Sugar Summer

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “Just so you know?” he says. “I know you're walking out of here thinking what an asshole I am, and...you know, I'm not saying I'm a saint. But you're the one who came in here to use me and my connections and my grandfather and your—” he gestures up and down my body, “that, for no reason other than you thought could get what you wanted out of me.”

  “I asked for a phone call,” I say. “It's a favor. People do each other favors.”

  “That's called being weak,” he says. “It's called giving shit away for free. If I piss off my grandfather, it's gonna be for something that gets me somewhere. Maybe that's not nice, but it is smart. You're not being smart.”

  I come back to him and pick up a bottle of wine, the one he said cost more than the tuition to the Ivy League school I got into even though everyone here keeps telling me I'm not smart.

  “You're right,” I say. “I think you're an asshole. Stay away from Tristan and stay away from my little sister.”

  “Put that bottle down, all right?”

  “Sure,” I say, and I smash it on the floor.

  I expected him to freak out, but he just raises an eyebrow. “You think that's gonna get me in trouble?” I say. “You think you can do anything to me? Have you missed who the fuck I am?”

  “You're a fucking waiter,” I say, leaving for real. “Get a mop.”

  It's a nice moment, but it still has me going up to the old clubhouse with my tail between my legs that night. Everyone's dancing and kissing and groping, like my first night here, but I barely see anyone any more but Tristan and Mara. They're in the center of it all again, dancing kind of slowly, just holding each other more than anything.

  Just like in the pavilion, when I stalled long enough waiting for for the nerve to interrupt Mara, Oscar appears to rescue me. He's got another water jug and a few bags of chips. Does he get paid to bring these guys stuff?

  I help him out with it all and he says, “Hey, how'd it go?”

  “Not so well,” I say. “Josh is an asshole.”

  “He sure is. He's been holding this shit over Tris's head for ages.” He waves at Tristan and Mara until they look over and gives them a thumbs down. Tristan rests his head on Mara's shoulder.

  To my surprise, they come over to me and don't immediately tell me that I'm useless and it's time for me to leave.

  “So what now?” Oscar yells over the music.

  “Now I don't get my surgery in two weeks,” Tristan says. “And I pay the cancellation shit and it's just...that's life.”

  “There's got to be someone who can fill in for you,” I say.

  Mara says, “I already told you—”

  “I know, no one on the entertainment staff can,” I say. “What about one of the waiters? What about you?” I say to Oscar.

  “I can't dance,” Oscar says. “And I have to work too.”

  “Right, sorry. I...there's got to be someone.”

  “You haven't gotten it through your head that you're not going to save the day?” Mara says. “Look, kid, you mean well, but you don't know what you're doing. You're flailing around. You come here and you flail around. You go try to make things work with Josh and you flail around. You don't know what you're doing. What, are you gonna do it?”

  “I...”

  “Why doesn't she do it?” Oscar says.

  He's looking right at me, and it still takes me a minute to realize he is talking about me.

  “Why don't I do what?” I say.

  “What if you take Tristan's place?”

  “Me?” I say. “No, I can't dance either, and I'm...”

  Tristan sips from his beer and studies me.

  “No,” Mara says. “No, you're fucking kidding me.”

  “This...this could work,” Tristan says.

  “She doesn't know any of the steps!” Mara says.

  “She's got nothing to do but learn them for two weeks,” he says. “So what, she skips some croquet lessons?”

  “And who's gonna teach her, me? It's all on me. You know I have a goddamn job.”

  “Come on, you're a great teacher, you can teach anyone. It won't take that much time.”

  “She's a girl,” she says. “She's got a girl's body.”

  “And what body did I have when we started dancing together, a sheep's? Look, she's my height, she's got my coloring, put her in my clothes...”

  “So what, now any straight girl can just pass, huh? That's your new angle?”

  “I'm not talking about expecting her to pass walking around in a tank top and jeans,” Tristan says. “But she's gonna be onstage, under the lights, fifty feet away from everyone at least, in a suit? Someone comes out, the crowd's expecting a guy, they're gonna assume guy. Hell, you could pass for a guy in those circumstances.”

  “Boy, I could pass for a guy in any circumstances, don't put me in your boxes.”

  Tristan rolls his eyes. “I'll be around to help teach her until the day before she goes on,” he says. “We'll teach her the steps—we can cut the lifts, no one's gonna care—”

  “I will care,” Mara says.

  “And I'll dress her up. It's for one night. Hell, I could cosplay Princess fucking Diana for one night. This could work, Mara.”

  I say, “I just..it's not that I...”

  Tristan looks at me. His eyes are wet and pleading and oh God.

  “It's not that I'm against it,” I squeak out. “It's just that I can't dance. I don't think I can do it.”

  Mara points at me. “You hear that? She cannot do it. Just like she couldn't convince Josh to move the show. She. Can't. Do it.”

  I turn to her. So sure of when I'm honest and when I'm just scared, huh? So sure of exactly who I am. Calling me any straight girl.

  I narrow my eyes.

  Chapter 4

  “Ow.”

  I scurry off her foot. “Sorry.”

  “You're starting on the wrong beat. You start on the right beat, you stop stepping on me all the time. Just listen to the music.”

  “But I don't—”

  “Just listen.”

  “I don't hear the beat.”

  “Okay, then memorize it, whatever.” She hits play on her boombox and we go again.

  We're up in the old clubhouse early in the morning for our first rehearsal, before anyone has Mara booked for a private lesson she needs to get to and before my mother's up to go running. We're both in shorts, me with a tank top, her a sports bra. Her abs are bananas. Maybe all this dancing will make me look fit in a way swimming never has.

  She puts one of her hands on my shoulder and one in mine, then lets go to rearrange my hands on her waist. “Why are your hands so cold?” she says. “It's a hundred degrees outside.”

  “Put on a shirt if you don't like it,” I say.

  “I don't want to. Okay, are you listening?”

  “Yeah. How's Tristan?”

  “Don't worry about Tristan. Focus on the music.”

  I say, “Do you worry about people thinking you're a bitch, or are you on like another plane from that? Asking for a friend.”

  She cracks a smile. “Shut up. And. Dance. No, God, not like that—”

  “I'm trying!”

  “You keep stepping on the one. You have to wait for the two. And what is this arm?” She smacks my arm reaching out to her waist. “Limp arm. Mambo is about tension. You have to be in control of every muscle in your body.”

  “I've been control of like maximum five muscles in my entire life.”

  “Then this will be a very exciting experience for you. Head up.”

  I don't put my head up. Head up is gonna be one of the last things I learn, I've already decided. I have eleven days to learn this dance and I'm going to spend ten of them staring at my feet. We start the steps, and she pulls me along by my shoulder.

  “Aren't I supposed to be leading?” I say.

  “No, you're supposed to look like you're leading,” she says. “We are not going to get you to the point where you can lead me in a week and
a half. It's an illusion. Now twirl—no, not you, me. You're the boy.”

  “Right.”

  “You want to watch the video again?” She and Tristan made a video of themselves doing the routine and sent me back to my cabin last night with their camera—why don't you just text it to me, I asked before remembering this Little House on the Prairie situation we find ourselves in—and I watched it without sound in my bed last night for an hour, squirming my feet around under the covers.

  Apparently it didn't help much.

  “Feel the music,” she says again, but repeating it over and over doesn't magically make me know what that means. All I feel is the curve of her waist, her hip pushing and pulling under my palm.

  “Your hair is getting in my mouth,” I say.

  “Good. Chew on it instead of talking. Find the beat. Look, here—”

  We repeat the opening steps over and over again, out and in, arms rigid, head...not up, but there's the potential that it someday might be. I think I'm doing well until she sighs, spins away from me, and turns off the music.

  “From the top,” she says.

  “That wasn't from the top?”

  “If you keep backtalking me this is gonna take a hell of a lot longer than it needs to.”

  “I think this is taking eleven days regardless of literally anything else,” I say.

  She throws up her hands, like she does.

  “Okay, okay, I'm sorry,” I say. “I'm listening. Come here.” I stand up straight. “See? Posture. I'm confident. I'm a guy.”

  She snorts. “Yeah, you're a guy.”

  I sneak back into bed before the breakfast bell, act like I've gotten a full night of sleep through a meal with my mom and my sister where Josh makes a big deal out of flirting with Bekah instead of me, and sneak back away right after breakfast ends with excuses of my fake art class to meet Mara at the dance studio. We make it about two hours without yelling at each other.

  Someone's going to start asking questions about where I am and we haven't had a break and who the hell planned this place and didn't take into account that maybe the dance cabin needed air conditioning?

  “Ball of your foot!” she says. “How many times do I have to—”

  “I am,” I say.

  “If you were, why would I be telling you to do it, just for sport?”

  “I don't fucking know!” I say.

  “All right, well I don't know how we're going to do this when you can't follow simple directions.”

  “Goddamn it,” I say, “Did you really think I was going to get this in one day?”

  “I thought we'd get past the first sixteen counts!”

  “Maybe if we'd just let this part sit for now—”

  “It has to be perfect,” she says. “Do you get that? This isn't some participation trophy good enough shit, these people are coming to a show expecting to see professional dancers. Someone complains that we weren't up to snuff, how long do you think it's gonna take them to figure out that it wasn't Tris up there and then we're worse than we were when we started.”

  “Then maybe you should just go up there and dance by yourself,” I say.

  “Yeah, maybe I should.” She shuts off the music with her heel. “Just go get some lunch, all right? I need a break.”

  I grab my bag.

  “I've got lessons this afternoon,” she says. “Practice on your own, come back here after dark.”

  “I know,” I say.

  I hear her mumble, “What the fuck was I thinking,” on my way out.

  I shower and tie up my hair and end up having time to kill before lunch. I know I should practice, take advantage of my empty room, but I'm so sore that just getting to my bed from the shower was a chore. I flop down on top of the blankets and watch the video a few times. We got through about thirty seconds of this and Mara says I'm still not doing it right, and it's hard to believe that, if I'm supposed to look like they do, I'm ever going to get it right. They move like water, like they're part of one wave.

  I jump at a knock on my screen door. It's Mom.

  “Art class ended early?” she says. “I was just coming to get changed for lunch. What are you watching?”

  “Nothing,” I say. I stash the camera under the covers.

  She doesn't push it, which is one of the best parts of having such a good relationship with my mother. I tell her just about everything, so she doesn't pry into the things I don't tell her. She comes in and sits down on the bed next to me. “How's art class?” I say.

  “It's...I don't know. Did you know I can't draw?”

  “I'm sure you'll be fine with some practice,” she says. “You're so good at that kind of thing.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Anything artsy,” she says. “You always have been. God knows where you get it from. I had one line in the school play when I was in elementary school and I was a nervous wreck. My brain's for math, like your sister.” She plays with my hair. “You've always been different. Coloring outside the lines. Hell, coloring at all, in this family.”

  “I can't draw,” I say. “Or dance, really.”

  “Sure you could!” she says. “You just need time. I'm telling you, with that artist's soul you can do anything. Who's gonna tell you you can't do something? You make your own rules.”

  I lay my head on her shoulder. “Thanks, Mama.”

  When I meet Mara again later in the dance studio, Tristan's there. “I only have an hour,” Tristan says. “I have a samba lesson with Mrs. Connors.”

  “Nobody sweats like Mrs. Connors,” Mara says to me.

  “What about you?” he says to Mara. “Don't you have an, um, appointment?”

  “Not in front of the kid,” Mara says.

  “You're like three years older than me, and I know you hook up with Rory Richards,” I say.

  “How do you know that?” she says.

  “Because I'm not an idiot.”

  “That's supposed to be a secret,” she says.

  Tristan's laughing. “Mara, everybody knows. It's not a secret.”

  “Entertainment staff's not supposed to get near the guests,” she says. “It's in our contracts.”

  Tristan says, “I think the rules are bent when you getting near a celebrity is the only thing keeping her coming back. I'm surprised Sol does't supply the dental dams.”

  “Tristan, seriously, dental dams? You're gonna scar the kid for life.”

  “I have a name, you know,” I say.

  She says, “Have you heard your name? Are you sure you want to go with that as your comeback?”

  “Yeah...that's fair.”

  “That's not your real name, right?” Tristan says. “That can't be your name.”

  “Don't listen to him,” Mara says. “You should have heard some of the names he considered before he decided fuck it, he'd just sound like a rich white boy.”

  “What, so you're the only one who's allowed to tease her?” he says.

  She rolls her eyes. “I'm starting the music now.” She hits play and Tristan goes and perches on the boombox and watches us dance. “How's she look?” Mara says.

  “Uh.”

  “We are so screwed,” Mara says.

  “It's one dance. Anyone can learn one dance. And she's got a good body.”

  “A good body doesn't help us here, Tris,” she says. She puts a hand on my waist and squeezes a little. “Yeah, she's got great curves. It'd be better for us if she were a block.”

  “I am no block,” Tristan says. “And get your hands off her waist. You're not the lead.”

  “I'm always the lead,” she says.

  I say, “I can't concentrate when you keep talking.” And touching me.

  Two three four. Two three four. I count in my head and try to mirror her steps. What I'm kind of doing is taking up space as she vacates it. Or she's taking up space as I vacate it, since I'm the lead. Maybe. Since everyone watching this is supposed to think I'm the lead.

  “You gotta act like you know what you're
doing with her,” Tristan says. “Like she's a prop you're using.”

  “Thank you very much,” Mara says.

  Tristan says, “Do you want to get her a women's studies degree or do you want to get through this showcase?”

  “I don't see why we can't do both,” she says.

  “She's small,” Tristan tells me. “Act like you're like...using her for balance. But that the dance is about you. And it's her job to steal the show, but you have to be holding it first.”

  “Holding the show?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This stuff doesn't...” I stop dancing.

  Mara says, “No, stopping is not how you learn.”

  “It doesn't make sense to me when you guys talk like that,” I say. “I need practical stuff. Like when you tell me not to step on your feet and when to start and how to hold my back and...stuff like that.”

  “You really need to be told not to step on my feet?” she says.

  I ignore her. “But when you start talking about like...like esoteric shit like feeling the music and holding something that you can't physically hold...that's not how my brain is.”

  “She's more of a waiter than an entertainment staff,” Tristan says.

  “Yeah, I get it, I'm the priviliged devil, but I'm here saving your ass so can you stop talking about me like I can't hear you?”

  Tristan grins and leans back against nothing and almost falls off the boombox. Mara laughs at him, and he laughs at himself, which helps.

  “It's just focus and practice,” Mara says. “That's all it is. We didn't come out of the womb knowing how to dance.”

  “What about like...musicality?” I say. “Like..really feeling it?”

  Tristan says, “You're dancing for three minutes and then you're done for the rest of your life. You can fake that.”

  “No, she can't,” Mara says. “But you can...you can learn it. Come here. Tris, get up.”

  He groans and climbs to his feet, and Mara says, “Get behind her.”

  He puts his hands on my waist. “Okay.”

  “Now you take hold of me,” she says to me.

  I do, spreading my fingers underneath her shoulder blade. Holding her solidly, confidently, like I'm supposed to. Like Tristan is holding me.

  “Ah, shit, hang on,” Mara says, and she untangles herself from us to start the music and then slips back in. “Okay, sorry. Now just listen to that, feel him, and watch me, okay? Don't take your eyes off mine. Like that first night, okay?”