He lowers his voice to a whisper, even though there's no sign of life anywhere. Luxury Living on Nature's Edge. Luxury Living on Nature's Edge.

"Listen, the cops don't know I was here that night," he says.

I try not to let him see my flinch.

"Okay," I say.

"It doesn't matter anyway," he says. "I left before any gunshot. I don't know what the h.e.l.l happened. But I did hear the two of them headboard banging for a good fifteen minutes before midnight and I couldn't get any sleep."

Coach, there, that night. When Will was still alive.

I take this fact, this staggering and harrowing fact, and put it in a far corner in my head. For now. I can't look at it. It is there for safekeeping.

"That's how it always was with them," he says. "I don't like hearing other people's private business. And, to be honest, the two of them, it made me sad."

He looks at me, fingers plucking at the bag loop.

"I mean, that was a messed-up situation, right?" he looks at me, raising his eyebrows. "You could see something bad was going to happen. Something was going to go down."

I know he's waiting for some kind of confirmation, but I don't say anything.

"The point is," he goes on, "like I promised her, I'm not saying a G.o.dd.a.m.ned word."

"Her?" I ask, measuring my voice. Hiding everything.

"Your friend," he says, a little impatiently now. "The brunette."

"Beth?"

"Beth," he says. "The one with the t.i.ts. I mean, you seem nice, but so did she at first. Girl like that, she could make trouble for me."

Craning his neck, he looks up at the apartment building, ominously.

"All of you, you're a whole lot of trouble," he says, softly. "I don't need that kind of trouble."

A whole lot of trouble, I think.

"Guess Sarge found out, didn't he?" he looks at me, grimly. "Queen of the hive. Don't mess with the queen."

I look at him and wonder which queen he means.

Driving away, I can't begin to unravel it all. Why would Beth want Prine to keep quiet about hearing Coach in Will's apartment that night? And why didn't she tell me, at least, if her aim is to convince me of Coach's guilt?

But the pulsing center is this: Coach was there with Will that night, Will alive. She and Will in bed.

The picture in my head now, Coach standing before me, bleached sneakers in hand.

Coach.

Tilting pyramid-top, reaching for me, bucking for my arm, knowing what it will mean. Where it would take both of us.

"Two days, four hours," RiRi says, fingers tapping on her thighs anxiously. "Fifty-two hours till the game, hollaback girls. Where is is she?" she?"

We are all standing in the gym, waiting for Coach.

I haven't figured out what I will do when she does arrive, if I will let my face betray anything.

I slide two Tylenol with codeine, leftovers from last year's thumb jam, under my tongue and wait.

But Coach doesn't show.

And Beth, well, she's not there either.

"I don't understand how Coach could do this to us," Tacy yowls, her battered lip now a frosted lavender. "Two days before the big game."

"It must be some kind of test," Paige Shepherd says, chin-nodding with unsure surety. "To show us we can do it on our own."

RiRi is doing a straddle stretch against the wall, which usually calms her down.

"No," she says. "Something's wrong. Really wrong. I've been hearing things. What if this is all about Sarge Stud?"

Oh, this causes quite a conflagration.

"My brother-listen to this!" Brinnie c.o.x gasps through those big chiclet teeth of hers. "My brother works at the sub shop next to the police station where the cops come in for lunch and he heard them mention Coach. And I don't know what they said, but..."

There's scurrying and speculations spun like long sticky gum strands, but I am out of it.

Instead, I work it. I pound that mat. I'm doing my tucks, over and over, curling my body sharklike upon itself.

"You are so f.u.c.king tight," RiRi murmurs, strolling by.

I slap her thigh hard and grin.

"You're better than you ever were with Beth," she says.

"I'm working harder," I say.

"You were kicking it with Casey Jaye last summer," RiRi says. "You were so good."

"Why are you bringing that up?" I say. "Why does everyone always want to talk about that?"

It's the thing no one can let go of. But I can. I'd like to never think of any of it again.

"I was glad when you two got together," she says. "That's all I'm saying."

I think suddenly of Casey, the ease of her light hands on me, flipping my hips up, laughing.

"You know," RiRi says, "Casey told me she thought you were the bravest, best cheerleader she ever knew and she's cheered her whole life."

"She meant Beth," I say. "She must have meant Beth."

Addy, Casey whispered one night, hanging from the bunk above me. Casey whispered one night, hanging from the bunk above me. She's never going to let it be you. f.u.c.k your four inches. You're light as air. You could be Top Girl. You're a bada.s.s and beautiful. You should be captain. She's never going to let it be you. f.u.c.k your four inches. You're light as air. You could be Top Girl. You're a bada.s.s and beautiful. You should be captain.

"And that fight between you and Beth, we all knew it was coming," RiRi says, shaking her head. "Four of us to pull you two off each other."

"It was an accident," I say, but no one ever believed me. "My hand got caught."

One day, tumbling cla.s.s by the lake, I was spotting Beth's handspring. When my arm flung up, my fingers caught her hoop earring, pulling it clean through.

I was trying to catch you, I'd told her, the hoop still hooked through my fingers. I'd told her, the hoop still hooked through my fingers. You were bending. You were bending.

But she'd just stood there, holding the side of her head, a brick red trickle between tan fingers.

Everyone whispered that it was about Casey, but it wasn't. It was an accident. Beth and her big door-knocker earrings. It just happened.

Sometimes now, when she's not looking, I stare at her earlobe and want to touch it, to understand something.

I never thought you'd be friends again after that, RiRi said later. But we were. No one understands. They never have. RiRi said later. But we were. No one understands. They never have.

"I stood with her when they st.i.tched up her ear," RiRi says now. "I never saw her cry before. I never knew she had tear ducts. h.e.l.l, I never knew she had blood in her."

"It was just a fight," I say, remembering the two of us tangled up, someone screaming.

"I thought," RiRi says, "'Addy's finally manning up to Beth.' None of us ever had the guts."

"A stupid fight, like girls do," I say.

"And, for what it's worth, Beth talked all kinds of trash about Casey," RiRi says, "but I never believed it."

I had, though. And I stripped my bunk of sheets and walked down to the end of the cabin, to the bunk Beth had already vacated for me. And I never talked to Casey again.

"Addy, you could still do it," RiRi says now. "You could be captain, anything."

"Shut the f.u.c.k up," I say.

RiRi brushes back, like I've hit her.

"That was a long time ago," I add, setting my arms up for another tuck. "That was last summer."

A half hour pa.s.ses, everyone doing lazy tuck jumps and stretches, before we hear the sound.

Coach Templeton's ancient boom box sliding across the gym floor, blasting bratty girl rap: "Take me low, where my girlies go, where we hit it till they're kneeling, till there's glitter on the ceiling..." "Take me low, where my girlies go, where we hit it till they're kneeling, till there's glitter on the ceiling..."

All our heads turn, and there is Beth, white-socked and whistle swinging.

"b.i.t.c.hes," Beth hollahs, ringingly. "Front and center and show me your bada.s.s selves. I'm self-deputized."

"What do you mean?" demands Tacy. "Where's Coach?" Our now perpetual lament.

"Didn't you hear?" Beth says, turning the music up louder, the rattle in it sending a few girls to their feet, bouncily. "She got hauled in by the po-po."

"What are you talking about?" I say.

"She's at the station house. The cops picked her up in the squad car. Her ball-and-chain went with her."

I don't let her catch my eye.

"How do you know?" RiRi says, c.o.c.king an eyebrow.

"I went over there to see if Coach needed a ride. Barbara-the-Babysitter told me. She looked scared pantless. She said the cops came in with trash bags. Started hauling off stuff."

Everyone exchanges wide-eyed glances.

"But I'm not here for idle gossip," she says. "Show me you got something other than chicken hearts behind those padded bras."

Everyone starts forming their lines, I can't even believe how quickly.

Clapping tight and shaking their legs out and faces tomato-bursting.

Like they're eager for it.

Like anyone will do, if they're hard enough.

"And no more tantric chants and bulls.h.i.t," Beth says. "I want to see blood on the floor. And remember what old Coach Temp used to say..."

She steps back as everyone but me a.s.sembles for their back tucks.

"Cheer, cheer, have no fear!" they all chant. Some of them are even smiling.

Grinning, Beth gives the response: "When you're flying high, look to the sky, and scream Eagles, Eagles, Eagles!"

An hour later, we hit the two-two-one, Beth our Flyer.

Tossed up between RiRi and me, already six feet up, our legs braced by Mindy and Cori beneath us. Tossed up, our ponytailed apex.

My arms lifted above, I have her right side, her right wrist, her arm like a batten, hard and motionless, and RiRi her left.

She, spine so straight, the line of her neck, her body still, tight, perfect.

I have her, we have her, and Beth is higher than I've ever seen anyone.