Free Dare Me by Megan Abbott

of nervous Mrs. Fowler flitting out of the ceramics studio, a foot-tall candleholder thick with shellac in her shaking hands.
    We stalk the halls, looking, hunting, scavenging.
    I want to find something for Beth. No captain glory, no stable to call her own, not even a glance from Sarge Will to distract her, she needs something. Something to knock the gloomy ire from her: an abandoned joint, a senior boy and freshman girl doing furtive nastiness in some far-flung corner, his arm jammed up her shirt, up over her baby-fat girl belly, her eyes wide with panic and excitement, already, in her head, practicing the telling of the moment even as the moment slips from her.
    By the time we reach the fourth floor, there’s a desperation to it. Beth flashes her eyes at me, and it’s really a taunt. Get me something, get me anything.
    But it’s always complicated with Beth and me, where her desire ends and mine begins. Because when we first hear the sound, I realize it’s me who wants it more. Wants something to happen.
    And then it does.
    A yard or two from the door to the teachers’ lounge, we hear something.
    The rough rhythmic sound of a chair skidding, lurchingly, across the floor behind the teachers’ lounge door. It seems, suddenly, to be just for me.
    Scrape, scrape, scrape.
    Beth’s eyes nearly pop with pleasure.
    We’re standing outside the door, listening.
    I’m shaking my head back and forth and whispering soundlessly don’t, don’t, don’t as Beth, bouncing on her toes, leaning against the teachers’ lounge door, dancing her fingers along it and mouthing things to me. I’m opening it, I am, yes, yes, I sure am, Addy.
    I put my hand on the door too, which vibrates with all that clamor inside, that squeaking and thudding. My ear against the humming door, I can hear the breathless pant. It sounds so pained, I think. It sounds like the worst hurt in the world ever.
    Like after RiRi lost it to Dean Grady at that party on Windmere and bled for hours in the bathroom and we kept pulling toilet paper from the roll in long, sloping drifts, like she was gonna die. Like she was gonna—
    Just like that, Beth pushes her hip against the teachers’ lounge door, and it swings open, and we see it all.
    Every bit of it.
    There, seated on one of the old swivel chairs, is Sarge Will, National Guardsman Will, and Coach spanning his lap, her legs bare and looped around him like a pale ribbon, feet dangling high, and his dress blue blazer asunder, wrapped around her snowy nakedness, his hands pressed against her breasts, his face red and helpless. Her thighs are shuddering whitely and his hand curves around the back of her head, buried in her dark hair, sweat-stuck and triumphant.
    Her face, though, that’s what you can’t take your eyes off of.
    The dreamy look, her pinkening cheeks, all elation and mischief and wonder, like I never saw in her, like she’s never been with us, so strict and exacting and distant, like a cool machine.
    It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
    I feel myself jostled backwards into Beth the instant Coach’s eyes meet mine, alarm and dread there. I feel myself hurling both Beth and me out the door, Beth’s laughter clanging through the corridor, my hand dragging the door shut, closing my eyes to it. Wondering if I even saw what I saw.
    But looking at Beth’s gleeful, mocking face, I know I have. I’ve seen it.
     
    Later, I think about it. It wasn’t like in the movies, soft-lit bodies writhing creamily under satin sheets.
    It lasted only a second, so how could it pierce me with such thorny beauty—but it does.
    Coach’s face that long, hectic second before she saw me.
    Like someone climbing her way out of the darkest tunnel, her mouth wide and gasping for air.
    And his eyes shut so tight, face locking itself into place, as if to let go would destroy everything, would bury her again, and he only wants to save her, to breathe that hot life into her.
    And she, gasping for air.
     
    By the