Dare Me

by Megan Abbott

After a game, it takes a half hour under the showerhead to get all the hairspray out. To peel off all the sequins. To dig out that last bobby pin nestled deep in your hair.

For a GAME? Has Abbott ever met a cheerleader? This is competition-level stuff, not a Friday night football game

“There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.”

Yes, because all teenage girls are secretly sociopaths and if they get bored, they're going to ruin everyone's lives. We are five pages in and I already want to throw things

There I am, Addy Hanlon, sixteen years old, hair like a long taffy pull and skin tight as a rubber band. I am on the gym floor, my girl Beth beside me, our cherried smiles and spray-tanned legs, ponytails bobbing in sync.

Yikes

But we know just who we are.

This is THE SECRET HISTORY levels of pretention, which doesn't work when you're one of millions of high school cheerleaders rather than one of a select few of classic majors at a psuedo-Ivy

you know where.

You can say penis, it's okay. You can even go wild and say dick or cock

They knew we were sexy beyotches.

It's seriously like a fourteen year old who has never interacted with another human being wrote this

No, we bounce and swing to bring everyone up,

That's not how this works

I’ve never had it happen like that before, a sharp ache down there, right there, and a put-put-put pulse, so breathless.

This girl is seriously sixteen and still says "down there" what is even happening????

all her girl hair.

Wait... does Abbott really think this is how teenagers talk? Is that what this is?

A place haunted by ruined Indians, or so we heard as kids spooking on Halloween. Apache maidens swan-diving over lost love for white men who abandoned them.

WOW

“If I wanted to be an ath-lete,” she says, “I’d’ve joined the other dykes on field hockey.”

Cmon, Abbott. Be better

Those five inches, and no one will ever ask me.

That’s not too tall to be a flyer, unless you’re on a squad full of girls who are barely five feet tall? Like 5’5” is not tall

ebony against her ivory,

What is up with the casual bigotry? Does Abbott not have a fucking editor?

The rough, smutty smack of it.

Has Abbott ever taken a shot of vodka?

the third-sex drama freaks—gaze

I am literally BEGGING someone to edit this book

some black singer she’d never heard of,

This is exhausting

The tenderness, like when Matt French buttoned Caitlin’s pinafore, when he tied her little shoes.

Real sketch that she's comparing the man she's sleeping with helping her get dressed to her husband doing the same for their daughter. Like, there's a daddy issues joke in there somewhere that I really don't want to find

girl-recesses

Why is "girl" constantly used as a descriptor for mundane things? Not everything needs to be gendered, even if you're talking about girls! You don't have to say "girl bellies" when you are literally talking about a girl's stomach! It goes without saying! A girl's stomach is really not any different from a boy's!

“You say it’s so dangerous,

Sitting on someone's shoulders is hardly what I'd call dangerous... it'd be one thing if Addy was standing on them, but she's not. It's just playing chicken

I want to be a part of their kiss, and maybe even they want it too.

What is it with Abbott and writing inappropriate relationships between adults and children?

We all had our periods at the same time, the witchiness of girls.

Every man in the world ghostwrote this sentence

high-kicking her boot brace

Why the fuck is she in a walking boot if she landed on her knee?

he sells her adderall, which she sometimes shares and which feels like oxygen blasting through my brain, blowing everything away and leaving only immense joy that shakes tic tac–like in my chest and then sinks away so fast it takes everything from me and my sad life.

This is clearly someone who has never taken adderall before

But Beth isn’t like the girls they’re talking about. Beth isn’t like a girl at all.

Oh my God

“Get the bitch over here now.”

That is a sixteen year old GIRL you're talking about. One who has likely just been sexually assaulted. At least PRETEND like you don't hate her for some irrational reason

These girls are nothing but boxed wine and havoc.”

That's rich coming from someone who regularly plies them with wine

“Coach, why am I here?” someone says in a voice I recognize, obscurely, as my own. The words just tumble out, constricted and lost. “Why did you make me come?”

Sure took you long enough to ask

Oh, was there no happiness to be had the world over? There or here?

I didn't realize Addy was a Jane Austen heroine

“You’re my friend,” she blurts, an ache in her voice. “The only friend I ever had.”

She is TWENTY-SEVEN and the only friend she's ever had is a SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL she coaches? What the everloving fuck?

After, Beth bought me a pink camo leash with my name on it in glitter.

Jesus Christ

But then she decided it was a hobby for the supremely boring and it no longer seemed so gangsta to any of us after that.

Someone please get these white girls a therapist

“You always were such a hoodrat,”

NO ONE TALKS LIKE THIS

like watching a gang recruit get jumped in.

Seriously, so exhausting

“If you’d feel more comfortable with your parents present,” the man says, “we can call them.” “No,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s okay.” They both look at me and nod, as if I am being very wise.

This is illegal and literally nothing she says would be permissible in court considering she's a minor with no representation, but sure, go ahead and interrogate her. Makes about as much sense as everything else that's happened so far

Why would Beth want Prine to keep quiet about hearing Coach in Will’s apartment that night?

You are literally so fucking dumb