare me | addy~beth)

[fiachairecht]

choreomania. dare me - megan abbott, addy~beth. pre-canon cheer camp body horror. 1.4k words, rated t. for bloodmoney in summerofhorrorexchange 2023.

The night before we leave for cheer camp Beth and I sneak up to Lanvers with two bottles of cheap raspberry vodka. It's the sort of thing we usually wouldn't be caught dead drinking, and it sends a little thrill through me - the knowledge that this is something just for us.

It's a clear night - weirdly clear, the kind of night that's so big and open you feel like you should be able to reach out and grasp the stars as easily as you held a girl on your shoulders during a pyramid.

Later I'll wonder if maybe that's why I didn't say anything about Beth's eyes, how they were too big, too bright. In the moment, I think I just put it down to her pregaming, and ignore the pang in my chest at the thought of her drinking without me.

All that vanishes by the time we get up to our spot, though. It's easy to forget, when we curl up on the hood of the Jeep and Beth's head rests heavy on my shoulder as we pass the bottle back and forth. The only downside is it makes it impossible to catch her eye as we gossip, trading plans for camp and dirt on some of the girls from other schools who'll be there, but it doesn't matter too much. Her hair is tickling the sensitive skin over my collarbones, and I tip my head back to watch the stars in their dizzying, drunken trails across the sky.

They look like they're mapping out our faces, and I can't help but laugh even as my stomach swoops with something like vertigo, like how flying must feel.

"You like that, then?" Beth says, and it's only when the cool rush of a breeze skims over my shoulder that I realise she'd said something. Asked me something.

Beth never asked.

And so I smile and say, "Yeah, of course," because what am I gonna do - ask her to repeat herself? And her eyes are so big, so black that it seems like I can see half the stars reflected in her eyes. None of the songs ever said how unsettling that was, for some reason.

Her whole face lights up when I say yes, though, and I feel myself warming in response. "Good," she says, and tosses the vodka bottle she'd been holding - only when I hear the dull clunk of it against a tree do I realise it's empty. "Give me your hand."

I do, like always. Curl my fingers loose around hers while her other hand digs through her pockets and comes up with a collection of small silvery things that glint even in the meagre starlight. Almost like - "They're nicer than the ones the St. Reggie's girls use on their skirts," Beth says. "But any crystals would look fantastic on you. Got any tweezers?"

"Uh." I'm still trying to figure out, through the haze of alcohol and nighttime and Beth what the fuck I missed. "In my bag, yeah. In the cab somewhere."

She wrinkles her nose. "Ugh, that'll take too long. How hard can it -"

Anything else, I don't hear, because the pain screams up my hand, ricochets through my fingers and up my arms and spills out over my cheeks as tears, and all I can hear is what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck echoing through my skull. 

All I can see is Beth's starry eyes, laughing.

The pain dulls. There's pressure somewhere at the edge of my hand, where my skin meets Beth's. "Breathe, Addy," she's saying when I can hear again. "Oh my god, you'd think you'd never broken a bone."

"Breaking doesn't feel like that." My hand is throbbing - my finger is throbbing, there's something slick and wet spilling over the place where our hands are joined. I want to look down.

I shouldn't look down.

I can't look down.

Beth leans forwards, kisses my forehead, and the dry press of her lips grounds me enough that I can breathe with the pain. Take it in, push it out, take it in, push it out, just like when we train. Behind the curtain of her hair, the pain recedes. "Good," she breathes, and word thrills through me, a arnica gel over the fiery line the pain burned. "Nine more to go."

Ten. My fingers. The crystals. If I looked down, I'd see - 

But I don't. I just see Beth, her smile redder than it should be in the dark.

I'm ready for it, this time. I can feel her nails, sharp as they trace over the pad of my middle finger; feel something even sharper as it rests in the base of my cuticle.

"Do it," I say, and this time, ready for it, waiting for it, I feel every second as she rips my nail free from its bed. I can breathe through it, sink into the pain, lick my lips at the rush of blood spilling over the sides of my finger.

I tense my hand, experimentally, and Beth swears as my finger presses into the space between the tendons of her wrist. "Wait til it's dry, Addy," she says, but she doesn't sound upset, really, just - hungry as she sinks the second crystal home.

Again, and again, and again. It's the worst thing I've ever felt and the best, and by the time Beth waves my first jeweled hand in the air and pronounces it done, I can't reach for the second vodka bottle fast enough.

My new nails are gleaming around the neck as Beth gets to work on my other hand, shining just like the void of her eyes.

I want to sink them inside her.

Maybe I will.

**

At camp the first day, the other girls can't leave my hands alone, and the attention shimmers under my skin just like the sunlight off my new crystal nails. It's a thrill, one I'm surprised to find feels unfamiliar, and I can't quite place it until lunch when a JV from out of state swoops down on me to gush over how they look so real, so whole, like there's not even a nail under there, and I realise -

Girls never used to look at me like this.

Like they used to look at Beth.

Not that no one's looking at Beth now - I can see her on the other side of the field without even trying, her honey and apple cider vinegar-lightened ponytail holding cheerful court at a shade-dappled picnic table. She looks almost translucent from here, the sunlight streaming into her wide goblin grin as she tips her head back to laugh burning her from the inside out until she's ... she's ...

She's catching my eye, and her smile's dimming, just for a minute, to a degree that no one but me would catch, and guilt settles hard in the pit of my stomach like a cinnamon roll. I only have the crowd of girls around me now because of what she did to me.

For me.

As I turn back to the girls with a mouth full of thanks that feel like they ought to be lies, I think that maybe Beth gave me them, too. That maybe it's because after years of her looking out through my eyes at their soft hands and smooth skin and unformed muscles, I can tell already who's going to make it at camp.

And who might not survive.

**

Day three of camp and some of the girls are toughening up. They're flying higher, running further, and some of them don't even bleed anymore when my crystalled fingers catch across their cheeks.

(We can do this, at camp, with the girls we'll never see again. With the girls that, maybe, no one will ever see again.)

There's something off, though. Something hanging heavy in the air like a thunderstorm that just won't break, and it's not Sadie standing a little too well on a taped-together ankle or Anjali who braids bells into her hair so tightly they look like they're dangling from her skin. 

Maybe they are. They're girls like me and Beth, girls I like to imagine I could take back to Sutton Grove, except ...

Except Beth's been ignoring me since the first day. And there's something dizzying about it, about being on my own, but what I hadn't expected was the loneliness. I can hear her breathing on the top bunk, see her running drills across the field, and that's it. The sun glints off my nails, into her eyes, and it's almost like we're connected the way we should be.

I have an idea, though. The knife from the kitchen fits perfectly under my pillow and I can't wait to slide it into Beth's mouth and pull. Can't wait to see her new smile.

All to thank her. All for me.

The rest of camp will be fine, after that.