carpet burns and carousels (dare me | addy/beth, addy/colette)

[fiachairecht]

carpet burns and carousels. dare me (tv), addy/beth, addy/colette. beth dies over and over and addy helps, until she doesn't. 8.5k words, rated m. for bluegansey in fandom5k 2020.

age 13. lanvers.

When we make JV, Beth takes us further into the woods than we've ever gone before. "It's a celebration, Addy," she says, full of glee and half-manic the way she's been all week. "I'm bringing something special."

Last time Beth said special we put spiders in Ben Trammel's locker, let them feast on the rotten lunches and build their webs inside his sweaty gym socks. It took him three days to find them and when he did he thought they were ants, didn't notice anything was wrong til some of the girls ran screaming for the nurse and his hand swelled up like his beloved football, Beth and I laughing the whole time because it was so much better than we could've hoped.

Maybe that's what I'm hoping for, when I sneak out just past nine, Slocum gone an hour ago and mom's car not back yet. Something fun, something dangerous, something to celebrate — but at the same time there better not be anyone else there. This is for me and Beth and no one else, not even RiRi or Cori or Brianna, because they might've made JV too but they hadn't earned it the way Beth and I had, tumbling through her yard while Lana yelled drug-numbed encouragement.

Anyone could be a RiRi, could be a Cori or a Brianna. They're our favourites — it's why it's them, not any of the other interchangeable bitches — but I'm tired of them, after camp and tryouts and the long weeks of charades, pretending we needed to prove ourselves to everyone else, like they couldn't look at us and just see. I just want Beth alone, Beth ... real. Maybe even happy, I hope she's happy — she has to be, I am.

What I get is Beth alone, wearing a short skirt and tanktop like it's still the middle of the day with the sun burning down on us. She's got her purse slung over her shoulder and I can hear the telltale clink of bottles as she sways from foot to foot waiting for me at the edge of the woods. 

But she doesn't look happy. She looks — I can't even tell, but after all this time, it doesn't frighten me the way I sometimes think she should. She looks like a lot, that's all — just a lot, like there's nothing left of her under the shining eyes and the pale shape of a girl in the moonlight. She reaches for me as soon as she sees me and I give her my hands. Don't wince as her nails dig into my wrist.

"You and me," she says, "You and me, Addy, you came, you came."

"Yeah, course." I'm trying to smile at her, but it's more a grimace, her nails breaking skin. I grab her back, feel all the tendons rippling under her skin, my own nails too blunt to draw blood. "Where are we going? Beth, what's—"

But she just takes off running, cheer shoes violent against the ground in the moonlight, and I feel underdressed, my sweatpants, tanktop, regular sneakers tripping over rocks as I have no choice but to follow her. Branches whip past my face, and over the wind I can hear Beth laughing like nothing human I've ever heard.

I laugh with her, of course I do — it's impossible not to because it's Beth, full of pride and a kind of joy I don't understand and I'd go with her anywhere, of course I would.

I don't know how long we run. Time is always slippery around Beth, I curl against her on the couch in the basement when we get home from school, TV on and untouched books sprawled open on the table until suddenly it's morning and all we've done is talk. It's worse — better — in the woods, where we run for what feels like days, our bodies hardening, muscles growing, and then come out the other side to find the same world we left, and it's unprepared for what we've changed into.

I love it. How could I not?

We stop when we have to, grass and dirt skidding out from under our feet when the path drops off the side of a cliff I don't think I've ever seen before. "Secret space," Beth says, twining our fingers together and clicking her tongue until I look at her, instead of trying to see the bottom. "No high school kids to make the rules for us up here."

The trees crowd almost right up to the drop, leaving barely enough solid ground for us to stand one in front of the other. Beth's back is to the drop, and as she stretches our arms out to the sides I imagine, for one silly moment, that she has wings. She's going to fly, I think, and then — of course she's not, it's not possible, but the certainty of it sits cold in my heart. Is this what Beth feels like when she dreams?

"It's beautiful," I say, but I'm looking at Beth more than the cliff and she knows what I mean. Always does.

"Yeah," she says, smiling soft and slow. "It sure is."

She spins around, and I follow, our own secret dance. "We're going to be magnificent, Addy," she says. She's flying — we both are, fingers interlocked, the whole world at our feet. I want to stay here forever, this one moment.

"Don't let go," she says, or at least I think she does. "Addy, please don't let me go."

"Never," I promise. It's so easy to promise things to Beth.

We're flying, and then only Beth is, as soon as I stop talking. It's like I've broken some kind of spell, although I don't remember letting go.

I remember Beth soaring down, her shirt billowing out like wings.  I remember that she never stopped laughing — never even looked sad, as I watched her, eyes glimmering like stars as she dropped off into the darkness until even those lights were gone.

I remember the crunch when her body hit the rocks. I don't remember how I got down to her side, though I had the scrapes and bruises to show for it for weeks after.

She's on her back by the time I get to her, eyes shut and limbs at all wrong angles. I can't find a space of her skin that isn't a bruise, but I fit my fingers against her wrist, her neck, the hollow of her throat anyway.

Beth isn't breathing. Her head's resting on a moss-covered log, her hands half buried in the dirt. She could be asleep, if I don't look too close. Asleep, playing a joke, anything but—

It doesn't seem possible. I shut my eyes, map the broken contours of her body the same way I have after so many practise sessions.

"Beth," I say, "Oh, god, Beth, this isn't happening."

She doesn't respond. Of course she doesn't.

There's the thought, somewhere, that I should call someone — my mom, probably, Lana wouldn't know what to do even if she was sober enough to pick up the phone — but I don't have my cell with me. I reach for Beth's pocket, feel nothing but smashed-up plastic. It hadn't survived either.

"Beth." I lace our fingers together again, lean over to press our foreheads together and it's only when I open my eyes that I realise I'm crying, teardrops falling on Beth's closed eyelids. "Please wake up," I say, over and over again until they don't sound like words anymore. "Beth, please, please, please."

I run my hands over her body — arms, legs, the feet attached to her twisted-up ankles that have their picture-perfect gymnast point in death just like life. Her skin is dry, the parts of it not covered in blood and leaves, and it crackles over her muscles, over all those smashed-up bones, and I think: she's beautiful. It's beautiful, what we do to our bodies, hard, strong, shining and suddenly I get it, all that talk in bio about life being a form of scientific magic.

Beth would love this, if she were alive to see it, and the thought makes me even angrier.

I look up sometimes. Think I see the faint image of us spinning around and around on the clifftop, and I wonder if it's going to be the only memory of Beth I have anymore — the moment right before I let her go. I still don't think I let her go, but what else could have happened? Beth's better at flying than anyone, loves it more than I ever thought Beth was capable of ever loving anything, and she still wouldn't—

Would she? We're JV now. We made it. Everything's different.

Grey-blue dawn is beginning to filter through the trees by the time I notice my legs cramping up. My knees are bruised from the rocks, from running down here, and I don't know if my sweats are damp with mud or blood. I shift over, sit cross-legged and pull Beth into my lap. "Time to wake up, Beth," I say, pressing kisses along her bloody hairline. Something's brushing against my wrist — some plant that she must have picked up on her fall. "My mom's gonna have a fit if we don't come down for breakfast."

Beth mumbles something incoherent and I scream. Would jump to my feet if it didn't mean flinging Beth away from my lap.

She was dead. She isn't dead. I knew it.

"Hurts," Beth says, and I can't help the disbelieving laugh that spills from my lips. Beth admitting to pain is a new one.

"Pain is weakness leaving the body," I say. "Or something. Fuck. Beth."

"Shut up," she says, but it's not accompanied by a punch the way it usually would be. "Ditch with me today?"

The bruises are fading already, but the dried blood isn't going anywhere soon. I grip her arm, feel the bone solid and whole under my hand. "Course," I say. I can ignore things too, if Beth wants. "You're gonna need, like, six baths before you're fit for public consumption."

"I'll start a trend," she says with a yawn, and, "Ow," as she tries and fails to reach up to stifle it.

I rub her shoulders, trace the lines of her lips and Beth groans, squirming away from my concern. Just like that, everything is normal again. But what had the cost been?

 

age 13. after.

"Do you ever think about dying?" Beth's fingers are digging hard into the knots of my shoulders but the question's easy, so easy that it takes me a moment to realise it's not another one of the questions from our history study guide.  And when I do, I have no idea what to say about it.

What is there to say? Not as much as Beth does, the way she sinks her hands into the patches of decaying ground whenever we find them in the woods. Not the way Beth does, the way she picks over people, ideas, whatever until she's taken all the good for herself. Not as happily as Beth does, the way she murmurs in my ear about blissful nonexistence , flat on our backs with with a joint after one of Lana's bad nights.

I only think about Beth dying, and when I do it's not thinking but remembering, dreaming — her shattered body at the bottom of the gorge, lips gone blue with blood.

She died. She wasn't dead.

Of course I think about dying, all the time.

"Thought that was behind us," is all I say, tugging at the end of my ponytail. "You fall again at practise when I wasn't looking, or something?"

Beth shifts over, straddling the backs of my thighs, and the warmth that spreads through me at that, Beth all solid and reassuring even as she's making me hiss in pain as she punches just under my shoulder blade, that's enough to distract me from whatever she's thinking about.

"No," she says. "I was just thinking, like, why is it me? What if it's not just me?"

What if you died, she isn't saying, would you come back too?

"Beth." I crane my head back to look at her, and she's staring down at me, thoughtful and far away. "Of course it's you. You're Top Girl, you fly, you're gonna be captain."

It makes sense, like that. Just another Top Girl rite of passage like the ice baths, one more thing for me to hold her hand through. "I know," she says. "I know, but ... you're not gonna tell anyone, are you?"

"Tell who?" I've kept all her secrets since kindergarten. Of course I'm not going to start telling now. Not when Beth's secrets are all the things that make the world feel big, make Sutton Grove feel like something we could both escape from one day. 

"Dunno," she says, rolling over to flop down beside me. She runs a hand down my arm, digs her fingers into my wrist. "But, like, this is our thing, right? Just ours."

"Yeah," I say, flipping my book shut so I can look her right in the eye. "Beth, everything we do is just ours. Especially stuff like this."

She smiles, bright as the sun, and I'd do anything to keep her looking like that. "Keep that promise, my girl," she says. "I don't wanna dream about you letting me go again."

All of a sudden that smile doesn't feel so nice.

I wouldn't let her go, I think. I didn't let her go.

But I don't think Beth believes me, and it makes me wonder.

 

 

age 15. sutton grove high.

Beth has us on the bleachers again, and the air knifes through the back of my throat every time I breathe in. It's too cold for us to be out, really, but Coach didn't show and Beth thought it was time we got some fresh air. She's not Captain, not really, but Ginny Matheson is too busy hooking up with footballers in the locker room to care whether we practise or not, so Beth's workout it is. 

I hadn't realised I'd missed it until we started running, no mats or walls to muffle our feet against the metal, but there's still Beth's voice rising above the clamour — knees UP bitches do you even call that running — and every step feels like coming alive again. Shaking off the suffocating sweat of the gym, nothing but the harsh in and out and in and out of breathing.

"Time's up!" Beth yells over the blare of the stopwatch alarm.  We stumble to a stop, all of us, tripping over the cement as we remember how to slow, how to walk. I miss the burn as soon as it starts to fade, doing slow leg lifts as the other girls lean over, gasping for breath. "You're slacking, Hanlon, that was only twenty five laps."

Beth, down on the track, did none at all, but we both know that's not the point. "And how many did Cori do, huh?" Two lanes over, Cori flips me off, and RiRi laughs.

"Ooh, trouble in paradise." Her teeth flash white and lethal as she grins over at me, and I roll my eyes, biting down on the desire to tell her to fuck off and keep running.

"Not as much trouble as you're gonna be in if you don't shut up," I say, abandoning the leg lifts to jump down the last few bleachers to stand at Beth's side. Three years in the squad respects us as a unit, for the most part, but it doesn't mean they can't do with a reminder sometimes.

"Okay, listen up!" Beth calls as soon as I hit the track. Across the bleachers the girls are starting to shake out the run, sneakers clanging against the metal, their breath steaming in the air. "You're gonna go inside, you're gonna trio up and do pyramids until the girl on top has a perfect bow and arrow. Should be done in about, what do you think, Hanlon?"

I pretend to give it serious though, ignoring the groans of despair from the rest of the squad. "I dunno, Coach, you've been riding them pretty hard these past few weeks. Might be two years instead of three."

"What are you punishing us for?" RiRi asks, as Mindy snaps, "Oh, shove it, like you haven't been provoking her all week."

RiRi has, too — been sliding herself in between me and Beth, fluttering her eyelashes and trying to figure out what Beth wants that I don't, what I want that Beth doesn't have. I'd thought Mindy was too reliable to stick her neck out for us, but I appreciate it all the same.

"I didn't say shit," RiRi complains, and Mindy snorts in disbelief. The rest of the squad know how this goes, are climbing back down the bleachers, filtering back to the gym, tossing phones and jabs back and forth. Even Cori leaves, walking backwards, looking between RiRi and and Beth like she's not sure she wants to leave them alone.

"Smartest decision you've ever made, Ross," I say, and she turns and bolts off after the rest of them.

There's just RiRi and Mindy now, facing each other with their arms crossed, like they're just waiting for the beat drop at the beginning of our routine. "Should we do something about it?" I ask Beth, soft enough that they can't hear.

"No," Beth says. Slings an arm over my shoulder, leans into my side as RiRi and Mindy stare each other down. "I like to watch."

The words hang heavy as a thunderstorm between us. Ginny keeps the squad tight, when she's around, a lot of talk about sisterhood and holding each other up emotionally too, and I like it but Beth thinks it's a load of crap. She likes pushing at the cracks between us, seeing who can break, and sometimes I think I like that even better.

There's no room for weakness if we ever want to cheer anywhere but Sutton Grove.

RiRi shoves hard at Mindy's shoulders, but she just plants her feet and shakes her head. No one moves Mindy if she doesn't want to be moved, and it's saved more than a few of us from eating shit with our faces on the mats.

RiRi bends, though, when Mindy swipes at her ankles. Bends right back into something that could almost be a bridge pose, before her wrists give, too, and she's lucky she was facing to the side or she'd be ass over head down all those slats.

"Pity she doesn't have the core for a handstand," Beth says. Clinical, almost her coach voice, and when I laugh it's a little bit mean.

RiRi bounces back up, elastic with it, and I can see the grin stretching wide across her lips. She's laughing too. "Don't be a pussy, Coughlin."

"Why not?" Mindy says, and she can fake innocence as good as Beth when she likes. "Seems like that's a sure way to get you to show me off."

All of a sudden it's not about us anymore, and Beth flies upright, suddenly bored. "Fuck off, Coughlin, no blackmail material on my field."

"It's not blackmail if it's on facebook," Mindy counters, but she and RiRi are heading down, no longer laughing. Show's over, no more fun, not now Beth's thinking about getting mad for real.

It doesn't matter though, and we all know it. They've done what they wanted — gotten some aggression out, shown off for me and Beth. Cheer's good for letting us do things like that, and I'll always make sure Beth doesn't let it get too far.

"Facebook's for losers," Beth says when they meet us on the ground. "Keep it in a group chat with your bitches, Curtis."

RiRi's cheeks are dark with blush, but to her credit there's no sign of tears in her eyes when she says, "That's where it started."

Serves her right for sending it to people outside the squad, I think, because Beth's the only one who'd post something like that and I'd know if she had.

Beth ignores her, eyes already on Mindy. "And you. Why don't you go apologise to RiRi by basing her for some handstands, huh?"

"Sure," Mindy says. Rubs her thick, bruised shoulder and smirks up at Beth. "She's easy enough."

"Go," I say, before the dangerous light in Beth's eyes can become something else, and they don't need to be told twice. I watch them as they jog back towards the gym, RiRi's short skirt flipping up in back to reveal the pink edges of her panties.

I took my eyes off of Beth. That was my mistake.

She's at the top of the bleachers when I look back. Sixty-four steps and most of the chain link fence high, she's there, waiting.

"Watch," Beth says. Balanced up on the railing, backlit by the sun, she burns herself into my eyes and I wouldn't, couldn't look anywhere else. "Eyes on my girl."

My girl, it echoes through me, and Beth's said things like that before, but the more she says it the more it seems to matter, all that lovely pressure building up inside my chest until my ribs crack with the force of holding it, Beth, inside. My girl, and I'm walking up the bleachers towards her, not quite reaching out.

"Watch what?" I don't know if she hears me — she feels so far away, the wind tossing her hair through the dying sunbeams like it's another living thing. "Beth, what are you—"

She jumps. I think she jumps, she must, because the other possibility is Beth falls, and I can't say it, not even just to myself, not even when I try. Either way, though, she's over the back of the bleachers, her laugh lingering behind her, and I'm watching. Keep my eyes on my girl's body, the whole downward arc of her, and don't take a single step forward until after she hits the ground.

She bleeds the same colour as her hair, bottle-red.

 

age 15. after.

I'm on top of Beth, fingers skimming over her sides. Waiting for her to wake up. Looking for scars, feeling for the bones that are still healing. I text Ginny from Beth's phone to tell her to get back with the girls, attaching one of the pictures Beth has of her and one of the field hockey players at last week's party. It's the only encouragement she needs.

"I guess this is just what we do now, huh?" She's less smashed-up this time, easier to think she'll come back from it. I can only hope it doesn't take as long as it did in the woods — the bleachers can only hide us for so long. "What is this for you, some kind of twisted good luck charm?"

We've had our best few years, since the day Beth didn't die. Everyone who doesn't want to be us wants to fuck us, and there's rumours that we might get a real coach one of these days, and it's all because of Beth. Tiny, weightless, rubber-band-stretchy Beth, who had shown promise but had turned into something no one knows how to describe, not Bert, not the coaches, not even me.

Has turned into something. Present tense. I don't even bother thinking she's dead this time, just start wondering how long it's going to be. Get her out of the sun, kick some dirt over the marks her body left on the ground, and try to remember what we did up at Lanvers.

"Unbreakable Beth Cassidy," I say now, using my sleeve to clear some more of the blood from her face. I'd never known how much head wounds bled. There'd been too much dirt up at Lanvers to really tell. "You don't have to do this, you know."

She doesn't need to do this to be good, to keep me with her, to do ... whatever she thinks she's doing. I need her, just like we all do, and I don't want whatever this ... thing is to run out of time. For Beth to push so far past life she can't find her way back to me and the squad.

There's one lone flower struggling up past the high school debris of the bleacher wasteland, the yellow clashing terribly with Beth's hair. I pull it up, and divest it of its petals one by one. She'll come back. She'll come back right. She'll come back. She'll come back wrong. She'll come back. Scattering the silky remnants over Beth's mouth.

I stop counting before the end. I already know what the truth is.

Beth starts breathing again just after six, when I roll her neck back into place. Air rattles up through the ladders of her ribs, pushes away the daisy petals, and panic flashes through me, like she's just gotten rid of — of something I need.

But she's fine. Hips cracking as she rolls over, joints popping back into place, and: yes, this is Beth, back at my side.

"Shit," she says. Less pain in her voice, this time. "Did I miss the bitch fight?"

"Nah." My hand's still on her abdomen, and I think I should move it, that this is going to turn into something else if I don't, but Beth isn't dead but she still isn't saying anything, so I don't. "You had them running before you used the fence as a diving board. I took care of the rest of it."

She struggles to sit, and my hand falls to her lap. Her thigh. She's taken blackmail photos of less, but all she's doing is looking straight into my eyes, so intent it's like she's never seen them before. "You're getting pretty good at this, Hanlon."

"Good at what?" I couldn't look away if I tried.

Beth snorts, mouth twisted scornful and almost mean, and just like that it's over. She rubs a hand over her face, through her hair, and it comes back streaked with blood, one lonely petal dangling from a fingertip. "Modesty sucks," she says, struggling to her feet. "Come on, get up. I wanna get out of here before the security goons lock up and make me climb another fence."

Good at what, I think the whole way back, crammed into the driver's side of Beth's truck, my knees nearly bumping the steering wheel because the seat's stuck again. Beth's almost dozing against the cracked window but I can see the light of her eyes glinting over at me like an accusation, and I fix my gaze on the slip of her reflection in the rearview.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing, I tell myself, if Beth likes it then good, everything's how it should be; if she doesn't like it, well, then she has to be the one to stop what she's doing first, and if there's one thing I would stake my life — my dreams of getting out — on, it's that Beth doesn't know how to stop, even if she knew how to want to.

 

age 16. cheer camp.

It's the first time I do it on purpose.

It's the first time I do it at all, really, and that seems like it should be more important than it is.

Summer is sticky over the cheer camp grounds, and my thighs are bruised with fingerprints from girls whose names I'm going to forget and I have a new bracelet from Casey Jaye, and all I want is Beth. I want her to apologise for freezing me out, I want to go back and have it be her lying next to me on the grass, I want—

I've never wanted something that Beth didn't before, not like this.

We're up on the cabin roof, moonlight washing the red and gold of our Eagles sweatshirts out to grey. I lean my head on Beth's shoulder and take the cigarette from her fingers. We shouldn't be smoking, but there's been a lot of shouldn't this month, and I'm over it.

"You haven't been very nice to be around, lately," she says. 

I frown over at her, smoke burning in my lungs. "Yeah, well, you've been avoiding me."

"Bitch." There's more heat to it than usual, as she grabs the cigarette back.  "Don't think I don't know what you're doing. Selling out. Hope Casey's mouth between your legs is good enough to make up for her lack of pillow talk."

We've fucked with enough other girls like this for me to see her pulling the same shit on me, but it doesn't make it hurt any less. "It's not like that," I say, but it's half-hearted.

"It's not like that," she repeats, mocking. Takes a long drag and falls silent, the smoke hanging in the air between us. Neither of us looking at the space on the roof where our hands are resting, one on top of the other, my fingers resting against all the places she bruised last time she died.

"It's not. It's just summer." Easier for things to be different in the summer, Beth's family taking her on trips while I stayed back, dying under the broken fans and trying to cram as much of my textbooks into my head as I could. Cheer had given us a reason to stay together, summers, but if anything was going to change, well—

"Nothing's ever just, Hanlon, you're being pathetic."

"I don't have to listen to this." I yank my hand out from under hers, pull my jacket tighter around me.

Quicker than lightning her hand's out, grasping at my wrist. "Your wrist," she says. "The hamsa."

"What about it?" It's there, just like it always is, pride of place in the centre of my arm between all the candy-floss handmade ones that tell the story of high school, cheer, the girls I'm not friends with but who want my approval or Beth's and so shake out to basically the same thing. 

"The one above it," Beth says. She pulls herself to her feet, leveraging herself up with my arm, and my shoulder twinges, just a little. Just to remind me she still has any effect she wants to on me. "You wanna tell me what it is?"

Casey Jaye's Love-Me-Knot. "It's a Chinese Staircase." It could almost pass for one, outside of the light, but Beth leans in, red glow of the cigarette lighting up my arm, and I know she knows I'm lying.

I've never lied to Beth before.

But all she says is, "Well, it's a sloppy one, isn't it?" And she knows, and she knows I know, and it all twists sick and hot in the pit of my stomach and maybe I shouldn't've done this to her, I think, but she has to know that it's summer, that I'll come back, that what we have is so much more important than me wearing another girl's bracelet.

"Yeah," I say, and my throat is dry, like the cigarette's taken more than just my breath. "Sloppy. Because it doesn't matter." I need her to believe me, and I don't even know why. Because she's never done anything else, because no one else does.

"Prove it," she says. Tosses the cigarette over the edge and I watch it, the tiny red light sparking in defiance until it fizzes out on the damp grass. She walks to the edge, and her spine is steel the whole way over, begging me to follow.

She's my captain. Of course I follow.

"Prove," she says, turning around, and she's manic like she was the first night at Lanvers. "Prove to me that you know what love really is, Adelaide."

A year ago, two days ago, I wouldn't have known what she meant. Would have thought I knew, the sight of Beth flying up our pyramids, Casey Jaye's sweat-sticky thigh pressed against mine as we sat together on the top bunk. But there's only one thing I can do now.

"Are you sure?" I ask anyway, stepping up to join her at the edge.

She scuffs her toe against the cement, looks up at me with a sudden, tired sort of patience, and I feel like I'm the one being given one last chance. "Are you?"

I've been sure since we got on the roof.

Her skin is so soft under my hands, the little strip of it between her tanktop and the jacket hanging limp off her shoulders. She moves so easily, bends to me like I've never seen her obey anyone before, and that's how I know I'm doing the right thing, when she flies.

I don't watch her this time. Just head for the stairs and get ready to carry her into the trees. To wait for dawn with Beth's head in my lap.

 

age 16. after.

"Did they ever find Casey Jaye?"

We're in the showers, sneaking glances at each other over the partition. Beth's soaked hair is plastered all down her back, dark and dripping just like her blood, and I don't think I like wherever that question's going. "I don't think she's missing." I'm never going to see her again, but it's not the same thing.

"Sure she is." Beth scrunches shampoo through her hair, the last few trails of glitter swirling over her shoulders, down her chest. "She didn't show for roll call when we were getting on the buses. I heard the teachers talking."

"So?" My mascara's running into my eyes, Beth fuzzy under the spray.

"So," Beth shakes her hair out. "I remember someone else being a little late leaving."

I roll my eyes. "Yeah, well, I wasn't gonna leave without finding your lipstick." It was under one of the loose floorboards in the cabin, where I'd stashed the knife, but Beth doesn't need to know that.

Beth shuts off the shower, leans against the partition. "Sweet, you caring about my lips. I thought you were more concerned with Casey J—"

"Give it a rest." I shut off my own shower. "It was summer, Beth, it doesn't mean anything. We didn't even do anything."

Anything like what Beth's thinking, at least. The rest is all details, the part she doesn't have to know about.

"You sure?" Beth asks, searching my face for all the tells we've long since memorised. "No dead bodies buried in your little heart that you want me to know about?"

I meet her eyes. Reach over with the arm I haven't been wearing Casey Jaye's bracelet on and poke her in the cheek. "Just yours," I lie. "And you're not even dead anymore. We fixed it."

I fixed it. Again. And I'm going to keep fixing it, until—

Well, I don't know. Until she does something that makes me not want to, anymore. Until the time she doesn't come back, and I won't know why.

Beth's hand dips out of view behind the partition, and I imagine I can see it pressed against the slice through her stomach, her fingers pale right above the dark curly thatch of her pubic hair. "This where you give me some bullshit about love putting people back together?"

I know better than to try that kind of line on her. "Something does, though. You don't even have a scar." Not a one. Not from the gorge, or the bleachers, or camp. Not even the ones she gave herself a few years ago, wanting to see what all the fuss about cutting was.

("Boring," she'd decided, and I'd run my fingers over the circle and its little curlicue at the end, small cursive a like all the notes she'd ever passed me in class, and wanted to tell her she was lying.)

Beth grins, wide and open-mouthed, her one genuine goblin grin. "Thanks to you, lover," she says.

The words send me reeling, as if I've lost my footing on the slippery tile, and I dig my fingertips into the grout, polish scraping off. I'd always thought — always known, I would have said — that it was something about Beth that made this work, her own power, her own ... Beth-ness, same as made her Top Girl. And when I'd left Casey under our tree, broken bones and all, unmoving no matter how hard I kissed her—

Well, that had just proved it, hadn't it?

Beth doesn't know what she's talking about.

I'm not doing anything. I can't be. Casey would have come back to the cabin with me if I had.

It's Beth, it always is. I'm just her lieutenant.

It takes me too long to realise I'm on the floor, cold tile freezing my ass now that all the steam's dissipated. Takes me longer to pick myself up and find a towel.

 

age 17. colette french's house.

Beth's flat on her back on the lawn, staring up at the twilight sky with blank eyes, her wine glass untouched at her side. My head's pillowed on her stomach, the softest bit of skin over rock-hard abs, and Coach's fingers are dancing along the end of my braid.

I've never been happier, or more scared.

"I knew Addy would bring you eventually," Coach says. The music spilling from her bluetooth speaker drifts over the words, light and more jazz than pop and adult in a way these gatherings usually aren't.

"Don't get your hopes up," Beth says, causal and cruel. "I'm only doing this for her."

("It's reconnaissance," she'd whispered in the locker room, breath hot against my sweaty neck, and I hadn't seen the Beth who used SAT words to try to impress me in so long, it felt like she was being serious for once.)

"It's a start," Coach says, and Beth runs her fingers around the rim of her glass.

"Sure," she says. "We'll call it that."

"I'm happy you're here too," I say, and Beth laughs, real enough that my head bobbles on her stomach, the vibrations shooting right down to the tips of my toes.

Just one good night. It's all Beth needs to understand, I'm sure of it. And it's been good, the whole house to ourselves, no Matt, no baby, no schoolwork, no parents, no rest of the squad. The three of us picking almonds out of tiny cut-glass serving bowls, doing lazy handstands in the middle of the hall like we all three belonged there, because we do.

Coach knows it. Beth will, too, soon — she'll see that she hasn't just been missing drunken parties or yoga orgies or whatever other dismissive phrases she likes to throw around, she's been missing a whole life. And she doesn't have to anymore. She never should've made me choose between her and Coach, but nights like this make me want to forgive her.

If I haven't forgiven her already. Beth's always been easy to forgive.

"So," Coach says, words honey-slow in the fading light. "Show me your secret."

"Like shit," Beth says, the same time I say, "What secret," and Coach laughs.

"You know," she says, cheek propped in her hand, Beth's stomach tensing under my own cheek like she's about to throw me off and sit up. I grip her thigh, tight, calming, as Coach continues, "What is about the whole ... Addy and Beth of you two, that you have the entire town doing what you want, and I don't see a hint of it on the field."

I'm expecting silence from Beth, or maybe something even worse, but she's gentle as she moves my head to her thigh and sits up smoothly. "Well, if you let me fly, you might see something different."

"Beth," I say, not enough of a warning not nearly soon enough. She grabs for the wine and drinks straight from the bottle, and I know without looking that her eyes are fixed on Coach's.  Between them, my head on Beth's thigh and the side of my foot pressing against Coach's ankle, I forget how to breathe.

"She ever fly you?" Coach asks, and I have to look over at her. She's talking to Beth but smiling only for me, and something twists sick and happy at the base of my stomach. "You're no bottom base, Hanlon, what's your secret?"

("You're tall enough to fly anyone," she'd said after practise one day, when I'd ended up falling into sloppy splits after a somersault, too much leg and not enough core. "Addy, we could build something entirely new around you.")

"Beth," I say in reply, and she leans down over me, hair curtaining our faces as she kisses me, hot and slow and possessive even though my mouth's slack under hers. When she pulls back, Coach is still watching us, pink high on her cheekbones and her fingers toying at the waistband of her yoga pants. 

"Got any other words in that pretty mouth of yours, Hanlon?" Beth murmurs.

"Nothing I wanna say in front of her." Even as I say it, though, I wonder, because Coach watching us feels so different from anyone at school, from the rest of the squad. We show off for them, but this feels more real. Feels like being back up at Lanvers with Coach and Will, except this time I'm not the one watching.

This time, Coach gets to wonder what it would be like to be with us, and I feel powerful, nailing a stunt for the first time. Showing her who we are.

"Not gonna show her off?" Coach asks. "Cruel, Addy."

"I don't need to show her off," I say, and Beth, sitting up now: "Oh, but I love it when you do."

"So?" Coach raises her eyebrows. "Let's see it. I'll help."

That's what does it for both of us — doing a stunt with Coach. I'm not stupid enough to believe it means the same thing to Beth, but it means something to her, and that's enough for me.

We throw her up together, Coach and I, and Beth's lighter than anything as she leaves our arms. It doesn't even feel bad — feels right, even, the three of us together. Like we work, like I'd always known we would — like we could've had all year, if only Beth had been willing to accept it.

She hangs in the air, arms outstretched, her unbound hair a loose wildfire spinning with the force of the toss. She spreads her legs, gets into a half-pike up, and she's reaching for her toes but I can already tell she bent too late for it. Her hands are just on her thighs, and, beautiful, Coach is saying, murmuring over and over as we wait for Beth to fall, she's so beautiful, but it's clinical and emotionless and nothing at all like what she says to me.

But she's right. I can't even hate her, because she's right.

Beth takes forever to fall. She's always been the best of us at staying in the air, gets better every time she dies, better than any bone broth and egg diet Coach could dream up. Tonight, she lingers there at the peak of her arc, and we threw her backwards so I can't see her face but she's smiling. She has to be.

"Coming down," Beth says, and Coach's hands tighten around my biceps and mine around hers, the tight interlock of our arms forming a basket for her. Beth stretches back out as she comes down, toes pointed and fingers long, the whole line of her body parallel to the ground.

Something's wrong. Last second before she hits, Beth's twisting, and left, Coach yells, trying to yank our cradle over to the side. To line back up with the body suddenly out of place. I let her pull me, even though I know it doesn't matter anymore.

That's the trade-off, what we do. Every time Beth flies higher, bends further, smiles brighter, and every time she's more fragile. It all breaks easier now, even easier than we tell fresh JV meat it will, and this time isn't any different.

Beth's neck snaps over my arm, one sharp crack that splits through the night air. Coach stumbles, nearly goes to her knees and I move with her. Can't do anything else.

"Put her down," I say, but I don't recognise my own voice through the ringing in my ears. I don't know what else there is to say. No one's ever seen Beth die before.

"No," Coach says. Her face is white with shock, gone so translucent I can almost see her bones. "She has a spinal injury, Addy, she needs support—"

"She's dead," I cut her off, and Coach makes a high, pained noise in the back of her throat. "She needs to be on the ground. Touching the earth." My voice is steadier than it has any right to be.

Beth's never died this far from the woods before. I only hope we're close enough that it doesn't matter, that grass and dirt and the wine-drenched other space of Coach's house will do what the woods always do, as long as I'm here.

"Addy what are you — we need to make a plan, we need to get her—"

"Colette, please." I've never used her name before, and it shocks her back to looking at me. "She's fine. She's gonna be fine. It's happened before and she's always been fine, okay, just help me put her down."

"This isn't fine, Addy, nothing about this is fine." She's looking for her phone as she helps me lower Beth to the ground, and I keep one hand on her wrist thinking please, please, don't bring anyone else into this, please, prove that you trust me.

Beth's head flops to the side, her broken neck loose. She's angelic, like this — no mud, no blood, no other injuries. For once, I could almost believe she's just asleep, with her perfect makeup and perfect manicured hand resting in Coach's palm, and that's when I realise: this is what she planned.

This was the stunt she wanted us to do for Coach, and she did her part better than she ever has. Figures, that her part would mean she can't be around to give me any advice on whether I should do mine.

"It is," I say. Smooth Beth's hair back, pick up her glass and take a long drink of the wine before handing it over to Coach. "We're just in for a long few hours, is all."

And I wonder if I'm lying, to her, to Beth, to any of us.

 

 

age 17. after.

Coach gets a blanket while I sit next to Beth — I can't look at her, Addy, how can you look at her — and I rest my hand over her silent heart and wonder if this was it. If I should leave her be, let Coach figure out what to do with her body. Beth would like that, I think, it's just the sort of punishment she would come up with.

But it would punish me, too, and she's cruel but I can't imagine her being that cruel.

So we cover her with the blanket and wait. Coach pours bourbon with shaking hands and drinks three glasses down too fast while I fiddle with the radio, flipping through car commercials and fuzzy pop before landing back on the jazz station, playing something full and melancholy and so fitting for what kind of night this has become, and I hate it. It makes me feel like Beth might really be dead.

"How many times, Addy?" Coach asks. She's looking at the sky, small and sad on her big lawn chair, and I can't handle it.

There's more than enough space for both of us up there, and I climb up, feeling the gooseflesh all along her arms. It's funny, I think, Beth was never cold when she died. Maybe I never let her stay long enough, maybe she was just too much, too special, for death to mean whatever she wants it to. "This makes four." My head's on her shoulder, like it used to rest on Beth's. I'd always known she was special, but somehow I'd never expected this. "You're the first one who's ever seen it."

"Fuck," she says softly, and I laugh, sipping at my own bourbon. "How do you manage?"

I could tell her almost everything, except that. "We just do." There's nothing else we can do. Beth needs me. I need her. Maybe, now, Coach is going to understand that she needs both of us.

The sun sets. Matt doesn't show, and I wonder what Coach told him, to keep him out of the house. My girls, I imagine her saying to him, they need help, like she cares about us. Beth and I had fought over whether she really did, but after this — after this, I know I can make her care.

Time slips away, following the dropping level of bourbon in the bottle. I think I feel Coach's hand between my thighs, stroking soft and undemanding as I watch Beth's covered body for the slightest hint of movement, wishing her eyes were open. Eyes on my girl, she says in my memory, and Coach watches me, I watch Beth, and Beth, wherever she goes during these times, I know she must be watching us too.

I shudder against Coach's hand, all slick and burning so fierce between my legs I don't know if it's good or bad or just everything I want. And when I come down, Beth's sitting up, her smile closer to angry than genuine, but she's smiling and however much she saw, I know it was enough.

Coach puts us to bed after Beth wakes up. It's still the easiest way to think about it — just a pause to all that Beth is, all that power. She even looks peaceful, most of the time.

I don't know how to explain any of it to Coach, any more than I already have. Don't know if Beth wants me to, but she dropped back off into a real sleep not long after we got her under the covers. She's a better Top Girl every time she comes back, but the recovery takes longer, too, and one of these days I'm going to have to decide if it's still worth it. If we can keep on like this.

We're all in various stages of undress, bras and shorts, and I'm trying not to think too hard about how the flannel pajamas I'm wearing are Coach's. It's hard not to — her arm is stretched over Beth's body, hand on my thigh, and we shouldn't be doing this. Not while Beth's asleep.

"When she wakes up," I say, but Coach's hand is trapped between my thighs when I roll over, and I want it. I want them both. "She'll explain. And you'll tell her you'll never fly Tacy again."

Coach's eyes are wide, almost afraid when she nods, and I know Beth would be proud of me.

She doesn't have to know. She won't know.

I know she would want this.