So look at me here, in the locker room before the game. The yearning so deep, like pinions over our hearts. We're all the same under our skin, aren't we? We're all wanting things we don't understand.

And when she came, I watched all their masks peel away. I was never one of those mask-faced teenagers, gum lodged in mouth corner, eyes rolling and long sighs. Look at how my eyes shutter open and closed, like everything is just too much to take in. I am on the gym floor, my girl Beth beside me, our cherried smiles and spray-tanned legs, ponytails bobbing in sync. There I am, Addy Hanlon, sixteen years old, hair like a long taffy pull and skin tight as a rubber band. Did I ever feel anything at all until she showed me what feeling meant? Pushing at the corners of her cramped world with curled fists, she showed me what it meant to live. She was the one who showed me all the dark wonders of life, the real life, the life I'd only seen flickering from the corner of my eye. So can you blame me for wanting to keep it? To fight for it, to the end?

It put a spine into my spineless life and that spine spread, into backbone, ribs, collarbone, neck held high.Īnd Coach gave it all to us. Mostly it's noisy and sweaty, it's the roughness of bruised and dented girl bodies, feet sore from floor pounding, elbows skinned red.īut it is also a beautiful, beautiful thing, all of us in that close, wet space, safer than in all the world. All those endless fantasies and dirty boy-dreams, they're all true, in a way. Read ExcerptĪll those misty images of cheerleaders frolicking in locker rooms, pom-poms sprawling over bare bud breasts. Award-winning novelist Megan Abbott, writing with what Tom Perrotta has hailed as 'total authority and an almost desperate intensity,' provides a harrowing glimpse into the dark heart of the all-American girl. The raw passions of girlhood are brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship, ambition, and power. After the first wave of shock and grief, Addy tries to uncover the truth behind the death - and learns that the boundary between loyalty and love can be dangerous terrain. Then a suicide focuses a police investigation on Coach and her squad. Only Beth, unsettled by the new regime, remains outside Coach's golden circle, waging a subtle but vicious campaign to regain her position as 'top girl' - both with the team and with Addy herself. Now they're seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls - until the young new coach arrives.Ĭool and commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach, Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her life. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy's best friend and trusted lieutenant.

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